TV for 2004 Pilot 30

I have a 2004 Pilot 30 with an old analogue TV antenna. I would like to have a TV – and think I can stream stuff to a smart TV. But it would also be nice to get the local TV news and weather, etc. I am not interested in satellite TV. Do you have suggestions regarding the following:

1. Specific TV’s that you use that work.
2. Can you suggest an antenna that would work?
3. How do you mount the TV on the wall/that backs up to the head? It appears the wood is 1.2 inch at the most – so how can TV be secured?
4. I know that many marinas have cable TV jacks – I assume this requires a modem on board – do you have suggestions for the modem – and have you found it worth it?

Thanks for any comments you might throw my way.

~ Peter Nord
Ecclesiasates II
Vero Beach, FL

Roku smart TV - 34" is $120 at Walmart. Ipad for personal hotspot (need at least 1 or 2 bars) and you are good to go!

Several thoughts:

The cable jack at most marinas is just like your cable TV at home. Connect a cable to that jack then to any TV and you should get TV pictures. What you get is dependent on the marina's cable plan, usually basic but that will give you all of the local channels.

A smart TV or a non smart TV with a Roku box or similar will let you stream TV from Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, etc. This requires a pretty fast wifi connection. This can either be from your marina (usually pretty slow) a nearby Xfinity or similar hotspot, a cell phone hot spot, etc. The cell solutions eat up data pretty fast if you stream TV.

One new system is TOGO, a $400 Wineguard antenna with a $360/yr. ATT unlimited data plan. Yes really unlimited. Check out the reviews on the RV web sites. It is getting pretty good reviews. My buddy just installed on on his RV a few days ago. So far, great.

David

Find out where you’re going to watch tv and figure out the size. We were on friends boat and he had a 43 incher that is way to big for the area IMHO. We just upgraded from a 28” Samsung Smart TV to a Vizo 32” Smart TV. Nice to have the larger screen but it doesn’t over power the room. Look for a 1080p tv on the smaller ones. Some are 780p.

For over the air we use a Shakespeare Seawatch antenna, about a $140. We have great WiFi at our home marina to live stream. I’ll let others expand on how you get your internet function for the Prime, HBO, Netflix, etc. part.

Oh yea, one thing when we’re away from the dock, we do watch some movies. Our TVs all have/had USB ports in the back so we can watch movies via a flash drive, some don’t. We haven’t had a DVD player for years. We download what we want on to a flash drive and plug it in to the back of the TV.

We have a 24" 12v smart TV that is mounted to the common wall of the head in our 30 Pilot II. A pull out adjustable wall mount TV bracket is thru bolted. The 4 bolt heads holding the TV bracket in place are on the 'head' side. A round Shakespeare antenna gives us 6 to 12 channels depending where we are. When we stay over we usually rent a few movies from a Redbox machine as the over the air channels are always just so so. The TV just does not get used as much as I thought it would. I could see a nice TV on a larger live aboard being important but not on a 30 fter.

regards Holty

Peter
The el-cheapo solution has merit here,
We are within 30 miles of Detroit and we get about 50 on air channels with ten dollar indoor antennae but it must be mounted as high as you can preferably outdoor (like on the top of the canvas or half way up the Vhf) We also tried a three part boat hook zip tied to the dock to hold up the 10x10 aerial. That worked well because it did not move.
any smart tv is ok at about $100

a small adjustable wall mount through bolted to the wall is fine (about $25)
most cable provided in parks or marinas needs no modem unless it also is wifi

This has worked for us at many marinas but on our trailer in texas we have a very similar setup 50 plus channels for free but half of them are mexican
who cares ? I get PBS for free clear as a bell