Sat Tv, KVH: TV1 or TV3?

As part of a New radar and mast project, I am looking to install a receiver for DirecTV.

We previously had the M3 dish on our last boat so I am curious to hear if there are major differences between the TV one and three?

The manufactures data indicate the TV1 dome is slightly smaller, but the specifications for the satellite etc. appearto be fairly similar.

Has anyone done any research on these two systems, or have any feedback on which system would be better for the dock and coastal cruising not more than 100 miles offshore?

Intellian is a better choice me thinks. Better customer support.

I agree with Intellian, having recently upgraded from a KVH M7 to an intellian S6.
In fact, I completed the installation just today. I had a configuration question (or three) and, amazingly enough, Intellian support was there for me. On a Sunday no less.

With my KVH, I always had to wait when changing channels so the antenna could find and point to the proper satellite. Among other benefits, the Intellian tracks all 3 birds at once. No more delay in changing channels.

I installed a TV1 on my last boat (a Manta sail cat) and HATED it.
1. We were in South Florida and the antenna couldn't find the satellites unless the boat was pointed in a specific direction. The TV1 was mounted 15 feet in the air and at least 15 feet from the mast, but it seemed the mast was ALWAYS in the way. The array is just too small to be reliable.
2. The unit was NOISY. When anchored out (and even in a slip), the unit is constantly trying to find the satellites and fine tuning it's position. You can hear the motors running constantly. The Arch was located on the stern of our boat and from the aft, master suite, the TV1 would keep us awake at night to the point that I had to flip the switch which supplied electricity to the TV1 (not just the receiver) so that the motors would stop running.

I can't comment on the difference between Intellian vs. KVH, but I can definitely tell you that you should spend the extra money to get a larger antenna.

Clark Haley
Nordhavn 47 - Roam

Thanks for the feedback.

I don't have any experience with the and intelian system, but I will research it.

regarding your TV one system, how old was that unit that you installed?

Intellian definitely. I had this conversation with my pro in this field Monday. He said KVH, seems to dry up parts as soon as the warranty is out. He has 4 dead KVH soldiers less than 6 years old laying around in the bone yard. Get extended warranty, buy with American Express and if there is another trick to protect yourself...use it.

Fletcher500, I installed the TV1 in January of 2016, so it was a brand new unit. I talked with KVH and with Dish about the problems I was having with getting satellite lock and we spent many hours trying to improve that, but nothing seemed to help. I would have upgraded to a larger unit, but before I could do that we decided to sell the cat and go to a trawler. Now I'm faced with having to install a Sat antenna on the new boat and I think I'm going to go with Intellian, based on my experience with KVH and feedback from Intellian users.

Clark Haley
N4708 Roam

Another couple weeks under my belt with my Intellian and I must say I am very pleased.

As for noise, I can only say that if I stopped and listened, and if there wasn't other noise to mask it, I could hear (from inside my salon but with the back door open) my KVH M7 searching when it shifted from one sat to another. I don't ever hear by Intellian, but since the doom is at the top of an arch above the tower over the flybridge on top of the salon, the Intellian may be making noises that would be objectionable to anyone closer. The other consideration is that, unlike the KVH, my intellian tracks all three sats at once, so it doesn't need to search just because I have changed channels.

And did I mention that the Intellian is considerably less expensive than its KVH counterpart?

My Intellian is very quiet...even with my hearing aids in I can't hear it.

BTW, yesterday I connected an external hard drive to my Dish receiver. Activated it through Dish and now I have a programmable DVR.

I'm running the Intellian I2 - Dish Network with a MIM and two VIP211 receivers connected, the smallest of the lineup, close to five years in service and no issues.

Sometimes I can hear it tracking up on the mast but mostly I don't notice it.

During the Dish transponder frequency change that occurred earlier this year, Intellian customer support was awesome. That's the only time I ever needed support.

Good feedback, thank you. I think the I2 set up will work well. I didn't want a large dish up there. Sometimes less, is more.

We currently have a digital antenna on the hardtop. I get plenty of channels in Spanish But only 3 in English, and I am not a big fan of Judge Judy or The View.

Couple more questions;

Is the attached system picture all I would need for a DirecTv account?

The new radar likely be solid state (Halo) so radar omissions will be extremely low. I assume I will not have to mount the I2 vertically above, or below the open array radar?

And if that is the case, then I would just not run the radar and TV at the same time. Reason I am asking, is the dome will be situated on the hard top on a horizontal plane with the radar.

A slight drift here:

I just this week added an external hard drive to my VIP 211K Dish receiver. It's a USB plug into the back of the receiver but is powered externally, not by the USB. The receiver recognizes the drive as a DVR and shows a phone number of on the TV screen to call to activate the "DVR" with Dish. It's a one time charge of $40 to activate and now I can record shows and fast forward through commercials etc. All of the programming is done on screen with the Dish menus. The wife is so happy as am I has we hate the ever growing commercial line up. BTW, we do live aboard so this is important to us. YMMV.

Fletcher500 said:

Couple more questions;

Is the attached system picture all I would need for a DirecTv account?

The new radar likely be solid state (Halo) so radar omissions will be extremely low. I assume I will not have to mount the I2 vertically above, or below the open array radar?

And if that is the case, then I would just not run the radar and TV at the same time. Reason I am asking, is the dome will be situated on the hard top on a horizontal plane with the radar.

Click to expand...

I believe you can get installation instructions on line from Intellian's site. As I recall there are specs for proximity to radars, etc., and I do not recall any distinction for Halo.

My Intellian came with everything I needed except the DirecTv receiver.

hmason said:

A slight drift here:

I just this week added an external hard drive to my VIP 211K Dish receiver. It's a USB plug into the back of the receiver but is powered externally, not by the USB. The receiver recognizes the drive as a DVR and shows a phone number of on the TV screen to call to activate the "DVR" with Dish. It's a one time charge of $40 to activate and now I can record shows and fast forward through commercials etc. All of the programming is done on screen with the Dish menus. The wife is so happy as am I has we hate the ever growing commercial line up. BTW, we do live aboard so this is important to us. YMMV.

Click to expand...

I was using Dish until relatively recently and hooked up hard drives to my receivers just as you did. I may be wrong, but as I recall, Dish was charging me an additional monthly charge for DVR functionality, but waived the activation fees. One other thing you may be glad to know about Dish -- you can deactivate (and later reactivate) for free as long as you use (or pay for) a full month each time you activate, and as long as you don't go more than 6 months inactive. At least that is what I recall.

No monthly fee, just the $40. And you are correct about the deactivation as I understand it.

MYTraveler said:

I believe you can get installation instructions on line from Intellian's site. As I recall there are specs for proximity to radars, etc., and I do not recall any distinction for Halo.

My Intellian came with everything I needed except the DirecTv receiver.

Click to expand...

I checked out their installation manual and it calls for 4 ft of vertical separation between the Intellian dome and most radars. (I'm guessing KVH is the same.) Yet a lot of boats seem to mount them in much closer proximity--almost on the same plane. Wonder what's up with that? Maybe they just never use the radar while the TV's on?

hmason said:

The wife is so happy as am I has we hate the ever growing commercial line up. BTW, we do live aboard so this is important to us. YMMV.

Click to expand...

We actually like commercials but we like the convenience of DVR. We never watch a show live other than sports.

Thanks Gents.

Yes, that 4 ft rule gets violated a lot. I am thinking it is based on the the magnetron, high output radars, as opposed to the newer solid state radars like Halo. If I remember correctly, I once read the a halo has the same exposure as a cell phone, so maintaning the dome to radar ratios, are probably not as important.

On our previous boat with the M3 dish, I was able to sign up the boat through DTV for about $5 per month, in addition to the home plan. Is that deal still offered by DTV?

Talking to the KVH rep at a recent boat show, he said the issue with radars on the same plane as the sat dish is that they 'toast' the LNB in the dish eventually.

As far as size of the unit is concerned, you should check that the operating range will suit you. KVH has maps available to show it, Intellian should have some data as well or their support folks would be able to tell you. The larger units have greater geographic coverage. The TV1 issue noted in a post above might have been due to it being too small a dish for that geographic location?

When I bought my boat in Seattle it came with a KVH M3, but it was not economical to modify that unit to be operable in Australia. It was quite susceptible to losing signal in the rain also. So I fitted a KVH M5, and simply (although not all that cheaply) changed the LNB when I landed the boat in Oz.

More recently I re-did my mast. In order to move solar panels forward to avoid shading I had to move the M5. So we chopped 5' off the deck mounted mast and mounted it on the hardtop instead. The M5 uses the original radar platform, and we made a new radar platform below it. Not 4' of separation, but it is all working fine.

No issues with the M5, but I would certainly check out Intellian, but make sure the coverage footprint was sufficient for intended cruising areas. The Inteelian dish may need to be a larger size to get equivalent performance to the KVH ones.

Insequent said:

So we chopped 5' off the deck mounted mast and mounted it on the hardtop instead. The M5 uses the original radar platform, and we made a new radar platform below it. Not 4' of separation, but it is all working fine.

No issues with the M5, but I would certainly check out Intellian, but make sure the coverage footprint was sufficient for intended cruising areas. The Inteelian dish may need to be a larger size to get equivalent performance to the KVH ones.

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We've found the key is to have two levels, typically a mast that is higher than the arch or hardtop or has two levels itself as you've made yours. Haven't found a magical distance like 4', have just found having some separation important. Typically we have radar at the peak of the mast and communications and television at the lower level.

The other thing is matching to your likely cruising area or areas. Cruising the US is easy. We get home quality reception. Other areas occasionally create challenges, especially with some equipment and systems.

Insequent said:

The Inteelian dish may need to be a larger size to get equivalent performance to the KVH ones.

Click to expand...

Why would that be? Could it also be the other way around? I admit that I did not check the footprint carefully before ordering my S6, but it appeared to give the same coverage (basically cuts out halfway down baja, but then I can switch to the Puerto Rico directTv network).

As for the 4' of vertical separation, I don't have it but am not worried as I am confident that the radar beam doesn't hit the Dome, and if there were a problem with magnetic interference, etc., I would already have experienced that. The angle of this picture makes it appear that the upper radar antenna is in the same plane as the dome, but it is actually about 6" below the base.

MY, that is quite a set up you have. I am guessing you don't have any issues with target separation with that big Furuno open array on the bottom.


As I noted, I still think these newer, low output solid state radars will not interfere with the dome, but I will confirm.


Regarding DirecTV, can you still add the boat receiver for another $5/month, as an add on to your home account? If I cant do this, and have to pay another $200/month for the boat, it would be a deal killer.

Fletcher500 said:

Regarding DirecTV, can you still add the boat receiver for another $5/month, as an add on to your home account?

Click to expand...

I think so, but right now I am using unused receivers from my house (and that works just fine, but I never had it configured in "whole house" mode). I will find out and let you know in a week or so when they come out to add a couple more to my house.

If you are considering the Intellian I2, I'm pretty sure it can't pull High Def signals on Direct TV network due to the size of the dish and the satellite band they broadcast HD on. No problem with HD on Dish network though.

If HD is important to you and Direct is your choice better confirm with Intellian first. This is an issue on the I2 13" dish, not sure about I3 and for sure not an issue on the larger Intellian units.

Don't bother asking a Direct Tv rep, in my experience most of them don't know anything about third party systems.

I would also mention I purchase my whole system on line for $1100 as a factory refurbished unit with universal LNB and MIM. If you see any factory refurbs available from Intellian I wouldn't hesitate to buy that way, it will come packaged as new.

TG, I am not overly concerned with the high definition programming. I just want to be able to get the typical channels in regular format for an hour or two of TV at night. I think I will still run with the I2 dish but will also run it by the electronics company doing the install which is also involving an entire redo of the nav system on the boat.