Wally receiver with fixed dish?

[jrs1871]

After nearly thirty years with Direct TV, we switched to Dish this spring after getting jerked around royally by Direct. We have a Hopper receiver in the house and a Wally receiver with Playmaker antenna in the RV. We are getting ready to head to our house in Texas for the winter. I am thinking of taking the Wally receiver from the RV and connecting it to a roof mount dish antenna. Has anyone done this and how successful was it?

[DFord]

We've been taking our receiver with us for years. Only one account with two receivers (both Vip211k). I pay $7 month for the 2nd receiver and don't bother to stop service on either one (I leave one in the MH and one at home). If I don't use one for a couple of weeks, it needs to be reauthorized to watch it. I should be able to do that using the Dish app on my phone but if that gives me any problems, I call their main number and work down to Tech Support for help. That's what I do to switch locals too. You can switch locals as often as necessary. The spot beams that carry local stations are pretty wide and I sometimes look up a campground in the city of choice - i.e. when entering Arizona, I give them a service address of a campground in Mesa although I may be closer to Tucson. The next night, I'll be closer to Mesa or maybe the other side and I don't need to switch locals again. If you have a separate account for your RV, you're supposed to be able to switch locals using the app on your phone as well as reauthorize the receiver. Because I only have one account for the house, I'm not able to switch locals on the phone.

I've been with Dish since I gave up on my 8ft dish system. I've had some problems but have worked through them. It seems they gave up on using Asian phone support (those folks were hard to understand and dumber than dirt). Every time I've called in the past two years, I've gotten an English speaking agent that took care of my request promptly and I like that. Since Direct was bought by AT&T, I've given up any thought of switching. It seems AT&T uses Asian agents exclusively and I have a hard time communicating with them. There customer support ranks at or near the bottom of the stack and I refuse to deal with them anymore.

[jrs1871]

I was actually thinking of getting the add on tuner to watch local channels in TX and just suspending the KS location for the winter. We did that with Direct for 16 years and then this year when we got back to KS they said we could no longer do that; we would have to pay for a separate account. Dish said we could do that when we signed up this spring. But that remains to be seen. For companies claiming they want your business, they make it danged difficult to work with.
If all else fails, we can use Hulu in TX but It is nice to have a guide of upcoming programming available.

[DFord]

If you've got both receivers on the same account and only paying $7/month for the second one, when you switch your service address so you can get local channels in your winter home, all your receivers will be assigned the new locals. Of course the one at your summer home will be out of the spot beam for those locals and the home receiver won't be able to "see" those channels. You need two accounts for the receivers to work in two different locations more than 200 miles (more or less) apart. Having two separate accounts will cost more than having both receivers on the same account.

[Second_Chance]

The "Two Bills" have stated exactly what I have found in my research. I have been looking into it because we are on the list(s) to join two different Escapees co-ops. When we get permanent sites assigned, I plan on putting a Dish 1000.2 antenna at both locations so our Wally can "see" more than one satellite at a time (we have a hard drive activated on the Wally) and I can pack the Pathway X2 away for when we're on the road.

Rob

[Bill_Satellite]

jrs1871 wrote:
After nearly thirty years with Direct TV, we switched to Dish this spring after getting jerked around royally by Direct. We have a Hopper receiver in the house and a Wally receiver with Playmaker antenna in the RV. We are getting ready to head to our house in Texas for the winter. I am thinking of taking the Wally receiver from the RV and connecting it to a roof mount dish antenna. Has anyone done this and how successful was it?

No issues at all. You will need to reconfigure it for use with the Playmaker when you go back to that configuration but otherwise it should be plug and play.

[jorbill2or]

The Wally will work fine with the full dish. Just run a check switch ( actually when you plug it in it should do that on its own) it will recognize the dish. If you have a hard drive active and on it , it will add ( turn on ) the second tuner in the Wally. That will add the ability to record 2 programs at once that you don’t have currently with the portable playmaker ( or any portable )
You could also take the hopper .. but I assume your recording local Chanel’s back at home or someone is still at the house ?