Travel with youtube tv & winegard

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by dkoldman

It is till not clear to me if the SIM card is for your 3rd party data plan or if you have to have data plan through them (winegard)

I may have to Google from here because I am courious as to what something like this would cost to have installed and what monthly fee it would require. I also suspect it may void my 10 year roof warranty, but thus far I have not seen the value for us if we actually had? My perception is I could buy some portable data device with some unlimited plan if I wanted to avoid the setups for Netgear / WiFi Camp Pro each time and be assure to have access in the event Wifi is not available from others.

But for now, we use our phones as Hotspots to do just that. If we don't try to stream movies through the phone we can use our computers / laptops all day with no issues. i.e. I can work from home. Sometimes; I am in RV with only my phone & laptop and no one can tell the difference, I may be at the lake

Winegard could replace your tv antenna on the roof because it's built in. You can go to a campground that has wifi and connect to their wifi it will boost the signal and encrypt it so it is safe, this is free. You can use your phone to make a wifi hotspot and go through the Winegard it's all free just the cost you pay for data from T mobile. You can use Winegard hot spot, the sim card is already inside the unit. Just call and activate it. I went to verizon and they gave me a sim card to replace the Winegard one. I pay 20 dollars a month, same as putting a new tablet on my plan. It uses our data plan so whatever a person has for data that will be the cap. Mine is on when the switch is on probably just like your tv antenna, from what they say if T Mobile has one bar on you phone this will pick up the signal and boost it for the hot spot

[dkoldman]

Thanks, that is the functionality / features I finally came to conclusion with. But with this information, where do you see it would benefit me?

Originally Posted by Bill Johnson

Winegard could replace your tv antenna on the roof because it's built in. I have omni directional antenna now on roof, No adjustments required and I have never had an issue picking up OTA signals; so I see this as a push (the same) or of no added benefit


You can go to a campground that has wifi and connect to their wifi it will boost the signal and encrypt it so it is safe, this is free. I do this today with Netgear Extender as primary and WifI Camp Pro as backup, it is all free. I connect to my home Wifi and any public Wifi I can see


You can use your phone to make a wifi hotspot and go through the Winegard it's all free just the cost you pay for data from T mobile. I use my phone t-mobile today as hot spot when working with my laptops, I use my phone t- mobile to direct stream to my Samsung TV, or my Roku streaming / mirroring apps on my phone. It is all free; Why do I need a Winegard as yet another device in the middle of all of that? We have unlimited data plans already with T Mobile but they do slow down after using too much data. The latter very rarely happens because most of the time we have 3rd party access to free WifI. If not we are someplace we will likely not be at very long or just use the T mobile phones. Since we have two, if we use up the data on 1st phone and need more speed; we could just go to 2nd phone, but the latter has never happened

You can use Winegard hot spot, the sim card is already inside the unit. Just call and activate it. I went to verizon and they gave me a sim card to replace the Winegard one. I pay 20 dollars a month, same as putting a new tablet on my plan. It uses our data plan so whatever a person has for data that will be the cap. Mine is on when the switch is on probably just like your tv antenna, from what they say if T Mobile has one bar on you phone this will pick up the signal and boost it for the hot spot

I could see where if the T-mobile SIM we could buy could work if it allowed consumption for data across all my data plans? this would be great because I have 5 t-mobile phones. However; we only travel with two phones. If the SIM was tied to one or the other T-mobile phone it would actually restrict us to one phones data plan

I think for me, if camping more or wanting to be anything like full timing, I would buy a portable data device and plan. It would be easy to use ANYWHERE, not just RV and always setup. I got that idea at a campground who was having issues with their Wifi; so they loaned us a Verizon Jetpack. That thing was great. It handled all of devices with ease, but I bet the cost would spook me from buying?

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by dkoldman

Thanks, that is the functionality / features I finally came to conclusion with. But with this information, where do you see it would benefit me?



I think for me, if camping more or wanting to be anything like full timing, I would buy a portable data device and plan. It would be easy to use ANYWHERE, not just RV and always setup. I got that idea at a campground who was having issues with their Wifi; so they loaned us a Verizon Jetpack. That thing was great. It handled all of devices with ease, but I bet the cost would spook me from buying?

You already have your amplifiers so it probably won't do anything for you. We go to places that don't have wifi or cell service is bad and this gives us a better signal and it was already on the motorhome

[Scubawise]

Originally Posted by Bill Johnson

With dish anywhere you can watch anything that is on your tv at home. If like me you have a Samsung phone or tablet just plug in a cable USB-c to hdmi and watch the game or send it wirelessly to the tv. The other way is to get a Dish usb stick and plug that into the tv and it will allow you to do everything you do at home.

Hi tried samsung usb to hdmi and used DEX app. Not full screen?

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by Scubawise

Hi tried samsung usb to hdmi and used DEX app. Not full screen?

I didn't have that problem, I have a note 8, I won't get a new note until this one breaks. I have an s7 tablet and it's great I don't even use my laptop anymore

[alajeu]

Originally Posted by Bill Johnson

With dish anywhere you can watch anything that is on your tv at home. If like me you have a Samsung phone or tablet just plug in a cable USB-c to hdmi and watch the game or send it wirelessly to the tv. The other way is to get a Dish usb stick and plug that into the tv and it will allow you to do everything you do at home.

The problem Bill is that Dish doesn't carry Cardinal Baseball either. As I mentioned before, the only provider that carries Bally Sports in my area (rural Missouri) is Atttv and Atttv sucks bigtime.

Alajeu

[Scubawise]

Originally Posted by Bill Johnson

I didn't have that problem, I have a note 8, I won't get a new note until this one breaks. I have an s7 tablet and it's great I don't even use my laptop anymore

Have note 9

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by alajeu

The problem Bill is that Dish doesn't carry Cardinal Baseball either. As I mentioned before, the only provider that carries Bally Sports in my area (rural Missouri) is Atttv and Atttv sucks bigtime.

Alajeu

I thought it was your local channels

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by Bill Johnson

You already have your amplifiers so it probably won't do anything for you. We go to places that don't have wifi or cell service is bad and this gives us a better signal and it was already on the motorhome

That is what I had concluded; just wanted to be sure. It is interesting to note that if you buy or have the Winegard; you can use without a subscription of any type of service. I also learned that if I ever tear up my rooftop antenna, or need a new one, I can consider the Winegard as an option, (dependent upon how much to install on the fiberglass roof as that is not a DIY for me). I typically will not stay at a RV Park if they do not have WiFi or allow me to get close enough to pickup signals.

Originally Posted by Bill Johnson

I didn't have that problem, I have a note 8, I won't get a new note until this one breaks. I have an s7 tablet and it's great I don't even use my laptop anymore

I am going to ping you an address to ship that laptop to

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by dkoldman

That is what I had concluded; just wanted to be sure. It is interesting to note that if you buy or have the Winegard; you can use without a subscription of any type of service. I also learned that if I ever tear up my rooftop antenna, or need a new one, I can consider the Winegard as an option, (dependent upon how much to install on the fiberglass roof as that is not a DIY for me). I typically will not stay at a RV Park if they do not have WiFi or allow me to get close enough to pickup signals.



I am going to ping you an address to ship that laptop to

Don't come in our area hardly anyone has wifi. It's a pain around here even for 70 a night

[Chateau_Nomad]

Originally Posted by Bob Denman

So I'm guessing that an HDMI cable between the smartphone and TV is ancient technology now...

I'm still trying to find the RCA jacks on the back of the TV to plug my VCR into...

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by Chateau_Nomad

I'm still trying to find the RCA jacks on the back of the TV to plug my VCR into...

You can do what I did, follow the wires from back of the 8 track player, unplug the red and white wire, plug in the VCR wires putting the yellow in the one next to it

Remember to switch it back if you wish to play music again

[Chateau_Nomad]

Originally Posted by Jibstay

Do you use Visible’s Party Pay to reduce your bill to $25?

We have a (Verizon) Visible plan... have our kids on it as Party Pay... great price for included hotspot.

We jumped through all the hoops with our rooftop Winegard. The data plans are now simply far too expensive for our taste. In the rare case we can connect it to WiFi - it's acceptable. Otherwise we use one of our phones as a hotspot to feed a Fire stick plugged into the TV.

Visible's data is truly unlimited... they state you are only throttled in cases of heavy network usage... which is usually only near larger metro areas. I stream YouTube videos sometimes for hours while driving in rural areas without ever being throttled.

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by Chateau_Nomad

We have a (Verizon) Visible plan... have our kids on it as Party Pay... great price for included hotspot.

We jumped through all the hoops with our rooftop Winegard. The data plans are now simply far too expensive for our taste. In the rare case we can connect it to WiFi - it's acceptable. Otherwise we use one of our phones as a hotspot to feed a Fire stick plugged into the TV.

Visible's data is truly unlimited... they state you are only throttled in cases of heavy network usage... which is usually only near larger metro areas. I stream YouTube videos sometimes for hours while driving in rural areas without ever being throttled.

I never thought about that while I'm driving. The motorhome has a 10 inch screen I could catch up on all my car programs while driving to the campground. I wish it had self driving mode too so I could go back and make popcorn while watching my TV programs

[Chateau_Nomad]

I have a Winegard ConnecT 2.0 on the roof. It came with it's own preinstalled AT&T sim card (slot on the roof device). The original data plan in 2019 was very affordable... I forget exact $ but $20 something on a month to month plan. Basically you pre-paid for only the months you needed. That went away (of course). It got WAY more expensive, and no more month to month plans.

We had Cricket (AT&T) phone plans then, which charged $$$ for hotspot. Last year we went to Visible (Verizon) which includes unlimited hotspot. So now we use phone as hotspot and Fire stick for TV streaming.

About the "better" Winegard reception:
An RV is basically a big Faraday cage which somewhat shields RF energy. A Winegard antenna sits on top of the RV, with the advantage of higher line-of-sight and signal not blocked by RV metal structure. Your phone inside the RV will have a tendency to receive/transmit less RF energy than an antenna sitting on the roof... which isn't blocked by that metal box.

Most of this is moot for me though... we camp a lot in southeast Ohio and West Virginia. About 50% of the time we have ZERO cell signal. About the only comm is the old reliable amateur radio towers with 2 meter repeaters - handy for emergencies. And of course a weather radio.

[Chateau_Nomad]

Originally Posted by Bill Johnson

I never thought about that while I'm driving. The motorhome has a 10 inch screen I could catch up on all my car programs while driving to the campground. I wish it had self driving mode too so I could go back and make popcorn while watching my TV programs

Well... just talk the better half into driving duties!

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by Chateau_Nomad

Well... just talk the better half into driving duties!

Actually my wife will drive this motorhome anytime with the f53 chassis. She drove our old Jayco motorhome on the 450 chassis and said never again. It was soon after that we got rid of it. I have bad legs and many times my wife takes over driving for a while

[Scubawise]

Originally Posted by dkoldman

I do that but no wires or cable needed

I can stream to all 3 TVs by simply wirelessly connecting to one of my Roku boxes direct from my phone.

In addition, I replaced my Main TV with a Samsung TV. I stream direct to it with any of our Samsung phones.

I guess technically we have 3rd option if we wanted to plug a HDMI to USB cable between Phone & TV but we stay wireless where all possible.

BTW, I read up a little on Winegard. I can see why some people would like, but right now it is just not for us. It would be a tough sell for me to believe they can pick up T Mobile signals any better than my phone does, but even if it did, why make that investment? My installation cost is also a factor. If I was worried that I could not always get a T Mobile signal, I could simply buy a portable device with coverage that is noted to be in areas that T Mobil may not be? It would be good backup and I could take with me anywhere in any vehicle and boat and not just be confined to RV. But a Full Timer may think different.

My Verizon sim $20 just hit 15gb and got msg speeds will slow. Well mine stopped no connection..right next to me my brother has same sim and maxed to 15gb but working
Only difference he had 5g phones & i have 4g. I am calling Verizon !also I see Verizon has a new 5g unlimited plan $30 a month with 30GB HOT SPOT..CHECKING

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by Scubawise

My Verizon sim $20 just hit 15gb and got msg speeds will slow. Well mine stopped no connection..right next to me my brother has same sim and maxed to 15gb but working
Only difference he had 5g phones & i have 4g. I am calling Verizon !also I see Verizon has a new 5g unlimited plan $30 a month with 30GB HOT SPOT..CHECKING

Yes they do

[Scubawise]

Final resolution after research..
We called Verizon. Since we had a 5g plan with 4g phones..we upgraded to the #1 phone s21 ultra amazing pictures battery etc. Verizon did $17 month for 24 months.
And Verizon upgraded phone hotspots to 30GB. So now we will #1 stream as much from phones unlimited 5g..first use both phones 30gb hotspot for all tvs , only use wingard 15gb if phone hotspots exceed 30gb or no 4g/5g signal..which is our case now at state campground. At campground with family no one has 4g or 5g and 3g 1 bar. We both exceeded 15gb winegard so Verizon slowed speeds ..everyone here connected to wingard and all have internet a little slow...big fans of winegard due to many times at state parks bailing us out