Watching TV onboard

[Tom.B]

Originally Posted by seasalt007

Take your DTV box from home when you go to the boat (free) or, get one for the boat.

That works, but there are limitations to it. Get too far away from home and:

a) DirecTV will know what you are up to and insist you lease a new bow for it (of course adding to your account to the tune of $20... $10 for the additional box lease and $10 for adding a box to your account)

b) The spot beam that carries your local station only hit (as the name implies) a specific spot on the globe. So you won't have access to them. I recall seeing an interactive map somewhere that let you view the range of your specific spot beam.

[boomerang]

Originally Posted by ranger42c

Update: make that 15 and 4. Just noticed the TV actually synced on two stations not listed in the TV Guide app.

Presumably when we get to Charleston we'll receive approx 33 OTA stations...

-Chris

TV reception 70 miles out is pretty good but I want to know how you're getting a cell signal to post on the forum that far out!!! Satellite service?

[seasalt007]

Originally Posted by Tom.B

That works, but there are limitations to it. Get too far away from home and:

a) DirecTV will know what you are up to and insist you lease a new bow for it (of course adding to your account to the tune of $20... $10 for the additional box lease and $10 for adding a box to your account)

b) The spot beam that carries your local station only hit (as the name implies) a specific spot on the globe. So you won't have access to them. I recall seeing an interactive map somewhere that let you view the range of your specific spot beam.

There are some sneaky ways to get on the DTV national feed where all channels are on one sat and they have no idea where you are.

[Woodland Hills]

Originally Posted by Tom.B

That works, but there are limitations to it. Get too far away from home and:

a) DirecTV will know what you are up to and insist you lease a new bow for it (of course adding to your account to the tune of $20... $10 for the additional box lease and $10 for adding a box to your account)

b) The spot beam that carries your local station only hit (as the name implies) a specific spot on the globe. So you won't have access to them. I recall seeing an interactive map somewhere that let you view the range of your specific spot beam.

We have been RVing for a while and have never heard of DirecTV cutting off RVers who take their home cable box on their travels. Just get a used Winegard Carryout on Craigslist and plop it down on the dock when you get to the marina. If you want local TV you can call DirecTV and have them change your location or you can get an RV TV antenna. This is SOP for the RV world: if you really want you can get an RV account with a new receiver/DVR, but why bother, when you can bring the one from home?

I never heard about any narrowcasting beam from the Satellite to each individual reciever, I always figured that the server at DirecTV simply authorized the various channels permitted each account when they did their "handshake" upon connection when it does the authentification process. Given that there are only a handful of geo stationary satellites and millions of accounts, there must be an enormous amount of transmitters up there if that's how it works!

[foggysail]

Originally Posted by Woodland Hills

We have been RVing for a while and have never heard of DirecTV cutting off RVers who take their home cable box on their travels. Just get a used Winegard Carryout on Craigslist and plop it down on the dock when you get to the marina. If you want local TV you can call DirecTV and have them change your location or you can get an RV TV antenna. This is SOP for the RV world: if you really want you can get an RV account with a new receiver/DVR, but why bother, when you can bring the one from home?

I never heard about any narrowcasting beam from the Satellite to each individual reciever, I always figured that the server at DirecTV simply authorized the various channels permitted each account when they did their "handshake" upon connection when it does the authentification process. Given that there are only a handful of geo stationary satellites and millions of accounts, there must be an enormous amount of transmitters up there if that's how it works!

I have dealt with Directv now for well over 10 years. One thing they show the greatest concern about is losing subscribers. So my point is, one should not be concerned about them cutting anybody loose today because they will almost stand on their head to keep customers........via discounts!

As to which beam one receives, it depends on the address you provide them. For example, we live just over an hour away from the boat and because they have my home address, we get Boston TV channels. My friend has his boat using Directv, not his home so he gave them the address of his marina about 1 mile from us. He gets Rhode Island TV stations.

[DLP]

+1

[Benthic2]

A few things that may not have been covered:

If you have phone service at your slip, you could get a DSL internet connection. The quality would not be great, but you could then access all your channels from your cable provider.

If you just want to watch TV shows, but not live TV, you can order disks from Netflix of entire seasons of shows and watch them in your DVD player.

It sounds like you have not tested the wifi at your marina and are assuming its terrible based on word of mouth. I'd probably do the following in order:

a)Try wifi as is

b)Try wifi with an added antenna ( see other thread on this topic )

c) Complain to marina that their wifi doesn't work and ask for a slip closer to the router, or that they upgrade their service, since you're paying for it. If the water service stopped working you wouldn't start lugging water to your boat.....you'd complain!!

[IronZebra]

Anyone doing Over the Air DVR on their boat?

https://www.tivo.com/shop/ota-detail

[Tom.B]

Originally Posted by Woodland Hills

I never heard about any narrowcasting beam from the Satellite to each individual reciever,

Thanks for the input from the RV world. :-)

Just to clarify... It isn't to each individual receiver, it is to a market.

A quick Google search landed this older image of the market beams:



Here is an explanation: Solid Signal Blog - How much area is covered by a spot beam?

Here is a post that shows all the beams and will open up a Google Earth map showing the beam's hit point and the outward signal strength footprint: Interactive Beam Footprint Library

[Comodave]

I don’t know if it has changed lately, but with Directv you could get the national feeds if you own an RV. You had to send them a copy of the RV registration and they would enable the feeds for whatever fee they charged for them. The rules were different for RV than boats because apparently the RV industry has better lobbyists. This wasn’t Directs rules but rather the FCC (I guess is who has the authority). We had a home disk that we installed on a piling at our slip to get the satellite signals. Worked fine but was only good when we were at our home dock. Now when we are traveling we take dvds with us and have a TV with a built in dvd player.

[Moonfish]

I have an older (non-HD) KVH Trac-Vision satellite system that we took off the boat. The previous owner used it for DirecTV, but we never did. If you find yourself up in my neck of the PNW woods I'll sell it to you for $300.

[seasalt007]

Back in 2002 Boat/US and Senator Breaux of Louisiana composed a joint letter to the National Association of Broadcasters (the lobbyists for local stations) in Washington, D.C. complaining that the then and still current policy of allowing RV's but not boats receive the National Feeds from Direct TV was discriminatory. I instigated this letter.

When my boat was in DC that year I hand carried the letter over to the NAB offices and handed it to a representative. They would get back to us...

They did...and said that their stance would not change and that they would not support a change to the FCC. The policy was to protect the local stations advertisers whether you were there to see the commercials or not.

That was the end of that.

So, I called Direct TV and told them to change my SERVICE address to:
80 Audrey Zapp Dr, Jersey City, NJ 07305. That is the address of Liberty Landing Marina. They asked me what county Jersey City was in and I said Hudson.

A few seconds later I was getting all channels, local and national, on my single LNB sat dish.

Scores of boaters have done this same thing. Be careful not to change your billing address and be prepared to find out which New Yorkers are getting murdered every night on the 6 o'clock news rather than in your home town. At 6:30 the same channel will have Lester Holt, John Muir or the new guy Jeff Glor.

[BruceK]

The owner of this boat love their TV. One side of the saloon is taken up with a lift up large TV in a long "sideboard", necessitating a redesign of the saloon.https://yachthub.com/list/boats-for-...tage-40/212067

[FootballFan]

We just went through this decision process.


As someone said above, we are rabid sports fans to decided to go Satellite.


If you want HD, doubt you could buy the satellite equip for 2k today. You could have a couple of years ago I think, but seems like DirectTV and Dish is very restrictive about how they are supporting HD. The cost of the DirectTV box was 2-3% of the satellite equipment.


We also added a local antenna both for all local channels and for those times we are out of the narrow cast beam.


DirectTV was a major hassle to get set up, but we got through it. Had Dish on previous boat - it was a hassle also.


Mark

[ssobol]

At home we watch everything on Tivo. When we go on the boat (and want something to watch) I just download the file from Tivo to a large tablet before we leave home. I can play it anywhere at anytime. Can do the same thing with movies.

[k9medic]

Originally Posted by FootballFan

As someone said above, we are rabid sports fans to decided to go Satellite.

Exactly. If we are not in the stadium on Saturdays in the fall then we are watching our team on TV.

[Jerry Williams]

We don’t have a dirt home anymore, so can’t leverage Xfinity for internet viewing when away from home any longer. We upgraded to AT&T unlimited cellular service since our iPads and iPhones were already on their service. We already had a WiFi hotspot we weren’t using from a prior work temporary location and added it to our unlimited service plan. We added DirectTV Now service (owned by AT&T) that doesn’t count against our data usage (which IS NOT UNLIMITED after all) so we don’t worry about getting our data speed throttled because we watch ESPN or HBO after hours while cruising, we use an Apple TV unit (“free” gift from Direct TV for prepaying for 90 days service). We work remotely from the boat and NEED internet service to connect with and take care of our customers wherever we are. We also have a WiFi booster on the boat that we connect to any marina we happen to be in for a few days, saving on the data usage and providing connectivity for our security cameras when we are away from the boat with our WiFi hotspot on business trips. We also have an amplified over the air tv antenna that was on the boat when we purchased her, we use local stations for weather reports as we move around as well as learning about local events wherever we may be. The boat also came with a KVH system that we haven’t activated because we seem to always have service with the local antenna/Direct TV setup we are using. Bottom line is we are paying about the same for our data/tv service as when we had DSL/cable service at our dirt home.

[High Wire]

We just watch over the air free tv via a glomex antenna. You just have to remember to scan channels every 30 miles or so.

[catalinajack]

Originally Posted by Tom.B

That works, but there are limitations to it. Get too far away from home and:

a) DirecTV will know what you are up to and insist you lease a new bow for it (of course adding to your account to the tune of $20... $10 for the additional box lease and $10 for adding a box to your account)

b) The spot beam that carries your local station only hit (as the name implies) a specific spot on the globe. So you won't have access to them. I recall seeing an interactive map somewhere that let you view the range of your specific spot beam.

Dish TV does not have this limitation. Get an RV account and one may change locations at will always getting the locals.

[BandB]

Originally Posted by k9medic

Exactly. If we are not in the stadium on Saturdays in the fall then we are watching our team on TV.

We're sitting in a marina in Miami tonight watching the Heat play the Rockets on television. We haven't decided where we'll be on Superbowl Sunday but we'll definitely be watching the game on television in the boat. (Exceptionally difficult sea conditions this month continue to change our plans).

Now communications is also critical for us and we do have Satellite for Internet but that's a completely separate issue.