Hi there, My husband and I will be staying in Arizona this winter in our motor home, and want to be able to watch tv. The campgrounds we're staying at don't offer cable hook up, and we just have the original analog tvs (circa 2005) that came with our motor home. Not sure if we'll get any over the air channels with our antenna. We've been debating on Dish Network or Direct TV, but not sure if that would work with our "old fashioned" analog tvs. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I know we would go stir crazy with no tv for months!!
We've been using Direct TV for several years. It is dome mounted on top of the roof that has the antenna inside. When we park for the night all we do is flip the switch and the antenna goes thru a series of alignments with the Direct satellite. We have to be in a mostly open space with no trees or structures blocking the incoming signal. All has been fine until just recently when we were told by Direct that we would need to replace our receiver in order to receive future signals. This is because our receiver is not HiDef. and Direct is no longer going to be broadcasting in Standard Def. They will be coming out to replace it at no charge sometime this month. Depending on what model TVs you have in your coach will determine whether or not the new satellite receivers from either Direct or DIsh will work with them or not. You might want to call either or both of them and ask them what will be involved in setting everything up with your current TVs. We don't watch much TV on the road other than the morning and evening news basically but it is nice to have TV when you are on the road for lengthy periods, especially on rainy nights when being outdoors isn't in the cards. Hope this helps a bit,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, BankShot...................(aka Terry)
Your old analog TV's can't receive over-the-air (OTA) channels unless you equip them with ditigal to analog converters, but given the price of new TV's it would be difficult to justify spending money on a TV that is more than 10 years old. The good news is that those old TVs will work fine with satellite receivers that have analog outputs. A receiver such as the DirecTV H24 is compatible with anticipated DirecTV changes later this year and it also has both composite and component outputs in addition to HDMI. Hopefully, your TV's have either composite (yellow, red, white) inputs and/or composite (red, blue, green) inputs.
Thank you Terry and Joel for the great info! I'm technically challenged when it comes to this stuff, so hopefully my husband and the Dish or Direct TV people can get it figured out. Think we would drive each other crazy all winter with no tv
For part time RV'ers, Dish is usually the better choice since they offer a Pay-As-You-Go plan where you can start and stop your service as needed without any penalties or contracts. The downside is that you must buy your equipment instead of getting it free with a contract, but the savings will usually more than make up for that. There are also more automatic aiming dish choices with Dish than DTV, including the Winegard Pathway X2 that can receive either of the Dish three satellite sets, one favoring the western US, and one for the eastern side. The advantage for RV'ers though, is that both arcs can be received almost anywhere in the lower 48 and carry nearly all the same programming except for some locals. That capability means more aiming opportunities on heavily treed campsites, improving your chances of getting a signal. My personal choice was a tripod mounted open face dish that's capable of receiving three satellites at once from either arc, and is manually placed and aimed. The automatic dishes are more limited, both in the receiver models they work with and the distance they can be placed from the RV. Joel covered the analog TV side well, so I won't go into that issue.
Advice - Whichever service you go with - buy a new HDTV. You'll appreciate the difference. The resolution is much much better, the aspect ratio is correct (ratio of height to width), the colorimetry (accuracy) is better, the consistency of color is better, the audio is better, the TVs use less power and the cabling is easier. Plus, you will be compatible with terrestrial (OTA) signals. Watching a good HD signal on an old analog TV is painful.
