Its time to get serious about how to receive television signals.  After more than six months of getting our television entertainment the old fashioned way via a cable connection to Comcast, we know that there is no way to continue with this setup once we start moving around the country.

There are many ways to get TV reception but most of them are pretty limited, some like the old days,  only getting three channels at best.  To get a full choice of "cable" channels you have to go with a satellite dish and get service from either DirectTV or Dish Network.  The Dish guys do make an extra effort in that they have an RV division.  They tailor the service to mobile users by having a separate customer service, no contracts and the ability to turn the service off and on in a month-by-month fashion repeatedly.  The con is that there are no national network stations, so no "local" programming such as news and weather or the prime time shows on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.  DirecTV has all the stations but they require contracts, usually 2-yr minimum.

There are lots of combinations to sort out.  You have to buy a specific antenna depending on the kind of service you want such as standard definition or high definition, number of channels you want to watch (for instance you may need to be able to "see" 5 satellites at a time if you want HD and more than about 20 channels).  Using one of the portable dome satellites that you can easily set out in the open and get clear of trees or whatever don't really have good signal quality capabilities and are way more susceptible to signal loss because of wind and rain than the larger, open-faced dishes.  The open-faced dishes with automatic satellite discovery (not in-motion) are fixed mount.  They have to be bolted down to something that is pretty solid.  This means the top of the camper which also means that there will be loss of signal when parked in the shade.

It has taken a lot of investigation to get this far and the folks over at the Escapees discussion forum have been a huge help.  Those folks have been practicing what I'm a greenhorn at for a long time.  Based on all their good guidance I am leaning towards the fixed-mount, open-faced dish with service from DirectTV.  But I am still not clear on all the trade-offs.  Miss Cyndee has suggested I put together a comparison spreadsheet.  Good idea, I think I just might do that.