Dish Network Wally: Upgrading Your RV TV Experience

Today we see you a lot of RVers expanding their TV experience. Not only using the old bat wing style for over the air antenna, but getting some type of satellite signal and receiver as well. My favorite is dish network. I've used it for years. I know a lot of people that have said that throughout the country the satellites are easier to find a little more locations. In fact, right now dish network has three satellites on the West coast, two satellites on the East coast. So if you have a line of sight issue that you can't get to you have a wide variety of directions to go to. So you can get your program pretty easy. There's a wide variety of receivers as well, or antennas. We're using a portable one that we have outside. And it was very simple to hook up. You know, you've got ones that are go on the roof that you have to aim. You have some that are automatic in motion on the roof but a very inexpensive version is the portable ones. And we hooked ours up outside, pointed it to the South, brought it in with a co-ax cable to our receiver here which happens to be a Wally. A lot of you that have dish might be familiar with the hopper at home. That's more of a residential style receiver. This one is rugged. It's built for temperature changes that you would have during storage. When you get down to 10 degrees in the morning, 60 degrees in the afternoon, road vibration, that type of stuff. So much better unit to put inside an RV. So we simply hooked up our co-ax to the backside, plugged it in, HDMI cable to our TV, and it started searching and it found the satellites, we happen to be to the East side. And so, the dish network has a program that I really like. It's called pay as you go. And they've had this program for many years and they realized that RV years are probably not. All of them are going to be out full timing using a satellite program every single month. So you can actually sign up as you use it and with no activation fee. So if I'm RV in for four months out of the year and I put my unit in storage, I don't have to pay or we'll do a contract for two years for stuff I'm not using, great option to have. Now a lot of people that just RV periodically and have a home system are going to the dish network because they can use a dish hopper at home. And for $7 a month, you can get a second receiver that you can put in your RV. So I can have satellite roughing it, no matter where I go. So a couple options that come with the Wally as well. The first one is our DVR and this just happens to be an external hard drive. You plug it in with a USB port to the back of the Wally and it will allow you to record programs. So if you're out sight seeing you don't have to worry about running back and getting the NASCAR brace or HDTV like my wife would have to have. So a nice option to put in here simple USB, if you don't want to wake the neighbors up and you want better sound without having everything inside rattle, your TV maybe doesn't have the best sound system in it like this one here, you can do a set of headphones with a Bluetooth. In fact, you take the Bluetooth option plug it into the USB, and I can use anything any type of external speaker to enhance what my TV has. And I can use these headphones and keep it much quieter but I can get that great surround sound as loud as I want. Then a lot of people want to find out the local news weather. And so they would have to go through there over the air antenna. And this one, you simply plug it into the backside. What I really like about this is when it goes in and finds local channels, it puts it on the actual menu. Now, typically you would have to switch inputs. And sometimes that's a little difficult for some of the, I call it entertainment, challenge people like my father. He would look at that and then input. What's an input. So this puts it right in the menu. I don't have to switch inputs. HTMI one or two. Everything is right on they're forming. And then this happens to be a wifi adapter. So if you've got Netflix or the weather channel very popular with RVers that are traveling across the country, I simply plug this into the backside. And if I have local internet available from my campground source, then I can tap into that or I could go into a 4G international program. There's a lot of great wifi connectors with 4G that are out there that you can subscribe to on a monthly basis as well. But I can also get my weather channel when I'm traveling around the country. And then we're going to talk a little bit here. This happens to be the remote for the Wally here in it's RF, which is radio frequency which means I don't have to have a line of sight. I can be back here behind it, simply hit my guide. And it goes to the guide. What I also like about this is when I change channels in this, if it happens to be on, we said there's two satellites to the East, one to the West. So when I go back here we're going to hit the recall button. This is going to change to a different channel. And sometimes there's just a small little delay but what it does is that satellite antenna out there will shift to the other satellite. So it, like I said, there's three on the West, there's two on the East. It'll find where those are at, cause it's already pre-programmed though. And if you want to manage your account from your phone you can download the dish app, be able to activate and do the pay as you go program. So if you're looking to upgrade your entertainment package look at the dish network, go to dishformyrv.com. And if you're an RV repair club member you'll get a discount.