So for the past decade or more we have gotten into the bad habit of not watching live TV other than sports..and it has to be in High Definition. All of the stuff we like to watch gets recorded on our DVR and we purposely watch things later in the evening or the next day so we don’t have to sit through commercials.  So what are we to do with the RV and how is that going to work out?

Well, the RV comes with a in motion satellite mounted on the top of the RV, it can pull in a single channel at a time:

This will get reception while your moving down the road and plan to use it to monitor the weather and news while we are driving from place to place.  The coach comes with Direct TV receiver, but the in motion set up for Direct TV is only standard definition, and we have already shunned that as unacceptable at home, so I can’t bring myself to go backwards.  To convert to Dish network is simple, since the in motion dish can be either Direct TV or Dish, just have to set some switches in the dome and away you go.  So all I need is to get a simple Dish receiver, and we can use it on the in motion dish.  Plan is to get a simple RV plan paying by the month so we can use it during the summer.  So here is the simple ViP 211z receiver:

The good news is you can add for a one time fee (additional profit for the company) an external hard drive so it can record shows.  Not sure if I need that right away so we will hold off adding that feature for now.

But the in-motion dish is a small dish, not real powerful and cannot do any of the advanced functions we have been spoiled with such as multi channel recording onto a DVR.  To enable that you need a more powerful satellite, called a Traveler, which is on the roof and has a motor to open it up and also stow it when you get underway.  It looks like this:

Now the plan is to get this installed at a Custom RV near Red Bay during our trip when we picked up the RV.  I can start by using the same ViP 211z receiver to test it and make sure it is working for now, but the plan would be to add a higher end DVR like a Hopper2 to allow multiple recording and playback like we have at home with a more complete programming package….

The set up for it will look something like this, I don’t know if we will need more than one of the Joey’s, which will allow us to watch different shows on different TV’s at the same time.

Now, this will be the summer time project and to connect we will end up also needing a way to use the cellular network to connect and get updates which will be a whole other post of thoughts and ideas.  Also something I got advice on that at least on the east coast, a lot of the state parks have trees and they block the satellite signals, so to get around that, you can use a portable dish outside the coach to find an open spot in the sky to get at least one channel on a satellite using the same ViP 211z receiver:

This is another item that we will wait on and see if I need one, as I know that with Amazon Prime I can get it delivered in a day or two.  It ties into the outside connection of the RV and feeds the TV distribution system.  I am not sure I really need three frickin Satellite receiver’s to cover all the contingencies.  I also can use our phones to stream stuff from the ol internet, maybe using air stream to get it onto the TV’s for watching, more testing is planned.  The good news is we have our phones on the old grandfathered ATT unlimited plans but the bad news is they cannot be used as a hotspot to connect our computer to.  Again, we will start with what we have and go from there.  Now that I have the motor home,  I can start playing around with it!