ShapeShifter
Buffalo, NY
Senior Member
Joined: 04/03/2007
View Profile
|
rk911 wrote:i was planning to buy new from a source like Amazon, Buy.Com, etc. but your points about the smart card are good and i'll be sure to follow thru on that.
Buying new from a valid retailer shouldn't be an issue, as it should have a valid smart card and no outstanding balances. You can sometimes get deals on eBay and CraigsList that seem to be good deals on the surface, but aren't. And don't be too worried if a receiver has an empty smart card slot -- as long as the receiver shows a smart card ID, it can have an internal card.
rk911 also wrote:that's gonna be tough to pin down. we're not fulltimers but we do spend time east of the mississippi...maybe not as much as we do out west but the amount of time we spend in the east is not insignificant. our home is in chicago but we rarely camp anywhere near our home. i'm not concerned about getting a specific set of local channels. i just want to get ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox but i don't care from where they originate. with that in mind do i still need to worry about what arc i need to plan for? if not then how do i change locals?
Normally, if your account is set up as an RV account, when you move to a new location you give them a call and they turn on locals for that area (turning off locals for all other areas.) If you have a Western Arc dish, and the locals for your current area are only on the Eastern Arc, then you won't be able to receive them even if they are turned on for you.
Unless you really want the local stations, because you want local news for example, an option for you might be to get DNS (Distant Network Service.) This will give you the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS) from a major city and you will be able to get them anywhere. Dish is not currently allowed to offer them (but may be soon) so you need to go to a third party provider to order them (but you will still pick it up through the Dish Network equipment.) All American Direct is the company you want to talk to for this: http://www.mydistantnetworks.com/ I have no personal experience with them, so I can't answer detailed questions about them.
rk911 next wrote:i was leaning towards the Winegard Trav'ler as i like the idea of pushing a button and forgetting it. most of the reviews i've read seem positive. and getting the locals, like HD programming for us, would be nice but it's not absolutely necessary.
If you go with the Trav'ler then your decision is easy: they only provide a Western Arc dish, Eastern Arc is not available from them (I wish it was!) Other than not supporting Eastern Arc (which I need to get my locals in HD) I really like mine. I've had it for a year and have had no issues. It will pick up HD, and will get any locals that are on the Western Arc satellites.
But as with any dish/dome mounted to your roof, you still should carry a portable dish. If you are parked under or close to trees, you might not have a line-of-sight for the rooftop dish. The solution is a portable dish with a long cable that you can move around to find a clear patch of sky.
rk911 finally wrote:i was just talking to a neighbor in the park and he said the same thing about his KingDome. we have no need for an in-motion setup so i wasn't thinking of going that route. being a ham i understand the value of having more rather than less 'aluminum' in the sky to capture signals. judging by their size most of the domes i've seen must have smaller dishes inside.
Yes, the domes have a very small dish inside. If I recall correctly, the reflector dish inside my KingDome would be about 10 to 12 inches in diameter (which is pretty small) if it were a full circle, but it's only half a circle (which makes it even smaller from a performance point of view.) Then on top of that you have the dome which tends to collect dew and rain drops, both of which absorb the signal. So the dome can be more problematic under weak signal conditions, and can often drop out in the rain.
But that wasn't my biggest problem with the dome. I could never get it working properly with my 722 or 612 dual tuner DVRs. The problem is that you need to be able to see up to three satellites to get all of your stations, and the dome can only see one at a time. A real dish (like on the Trav'ler) can see all three at once, and only need to electrically switch between them as you change channels. But a dome must physically move from satellite to satellite. That means it must get commands from the receiver to tell it to point to the correct satellite. But that doesn't work well with a dual tuner receiver, the folks at King-Dome say it works well with a single tuner receiver, but there is something different in the way dual tuner receivers talk to the dome that causes problems. The other issue is that the second tuner can only see channels that are on the same satellite as the first tuner. While a real dish can simultaneously send signals from one satellite to one tuner, and another satellite to the other tuner, a dome can't do that. If the main tuner has it pointed to one satellite, and the second tuner is trying to pick up a different satellite, that second tuner gets nothing.
2007 Holiday Rambler Endeavor 40PDQ LE
400 ISL Cummins/Allison
2002 Chevy Avalanche toad
Inside: Him, Her, and a pack of little furballs...
|
