I just bought a small motor home. (picture) The wife and I are looking forward to using it for various mini-vacations across the mid-Atlantic with our kids, but I had a question. The motor home comes with a TV and a VCR, but nothing but a standard antenna. I was thinking that I could put a small dish on the roof, and when we set up at night, we would have full TV reception and internet service for my laptop, but this is obviously something that we would only need when we were camping in the RV, not all the time. I was wondering if there was any type of satellite service that sold time on an as needed basis, say, service that I could buy for a given week or weekend. Does anyone know if such a service exists?
Don’t know about the sat/cable options, but a quick Google search brought up this option for Internet access:
Rent an EVDO Card (for Internet access from your laptop, over the cellular network)
Definitely not cheap.
Not exactly broadband, either.
FWIW, I think climbing up on the RV and manually repositioning the dish every night sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
They do make “auto-positioners” for RVs and busses, but they aren’t cheap either.
If it were me, I’d just add another “room” to my dish network subscription and pay the $1,000+ for said “auto-positioner”, or say, “the hell with it” and deal with cellular internet and terrestrial TV.
TV through an antenna isn’t all that bad, if you know where to point it at. If there was someway to record HD TV, without going through someone, I would ditch my cable all together. I get HD broadcasts for free, something that would cost $70-100 per month. Granted I don’t get all the other cable channels, but I don’t want them anyway.
I’m sure if you looked around you could find wireless internet at some campgrounds.
Soon, maybe.
I haven’t had satelite in years, so this may no longer be true. People purchased a second unit, and moved the card between them.
That won’t work these days.
The card, when activated, is “married” to the receiver.
If you have satellite service at home, you can get a portable dish antenna (with or without the expensive auto-aiming features) and bring your receiver from home with you when you travel. After positioning the antenna, you will receive all the channels you would normally get at home (including all your local channels–not the locals from where you are parked).