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Dish TV temporary?


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Hey All.  I'd like to get dish TV for my rig but I only want to pay for it when I use it.  I don't have Dish TV at home and I don't want it.  I'm very happy with my rabbit ears,  HD TV antenna,  and $0.00 cable bill.  Anyone know of any temporary RV only dish packages? 

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Just curious . . what is a "HD" antenna? Sounds like a marketing ad.  I use a conventional UHF/VHF antenna with a preamp on our RV and it does all I need.  We usually get more TV when camping in remote places then we get at home.

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1 hour ago, jdemaris said:

Just curious . . what is a "HD" antenna? Sounds like a marketing ad.  I use a conventional UHF/VHF antenna with a preamp on our RV and it does all I need.  We usually get more TV when camping in remote places then we get at home.

High definition radio waves very special grown only in China.

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7 hours ago, gringostar said:

Hey All.  I'd like to get dish TV for my rig but I only want to pay for it when I use it.  I don't have Dish TV at home and I don't want it.  I'm very happy with my rabbit ears,  HD TV antenna,  and $0.00 cable bill.  Anyone know of any temporary RV only dish packages? 

There are co's that have RV packages but you are still stuck with owning the gear don't know of any one that rents them short term. 

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5 hours ago, jdemaris said:

Just curious . . what is a "HD" antenna? Sounds like a marketing ad.  I use a conventional UHF/VHF antenna with a preamp on our RV and it does all I need.  We usually get more TV when camping in remote places then we get at home.

Hi. In CA, all over the air TV is broadcast in HD (high definition)   The only way I can watch TV for free is if I use an HD-TV antenna. I thought HD TV broadcast was standard throughout the USA?

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56 minutes ago, gringostar said:

Hi. In CA, all over the air TV is broadcast in HD (high definition)   The only way I can watch TV for free is if I use an HD-TV antenna. I thought HD TV broadcast was standard throughout the USA?

Again - there is no such thing as a "high definition" antenna.  An antenna  built 70 years ago can receive an HD signal.  Nothing has changed with the antennas in regard to how they work.  Just the signal.  UHF is still UHF and VHF is still VHF.  Makes no difference to the antenna if the signal is analog, digital, or high def.

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i would say the difference is in the TV, not the antenna; before you could halfway get a fuzzy far out signal. now you either get it or not.

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1 hour ago, Totem said:

i would say the difference is in the TV, not the antenna; before you could halfway get a fuzzy far out signal. now you either get it or not.

That is a characteristic of a digital signal, as compared to an analog signal.  We still get a few analog stations where I am right now and get weak "snowy" pictures.   No snow with digital.  Just clear, or pixels, nothing.  Kind of an "all or nothing" sort of deal.

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indeed, my sunrader still has the u shaped tv antennae that has the coaxial cable hookup inside that goes to it; its also "amplified" into the 12 volt system.. I always just use it as a "luggage rack" up on the roof. Mine is stronger than most as my brother in law destroyed the original oem factory aluminum one when he "accidentally" felled a widow-maker branch that bounced 30 feet and landed on the roof and i replaced it with galvanized conduit pipe bent into the same shape/size.  - unsure what the effect of this would be in the antenna; from what i can tell the connection is one of the mount points that its slid into. Maybe Derek up north or someone more knowledgeable can elaborate on the sunrader antenna composition.

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The original Winegard amplified RV antennas, with the crank-up feature, were primarily focused on VHF TV channels and are/were weak on UHF.  When TV went to digital, many VHF stations changed over to UHF. So Winegard came out with an add-on kit to increase the UHF range. Called the "Wingman."

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When broadcasts mostly went digital (HD) I actually had a salesman stop at my house to sell me a digital (high definition ) antenna.  He informed me that my old antenna would not work with the new signal.  I informed him that he could leave immediately or get eaten by the dog.  I called the sheriff's office and they picked him up at my neighbors house half an hour later.  

I have a 27' antenna on top of a 50' tower because I live in a "fringe area"  When all of the Madison, WI stations finished adding channels to their broadcast, I ended up getting 17 stations on my old antenna with a new TV.  By the way, there are some low power tv stations still broadcasting  analog signals.

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I bet there are a few still broadcasting in Mexico.  easy way to avoid any FTC regs is to broadcast from just south of the border, like the famous old radio station from Juarez(?) that used to play stuff you couldn't play in the US.....source of the old ZZTop song "Heard it on the X"

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1 hour ago, snail powered said:

Television withdrawal symptoms can be painful but they do not create long lasting damage or fatalities.

I'm not so sure about that, I still have flashbacks.

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1 hour ago, Derek up North said:

I went cold turkey a few years ago. No problem. YouTube, on the other hand ...! :)

I have weak moments, where I want to resubscribe. So I wander over to the neighbors and watch his for a bit and that snaps me out of it.  Now I am getting sick of commercials when I am surfing you tube.  I must have saw 4 seconds of Germain toyota ads a 150 times when trying to research my no start problem.   I sent an Email and told them I would never buy a vehicle there!

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I previously stayed out of this discussion cuz I agree with Totem....glad to see i'm not the only one.  haven't had one of the cursed things for 40 yrs.  coworkers often ask me how I get so much done on the weekends....I tell em my "television deficit disorder"  is acting up again.

my wife is a career educator, has taught all levels and all grades, currently at a community college.....she agrees that even for "good" TV (PBS, NatGeo, etc), the canned and prepackaged visualization causes visualization and abstract imagery skills in the brain to atrophy.....my shorter version is "it sucks yer brain out through your eyeballs"

Edited by payaso del mar
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Payaso, get a roku. You can have history nat geo et all without the lame stream cable bill. Amazon firestick running codi and a hotspot or tethered phone is all we need for ala carte choice. Dish, cable and satellite tv are for the sheep.

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I get plenty done and manage to watch TV too.   But yeah, I guess if you a person that somehow becomes unproductive due to a lit-up TV screen, I guess you ought to stay away from it.
I do plenty from 7 AM to 9 PM every day of the week.  I doubt watching TV from 9 PM to midnight is cutting down on my personal productivity. If anything, it might be increasing it.  I suppose I should be reading a book or weaving a basket instead and then be a better person?  Hey, I don't see "device use" being bad-mouth and I see much of the world glued to the things all day long.  I am certainly free of that "vice."

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yeah but you PAY for cable/sat? If I am going to invest my time I'd like to do it without having to suffer a Vote for "H***CENSORED" commercial. and I cannot escape that on any TV channel even on the air.

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17 hours ago, jdemaris said:

I get plenty done and manage to watch TV too.

um, I hate to break this to you but I daresay you ain't representative of the average American*.  if the rest of the place were like you, we'd have those flying cars they promised us back in the early 60s.........

 

*the average would be more like the folks in the auto parts store who didn't know how many cylinders their car had.....

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Geeze poor Gringo, ask how to get dish temporary and gets a tv causes drain damage lecture.  Must be all that TV you guys watched as kids. B)

 

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hey now, speak for yourself I offered a better alternative - free tv/movies (via roku or firestick with cellular internet which also provides access to this site.)

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6 hours ago, Totem said:

yeah but you PAY for cable/sat? If I am going to invest my time I'd like to do it without having to suffer a Vote for "H***CENSORED" commercial. and I cannot escape that on any TV channel even on the air.

I'm not sure who you are replying too.  I don't pay anything for TV.  We have two big antennas. One VHF and one UHF and twin 30 dB preamps.  So I paid around $200 for the equipment once, about 10 years ago.  We get around 14 digital channels from the USA and another 6-7  digital channels from Canada.  We also get three analog channels from Michigan  and three analog channels from Canada. What we DO pay for is DVDs from Netflix. We are in the $12.71 per month club.  For that they send us two DVDs anytime we send two back.  We wind up getting 10-12 DVDs per month for $12.71. Pretty good deal.  We do not watch them when we get them,  I decode them, put them on our own DVDs, and send back the originals  right away.  We tend to get older TV series and binge watch, like an episode per night until we watch the whole deal.  No commercials.  We get a lot of HBO series this way but more often older stuff.  Like the entire series of Northern Exposure (one of our favorites).  Just got done watching 24 start to finish, and also Breaking Bad.  By the way, if any Feds are reading this - I am only kidding. I have no idea how to copy anyone's decrypted DVD, except of course, the ones I own.  

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I use their streaming service $7.99 a month (grandfathered price). All i need is 3 mbps to get standard def. if i were in the up though i too would do the dvd thing prolly. 

Glad to hear no paying for the tube. 

 

Edited by Totem
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I wish we could have a service that allowed streaming once in awhile.  We have never had good Internet access.  We started with dial-up that resulted in a non-local phone call that ran up charges.  Then we migrated to HughesNet dish that cost us $80 a month and was slow and very limited.  Then we got Millenicom  wireless for $70 per month with a 10GB cap.  Then they got bought by Verizon and we now have Verizon MiFi wireless for $80 per month and it is capped at 15 GB per month.  That includes our phone use, or Internet access.  It tends to work pretty good most places as long as we use a good antenna. We have a roof-top Yagi antenna at home for our Internet.  When we travel and camp - we use a portable antenna and a Wilson amplifier.  Oddly, we get a better 4GLTE signal when at our place in the UP near Eckerman, then at home near Rogers City at the northern end of the lower peninsula.

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just a note; if you pay a monthly membership to netflix you get the streaming service free; you just need a device that can access it like a roku or netflix app etc.

inside of the netflix online account you can throttle the bandwidth which will downscale your definition as viewed; lower quality def only requires lessor internet speed and bandwidth usage (making it fit inside the cap of the mifi.)... might be a nice treat on a road trip.

check it out in your account.

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On 5/24/2016 at 1:26 PM, Totem said:

I offered a better alternative - free tv/movies (via roku or firestick with cellular internet which also provides access to this site.)

I have heard nothing but good things about the Roku, I am looking into cellular internet TV as well. I don't watch TV, but then again I am not living in my rig ATM. Once I start, I would like to have as many choices of media as I can for the cheapest price. I have friends who swear by the Roku.

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I get all my media from the internet plus netflix. I don't watch TV at all. I am thinking a $35-$50 dollar unlimited data plan w/tethering, no contract, is the best way to go. If one wants HBO...etc then adding the Roku would be the best option as it will run on the tethered hotspot.
Any thoughts or suggestions?

This is what Totem has suggested.

The only problem I can foresee is having no signal due to network boarders.

B

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I've never been able to find any unlimited data plan for $35-$50 per month.  If available, where?   We pay around $80 per month for 15 GB through Verizon.  That 15GB is a shared account for our household Internet, devices, phones, etc.   I can't say I check every week to see if anything new is out. I know that when we got our Verizon MiFi 15 GB per month plan - it was the best there was available where we live or travel.   At that time Sprint and T-Mobil had unlimited plans but since neither work where I live, so it was kind of meaningless.  Presque Isle, Alpena, and Chippewa counties, northern Michigan.

Someone was here a few weeks ago with a "free" Obama phone.  It would not work at all. On the Sprint network I believe. 

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