Accessorizing Your Dish Outdoors RV Setup

Back in the day, if you wanted to watch TV in your RV, it was a 19 inch tube TV supplied by a signal from a crank up, bat wing antenna. If you didn't put the antenna down when you took off, it would come down eventually, not in a good way. Technology has changed, and bringing entertainment in your RV is wide open. So we've got our portable antenna. We got our system set up, and we're ready to watch satellite TV, right? Not yet. With today's technology, we really wanna jazz this stuff up. We want Bluetooth speakers, we want portable headphones, we wanna do a movie night. So, you know what? Let's take a look at the accessories we have available. And we can take everything we have at home in our entertainment center, and we can bring it on the road. So the first thing we have here is our Wally. And the Wally is the receiver, it's the heart of this system, basically, in my opinion. And we would have our coax cable that comes from, either our portable, or the roof. And we can put it in here. And like I said before, that I really like about the portables, is the fact that I can put the rig under the shade here like this, and cool it down 20, 30 degrees. And I can put my dish way out in the line of sight, because I can't get a signal here, typically like that. And I have the best of both worlds. Now, the way you would set that up. In fact, I know a lot of people that have a permanently mounted RV antenna, and they bring a portable with 'em, just because of that. They're very easy to pack up, they're very inexpensive. So it's a great option to even have both of them. Now, one of the things you can do, it's so easy to hook these up. You simply bring the coax cable to the back of the unit itself, and then hook it up to the service center. Most of your RVs have a coax cable in the service center, or on the side of the rig, that you can bring, either cable from a campground source, or hook a satellite dish up. And then that comes on up to your entertainment center, which then, of course, you would hook in to the back of your Wally. And a lot of 'em have just a switcher. So I can do over the air antenna, I can do my Wally, so forth. But the nice thing about it is, is that it's very easy to hook up and to get it running. So the first thing we're gonna look at is the over the air antenna adapter. And this one here, it just hooks in with the USB to the back of this here, and then I can hook my antenna up to it. So the thing that you have to look at with this one, is most of your over the air antennas are gonna be permanently mounted on the top of the rig. The coax is gonna go through the actual roof, down into a cabinetry, into an entertainment center, and then that is gonna get routed to a television. And so sometimes it's hard to disconnect that, 'cause your Wally may be in a totally different place than where that is at. So what I do recommend what people do, a couple options, is to take along a flat panel. You can buy those very inexpensive, WineGard has 'em, and variety of others, but you can buy a flat panel and get an over the air from that. Or even easier, is go to my dish app, and you can go to your service location, and get the local channels in part of your package, if they're part of that Dish Network receiving. So next up, is our hard drive here. Which when plugged to the back of our Wally, is going to be able to have a DVR. And the DVR is a digital video recorder. So I can record all the episodes of "Ozark", which my wife loves, and I do, too. And then when we're out and it rains someday, we could just do a marathon of watching those, one after another, because we already have them in the system. I can record stuff if I'm out and I'm sight seeing, or I'm you know, whatever, I'm not able to watch it at the time. Then I can just record it, and come back and pick it up. Another nice thing about it too, is I can record shows. And then when we're traveling, we can watch those shows. Of course not the driver and the passenger, for safety reasons, but keep the kids entertained in the back. So it really gives us some flexibility. Then we're gonna look at the wifi adapter, here. We go. And what this will allow us to do, is to bring a wifi signal into this. You do have to have a signal to make it part of your Wally, here. Most campgrounds have wifi. However, they're very weak, they're very poor. You know, this campground is a state park campground. We have no wifi service out here whatsoever. So hooking this up, it allows me to do on demand movies. It allows me to do streaming, right through all this. And the nice part about going through the Wally in this, is I don't have to switch my HDMI feeds. I don't have to figure out what my TV input is coming in. And sometimes that gets a little challenging, or it's harder to do. I can just get it right in the guide, right from my easy chair, really roughing it. So one of the options that I've added, too, is the TravlFi, which is a hotspot. And what I like about the TravlFi, is it doesn't tie you to one network, cell phone company, or provider. It takes the top five in the country, and it finds the strongest signal. And I've used this all over the country, and I've been able to get a signal. Even in the mountains, in the desert, in certain locations. And so it's easy to do. Just simply plug it in, and charge it up. It takes a couple hours to charge, but it'll last for, you know, day and a half, two days, depending on how long you're using it. Just turn it on. And when we see the little lights come on into it there. It'll take a little bit of blinking as it comes up. And the advantage of the TravlFi also, is that you can customize how often you need it. I may not need to do a whole year program, two year program. I can do month at a time. And so I can just pick the one month, I can let it keep activating, and be able to do two, three months in a row. And I can also choose the data plan I want. So if I'm just doing internet only, I'm gonna get the smallest data plan, I don't need all that gaming data. But if you are doing podcasts, you are doing streaming downloads, and video stuff, then you're probably gonna go higher. And you'll know the data plan that works best for you. But one of the things I can do now, I could take a laptop. So not only will this work with my Wally, I can use it for my laptop. I can also use it in my phone. And I just pull it up and I go to wifi settings, and there we go. And I see it come up as TravlFi for me, there it is. So I could just click on that, and I could use that. And once you start this up, if the device you have is already running, it will automatically connect to it. It's like resetting your router at home. You don't have to have the password, but the password is on the back of your individual TravlFi. Our next accessory is the Bluetooth adapter. And this one, I think is the coolest, because it just has so many neat gadgets that we can add to this. So we put this in here. Now I can do Bluetooth, wireless speakers, I can do headphones. So if I wanna be inside, and get that great big surround sound, it's just a beautiful sound into this. And some of those movies are just absolutely phenomenal, how they mix some of that stuff. If I wanna do a movie night out here, I can use this TV, and two Bluetooth speakers. And they are just very small anymore, and they are very powerful. And it just makes an outstanding, fun night, with that unit. So there's a lot of fun accessories here. There's ways you can really ramp up, and bring really, your entertainment at home on the road with you.