Home Channels

[hermanmullins]

I know that Direct and Dish do what they want. But can anyone explain why, like Dish, they use satellites No. 110 and 119 no matter where you are? When in your home area you can receive all of your local channels you subscribe to; however, when you stray too far you can't receive your locals even though you pay for them. I can't see what difference it makes.

I have called Dish and they have set me up with local programing for the area we are in, but when I get home I have to call them up and have my locals reprogramed.

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE???

[banditrider776@gmail.com]

I know that Direct and Dish do what they want. But can anyone explain why, like Dish, they use satellites No. 110 and 119 no matter where you are? When in your home area you can receive all of your local channels you subscribe to; however, when you stray too far you can't receive your locals even though you pay for them. I can't see what difference it makes.

I have called Dish and they have set me up with local programing for the area we are in, but when I get home I have to call them up and have my locals reprogramed.

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE???

Local channels are spot broadcast via a narrow cone, when you leave home you are now outside the broadcast area.

[Guest Wayne77590]

Dish has 4 satellites, 61.5, 72.7, 110, and 119 that provide basic and some HD programming. 110 and 119 are best suited for west of the Mississippi, and 61.5, and 72.7, east of the Mississippi.

[hermanmullins]

Local channels are spot broadcast via a narrow cone, when you leave home you are now outside the broadcast area.

Thanks Mike. I understand about the zones for local channels. But it seems that if you pay for local channel you should be able to receive the local channels where you are parks. We live in Dallas, TX and receive the local channels. I should be able to get the local channels for Oklahoma City when we are there. I have been told that in the past (before we got Dish) they did provide the channels, but changed to not providing them when you are out of your home area. I would bet there would be alot of RVers that would change if they offered them.

Sorry but this is just one (of many) of my pet peeves. I can still call and get the locals where I am at. (Between the A&T, as my old English teacher would say.)

[banditrider776@gmail.com]

Thanks Mike. I understand about the zones for local channels. But it seems that if you pay for local channel you should be able to receive the local channels where you are parks. We live in Dallas, TX and receive the local channels. I should be able to get the local channels for Oklahoma City when we are there. I have been told that in the past (before we got Dish) they did provide the channels, but changed to not providing them when you are out of your home area. I would bet there would be alot of RVers that would change if they offered them.

Sorry but this is just one (of many) of my pet peeves. I can still call and get the locals where I am at. (Between the A&T, as my old English teacher would say.)

The satellite service providers are not RV minded since we are a very small portion of the population in general. Each local channel has it's own scrambled signal code so other people don't steal the "free over the air" content. When I go somewhere I use the batwing antennae for the local channels, whcih isn't very often as we use the radio a lot more. When we hit the road fulltime I will be getting the RV exemption and get the east and west coast network feeds.

[hermanmullins]

The satellite service providers are not RV minded since we are a very small portion of the population in general. Each local channel has it's own scrambled signal code so other people don't steal the "free over the air" content. When I go somewhere I use the batwing antennae for the local channels, whcih isn't very often as we use the radio a lot more. When we hit the road fulltime I will be getting the RV exemption and get the east and west coast network feeds.

Thanks again Mike. How does one go about the RV exemption. Do you just call up your provider?

I will call Dish and ask.

Thanks again.

[texnet]

The loss of home/local channels when you are traveling outside of your home zip code area is NOT the fault of either Direct TV or Dish. It is the fault of your local TV stations. They wanted protection from the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and they got it. The resulots is that Satellite companies may not provide a customer serivce outside of the local area. The "RV Exclusion" that was referred to is a piece of paper that the RV user states that he/she basically is only using the East/West feeds in their motorhome while on the road. FYI, East/West feeds are NOT your local home channels but east or west coast feeds thus if you are in Oklahoma City you won't get the local OKC channels but will get either a feed from the East or West Coast. If you want local channels in the area you are in just call your providers customer service number, give them address you are parked at including the zip code and tell them that is NOT your billing address but your service address. They will then program your account to receive local channels for that location.

[hermanmullins]

The loss of home/local channels when you are traveling outside of your home zip code area is NOT the fault of either Direct TV or Dish. It is the fault of your local TV stations. They wanted protection from the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and they got it. The resulots is that Satellite companies may not provide a customer serivce outside of the local area. The "RV Exclusion" that was referred to is a piece of paper that the RV user states that he/she basically is only using the East/West feeds in their motorhome while on the road. FYI, East/West feeds are NOT your local home channels but east or west coast feeds thus if you are in Oklahoma City you won't get the local OKC channels but will get either a feed from the East or West Coast. If you want local channels in the area you are in just call your providers customer service number, give them address you are parked at including the zip code and tell them that is NOT your billing address but your service address. They will then program your account to receive local channels for that location.

Thanks Texnet. I have done this before and have received the areas we are in locals channels. I had to laugh the first time we did this. when we returned home we had to call to have our home area changed back to our home address. On the same note we have several shows we like to watch so when we are going on the road I will set the DVR to record the shows. When we returned from one trip I had no shows recorded because I had moved to our mobile location and I didn't have my locals at home. Now we just hope for cable where we park or watch some movies we have.

Thanks again for everyones responce to my question.

Go RVing and go often.

[Guest BillAdams]

Sorry to be so late to this topic, but the reason you cannot receive your local channels when you travel is entirely a financial one. The FCC protection the local providers want is protection from subscribers being listed (more subscribers costs the advertisers more dollars) who are not truly from that area. If a local car dealer in Orlando, FA puts an ad on satellite he does not want to have to pay for subscribers who live in Jacksonville, FL or Eugene, OR. The spot beam signal allows this to happen and (possibly even more importantly for the satellite services) allows them to re-use the same frequencies at different locations around the US without interference. This has allowed them to provide more and more local network programming without the huge costs involved with additional satellites.

Dish Network actually uses 6 satellites to provide service to all of their subscribers. 61.5, 72 and 77 are considered the Eastern Arc satellites and 110, 119 and 129 are used everywhere else. Expect to see a new KA band satellite from Dish Network in the near future (at least a couple of years away at best guess) that will allow a reduction in the number of satellites used and more spot-beamed local network programming.

[kingfr]

So if Dish puts up a KA band satellite, I guess that the Dish subscribers who use Kingdomes, etc are gonna get shafted like us Directv subscribers did in late 2007.

[Guest BillAdams]

That is correct. Remember that neither of these services are spending billions of dollars on new satellites and technology to "stick it" to RVers. They do it without consideration of the RVer as the RVer is such a small part of their subscribers as to be a non-issue. All decisions by DirecTV or Dish Network are based upon what they can do to provide the very best service to their subscribers. Those of us that take the service mobile have to work around these parameters and find a way to make it work.

[Guest Wayne77590]

Herman,

Don't fret, we probably have all missed episodes that would not record.

If you do get to an area that does not have your local channels, try going to http://hulu.com and watching the episode that you missed on the computer screen. If your television has a PC input you can hook it up to your computer and watch on the "big" screen. Nice thing about Hulu so far is that they are free. Also, the networks sometimes streem their regular programming and you could watch it the same way. Darn! I hate missing "Heroes."

[Guest BillAdams]

You just have to be careful about "how" you connect to Hulu or a similar service. If you use an air card you will quickly exceed your 5G/month limit and find yourself paying huge overage charges. If you are using the parks wi-fi you could have angry villagers banging on your door asking why you are eating up all of their bandwidth!