Cancelled HughesNet and ? About Hooking Laptop to TV - RV-Dreams Community Forum

TxYellowRose · RV-Dreams Family Member

Cancelled HughesNet and ? About Hooking Laptop to TV

Racerguy · RV-Dreams Family Member

Betty the only problem I see is that movies will use up your data allotment pretty fast and many campgrounds frown on using a lot of their bandwidth watching movies.I think Bill knows the figures as to how much data is used for 1 HD movie.

Bill Adams · RV-Dreams Family Member

If you try to watch much TV over your air card internet connection you will quickly find yourself running into additional monthly overage charges. You are only allowed 5GB/month of both upload and download combined and one Netflix movie is usually more than 1/2GB and the HD versions can run 2-3GB. Hulu uses less bandwidth but watching many shows this way will also cause you overage charges. Unlike Hughes where you only get slowed down, it you exceed your monthly air card limit you will be charged an additional $10/GB.

TxYellowRose · RV-Dreams Family Member

Big DUH On My Part!

Ken & Sarah · RV-Dreams Family Member

RE: Cancelled HughesNet and ? About Hooking Laptop to TV

NorCal Dan · RV-Dreams Family Member

If your television is HD compatible you might be able to pick up HD signals over-the-air. I've had decent results after adding the Wingman to our batwing antenna. For a $30 addition it does improve signal reception.

After only a few months on the road we learned to not rely on CG's for TV or WiFi. We started with a portable sat dish (that I still carry with us) and then had the Slimline Traveler sat dish installed on our roof. I like DirecTV since you can get distant network services from them, and I think their tech support is slightly better than Dish. The 2 year contract goes by quickly. I'd also recommend the DVR so you can record shows to watch later.

Netflix...we use it, but mostly thru the mail. I have watched a couple movies on my iMac with a 24" screen. Bandwidth is a problem when using an aircard that has restrictions. No easy way around that, and 5GB won't last long. As previously mentioned they count data both up and down stream. But if you land a job in a park with free WiFi and you want to watch movies there are stand alone boxes for about $80 that will stream to your TV. Or you can get either a Bluray player with the Netflix app built-in, or a game console like the Wii. I've found that even slow CG WiFi can work for watching Netflix. The app does a good job of sampling the speed of your connection and buffering the movie so you don't see any interruptions.

Bill Adams · RV-Dreams Family Member

While many parks offer wifi, very few parks have a wifi service that would allow everyone to be streaming video or downloading massive files such as a movie would entail. The experience would be poor on a basic wifi network and could result in a knock on the door from a monitored network where you are the one eating up all of the limited bandwidth.

If they check with the owners of the network and they have no issues with that kind of usage it could be a viable option from time to time.

Bill and Linda · RV-Dreams Family Member

Betty:

I send you a PM with a request for some info from you. With that info I might be able to help a bit with that FREE HD over-the-air TV thing. It usually works very well near cities.

The "Wingman" add suggested is a very good one if you have the typical Wingard "Batwing" antenna found on many RVs. Installation is so easy I could do it.

Bill

Ckerr · RV-Dreams Family Member

For movies on the road we use the Redbox and Blockbuster kiosks. Redbox is generally $1 a day for a movie and you can return it to any other Redbox kiosk. Their movies might be a little behind, but then so are we, so we can generally find something to watch when the weather is bad and there's nothing else on the agenda.

NorCal Dan · RV-Dreams Family Member

Bill Adams wrote:
While many parks offer wifi, very few parks have a wifi service that would allow everyone to be streaming video or downloading massive files such as a movie would entail.

Very true. I know the new trend at CG's is blocking bandwidth hogs like Netflix and Skype and even FTP service. Until there is some breakthru in technology that increases bandwidth to end users, similar to cable with 10MBit connections, we can expect more CG's to throttle services available from their internet connection.

mrsgeek · RV-Dreams Family Member

When we were camped for the season at one RV park in Fort Lauderdale, we signed up for DSL thru AT&T - that's unlimited! Then we used our Wii to watch Netflix movies online - it was always hooked up, no need to use a computer then. It was *WONDERFUL*. Anything I wanted to watch, anytime, instantly available - just push the on button on the Wii, set the TV to Input AV2 and then use the Wii remote to navigate the menus. But - no way can we do that on the road. We now have a 4G mobile hotspot and, when we're in a good 4G area, we can run thru bandwidth at 5Gigabytes a week! And, that's without any movies! We switched to the 10Gigabyte/month plan and still ran out before the end of the month. Every once in a while, we find Wi-Fi good enough to watch a movie. You need really good Wi-Fi *and* very few RVs in the park.
I wrote an article on this issue:
My on the Road Data Diet

-- Edited by mrsgeek on Monday 30th of May 2011 07:06:42 AM

Blythe N Chuck · RV-Dreams Family Member

We have used Netflix for home and when we travel (not in the RV) and love it. We have just started looking into internet options for the RV as we will be FTing in Aug. Best Buy said Vodafone has an option - $40/month no contract unlimited data. Its $200 for the device but it's an option (sometimes on sale for $150). We are going to do a little research to see what their coverage is like. In my past life I did our IT mobile phone contracts and Vodafone was a sister company to Verizon so they could have the use of Verizon towers - not sure...still checking on that (just started looking into that today).

Bill Adams · RV-Dreams Family Member

Nothing about such a plan on the Best Buy website as of today.

3Gstore_Matt · RV-Dreams Family Member

If any of you are concerned with your monthly allotment you can always check out our chart on "What does 5GB get me?". It's not going to be 100% accurate but should give you an idea of what types of activities really eat into your monthly data allotment.

Jack Mayer · RV-Dreams Family Member

Every park that I design/install WIFi in has movies and TV blocked. With the exception of one, that has what they feel is enough bandwidth (25mbps backhaul). Sorry folks, but the appetites of a few affect ALL users. Most parks do not have enough backhaul to watch movies and TV. Doing so in almost every case has a very negative impact on other users. And is "part" of the reason that RV park wifi is generally considered to "not work".