Hi Everyone. Well, after 15 years the RV-Dreams Community Forum is coming to an end. Since it began in August 2005, we've had 58 Million page views, 124,000 posts, and we've spent about $15,000 to keep this valuable resource for RVers free and open. But since we are now off the road and have settled down for the next chapter of our lives, we are taking the Forum down effective June 30, 2021. It has been a tough decision, but it is now time.
We want to thank all of our members for their participation and input over the years, and we want to especially thank those that have acted as Moderators for us during our amazing journey living and traveling in our RV and growing the RV-Dreams Family. We will be forever proud to have been founders of this Forum and to have been supported by such a wonderful community. Thank you all!!
Does anyone know if cable TV can be recorded with the Dish Hopper or are the signals different ? We locate in a park for six months that is completely tree covered. Cable is OK but not nearly as good as Dish Satellite HD and I loose the ability to record programs to the Hopper for later viewing. I have to put my Dish Network account on Pause during this time.
If there isn't a way to integrate cable with Dish Hopper. Is there any equipment aside from the old VCR that can record cable programs by time and channel for later viewing ?
No, your Hopper will not record cable programming. If you have the OTA adapter and good OTA signals, that programming can be recorded if the account is active. Do you have a portable dish, or a location limited roof mounted dish? We use a portable tripod mounted dish that we can equip for either the eastern or western arc satellites, and have never landed on a site yet where I could not find a sat signal somewhere. I've used as much as 200' of coax a few times, but we've always had service.
We have a roof top Winegard 1000 HD ( 3 satellites ). I've tried to go to 1 sat in western ark but there is some things you have to do in the TV with the Dish remote. Haven't figured that out yet. If I do maybe I can try single west or eastern satellite that will find a hole in the trees.
Ok, hopefully someone that's familiar with manually aiming a Trav'ler will jump in with some help. I know quite few folks with roof mounts that also carry a portable tripod mounted dish just for situations like yours. Broken down, they don't take up a lot of storage space.
Does anyone know if cable TV can be recorded with the Dish Hopper or are the signals different ? We locate in a park for six months that is completely tree covered. Cable is OK but not nearly as good as Dish Satellite HD and I loose the ability to record programs to the Hopper for later viewing. I have to put my Dish Network account on Pause during this time.
If there isn't a way to integrate cable with Dish Hopper. Is there any equipment aside from the old VCR that can record cable programs by time and channel for later viewing ?
Nope, for sure and the same is true for DirecTV. And while there are ways to record cable with stand alone DVR's it gets a bit complicated and one must program, essentially, most all recordings manually. And "It depends" on the cable system how this can be done.
The reason is due to how the recordings are made and the form of the "signal" they require. Things have changed a lot since the days of VHS VTR's. You know, the recorders with the flashing 12:00 in the time display because no one could figure out how to set the clock.
I started to install all this type of capability and then said, forgetaboutit and just take everything off satellite including the networks and local stations if I am going to be in a local area for any length of time. Just sooo much easier.
We have a roof top Winegard 1000 HD ( 3 satellites ). I've tried to go to 1 sat in western ark but there is some things you have to do in the TV with the Dish remote. Haven't figured that out yet. If I do maybe I can try single west or eastern satellite that will find a hole in the trees.
that also carry a portable tripod mounted dish just for situations like yours. Broken down, they don't take up a lot of storage space.
OK, here we got with Ford / Chevy discussion - Dish vs. DirecTV version. {Big Grin}
The traveler, when used with DirecTV, uses the satellites over "Texas." That is the satellites are "parked" in the middle of the Continental US. Most of the time this can be big advantage for RVers. DirecTV, for now, uses satellites 99 / 101 / 103 right in the middle of the US. Satellite 101, for now, has everything on it (well almost everything) in Standard Definition. (I.e. not HD - 99 / 103 is where the HD is located.) So one can tell the Trav'ler to peak only on 101 in difficult situations. Think trees. Single satellite peaking is much easier. Because the three satellites are so close together peaking on 101 will almost always get all three satellites and that means HD off 99 and 103. (This working depends on trees most of the time.)
The point is, the dish does not have to tilt down as far to the east or west to get the far east or west satellites Dish uses. In the home, typically, this doesn't matter and choose whatever service one prefers. But for RVers, IMO, DirecTV works better because of where the satellites are located and the fact one can get just one satellite, 101, and still watch all TV channels albeit for now in SD. Naturally YMMV.
FWIW, Lots of discussion on this forum over the past, odd, 7+ years. Most of those discussions are still valid if one wants to search around FWIW.
After some research, It looks like I have a choice of Western Arc sats ( 110 /119 /129 ) west of Chicago and Eastern Arc sats ( 61.5 / 72.7 / 77 ) east of Chicago.
My HD satellites are 129 and 61.5
Western Sats are at 21.7 deg elevation / HD sat is 14.8 deg ( pretty low from southeastern Ma. ). Eastern Sats are all at 40 to 41 deg elevation ( somewhat higher ).
I plan on getting the satellite finder app for my cell phone to see if I can find a hole for one of those satellites.
May sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I don't. Just trying to learn.
Yes, Dish uses two sets of satellites for east and west coverage, something that we've found very useful on heavily treed sites since we've usually been able to "see" one set or the other, and always a sat that carries the channels we're particularly interested in. Sometimes we can only see the 72.7 and 77 sats for instance, but since 77 carries the SD version of nearly all of the channels carried on the HD 61.5 sat, we still get all of our programming. In my opinion, the portable dish is the key item in insuring a sat signal in more locations than a fixed roof mount dish, regardless of which service is used. For us, the broader selection of Dish sats combined with the more RV friendly Dish customer support has kept us with them for the last 10 years.
