Dish 211z vs Wally with Tailgator

mtpocket · April 1, 2018

I have the old tailgater. Big white cube. I have been thinking of swapping my 211z receiver for a wally but have read they can be temperamental. On another RV site I found a thread that says unless it finds all 3 satellites it will not work. Has this been anyone else's experience? While the 211's interface is clunky it seems to work pretty well. I have had some times when it could not find all three satellites so this would be a concern.

chirakawa · April 1, 2018

I've been thinking about switching to a Wally from the 211. The only real advantage for me is that it has 2 satellite tuners and 2 OTA tuners (with the optional adapter). However, that wouldn't have much value with you using the Tailgater.

The Wally does offer built in Netflix, if that's something you use. Otherwise, I see no reason to switch unless you just like the new interface.

mtpocket · April 1, 2018

Thanks chirakawa. We bring the 211 from the house. It's leased and we are upgrading the house to the hopper and Joey's. Dish said to do the deal we couldn't keep the 211. That really doesn't make sense but it thats what they said. So I will have to buy either a 211 or Wally.

Chad Heiser · April 2, 2018

I had two 211’s and 2 Hoppers and 2 Joeys on the same account up through November 2016. Unless Dish has changed a policy, you should be able to do it as well. I did have to go up through the chain a little to get someone high enough up to get it approved. I do think I had to purchase my 211’s, but I cannot remember for sure.

I currently have two Hoppers, 2 Joey’s and 3 Wally’s on my account. I had to purchase the Wally’s to get them activated by Dish.

chirakawa · April 2, 2018

DISH allows you to have a solo receiver for tailgating in addition to your Hopper equipment. I guess they assume people will be turning it's service off and on which would require a leased receiver to be in transit to and fro too often. So, they require that it be owned.

dkreuzen · April 2, 2018

I fought with DISH over the RV receivers for years since I got a Hopper system in the house. They always said "only one non-Hopper unit to a home account"... until last year I got a different answer. They said buy one and call back to activate it, so I did.

KodiakJack · April 2, 2018

I finally decided on DISH and got a Wally and Pathway X2. Setup was easy. Worth mentioning is that I had channels (not sure how many) when locked to 2 satellites. The voice remote is great as it lights up the buttons (if its dark) when you move it. Say Netflix and it pops open and you can navigate that site with the remote but the Wally needs internet to do this. I have a wireless adapter plugged in for this purpose.

Later, J

Twotoes · April 3, 2018

I think your problem may be the Tailgator. I would look at getting into a Pathway X2 or a rooftop mount Travler. Either will work with a Wally or Hopper. The Tailgator is the weak link in the chain.

WeBeFulltimers · April 3, 2018

21 hours ago, dkreuzen said:

I fought with DISH over the RV receivers for years since I got a Hopper system in the house. They always said "only one non-Hopper unit to a home account"... until last year I got a different answer. They said buy one and call back to activate it, so I did.

I have found that there is 1 little word that you can say to Dish when they don't agree with a plan you have for change. Say "Directv". Gets their attention! To be fair to Dish they are USUALLY agreeable with anything within reason.

Twotoes · April 3, 2018

6 hours ago, WeBeFulltimers said:

I have found that there is 1 little word that you can say to Dish when they don't agree with a plan you have for change. Say "Directv". Gets their attention! To be fair to Dish they are USUALLY agreeable with anything within reason.

When I traded in my 5er and purchased a used Class A it came with a Travler on the roof that was set up for DirecTv. I had been with Dish using a Pathway X2 and a 211K on the 5er for 5 years. To convert the Travler to Dish required a $300 kit and $200 labor. I asked Dish if they would give me any credit to stay with them and got a negative reply. I switched to DirecTv.

WeBeFulltimers · April 4, 2018

16 hours ago, Twotoes said:

When I traded in my 5er and purchased a used Class A it came with a Travler on the roof that was set up for DirecTv. I had been with Dish using a Pathway X2 and a 211K on the 5er for 5 years. To convert the Travler to Dish required a $300 kit and $200 labor. I asked Dish if they would give me any credit to stay with them and got a negative reply. I switched to DirecTv.

One can usually get much better results if they ask to speak to a "retention specialist". It is amazing how powerful they can be as opposed to regular customer rep. LOL