Why not? If you have a self-aiming dish like a Playmaker or Winegard RoadTrip, or even a monster like an Intellian s6HD, you know how much fun it is. These are set-it-and-forget-it devices that take practically no work from you in order to get great satellite service. They’re designed for on-the-go applications like tailgating and RVing. Does that mean they can’t be used at home?
They work the same at home as they do on the road.
You can use your mobile dish while at home, same as you do on the road. The same rules apply. You need a view of the sky of course. If your dish is designed for one receiver, you can still only use it with one receiver. It’s all basic common sense really.
Why would you want to use a mobile dish at home?
There are a lot of reasons. Perhaps your home satellite dish is damaged. Perhaps you are waiting for an installer to come. Perhaps you want satellite service in your garage or some other outbuilding. Maybe for some reason it’s just easier. Doesn’t matter. The fact is, it works.
Can you use the mobile dish as your only dish?
Yes absolutely. Let’s say that you RV for six months out of the year and then stay home for six months. You could run a wire from the mobile dish into the house and use that if you wanted to. Honestly though I think you’d be better off with a dish mounted on your roof in a traditional way, unless you’re really just not home very much. It’s not a big expense and the traditional dish will work better. It won’t have to move to get different satellites and that means faster channel changes and the ability to use more than one or two receivers at the same time.
What about receivers? What about the satellite contract?
Since we’re talking about it, you absolutely can bring receivers from home and put them in your RV. Or, you can bring receivers from the RV and put them in your home. However there are some things you can’t do.
You can’t use receivers on the same account in two different places.
Whether you have DIRECTV or DISH, your customer agreement says you’re going to use the satellite service in one location at a time. If your receivers aren’t connected to the internet in both locations, the satellite company won’t know, but that’s not the point. You agreed not to do that.
You can’t use receivers from different accounts in the same place (but….)
If you are on DISH and you have a month-to-month RV contract, then don’t bring your receivers into a home where they already have service. If you’re a DIRECTV customer visiting another DIRECTV customer, don’t connect your receiver to their dish.
However, you can share a dish with someone else as long as there is no data connection between the two. For DIRECTV this requires putting a band stop filter in place if there is a SWM system. For current DISH systems it means using a DPH42 multiswitch to isolate the home’s Hopper/Joey infrastructure from your receiver.
Homes with older-style DIRECTV/DISH setups don’t require any additional hardware to let you share a dish with someone else, but be sure not to connect your hardware to their internet. If you’re going to be really picky about it, you shouldn’t ever put the receivers under the same roof.
If you’re curious about getting satellite for your RV or home, the best place to start is Solid Signal. Not only do we have tens of thousands of great parts and accessories, but we have free tech support and the best group of certified experts when it comes to mobile satellite. Call us now at 888-233-7563!
