LindaH

I haven't used Dish Internet, but I believe it's for a fixed location and is not mobile. You might want to contact them to inquire about this.

We've been doing so for years. We even contact Dish when we travel to update our service address so that we can receive the locals for the locations we're in.

Do you own your Hopper or lease it? We lease our Hopper 3 which I can see as being a problem when we switch from a home account to Dish Outdoors. I want to be able to turn on Dish only during the time we're traveling in the winter and have it off the rest of the year. Seems like I would have to continue paying at least the lease fee on the Hopper 3 during the time we were at home not using the Dish service. It would probably be a cleaner break just to get the Wally although I'll miss the ability to tape shows while we're watching something else.

Thanks, Zulu. Our Trav'ler is currently set up for a Hopper 3 receiver. I'm assuming we will have to disconnect the DPH42 switch from the dish and set it back to it's original configuration.

Can the Wally (which, apparently, is the only receiver offered for an Outdoors account), be used with the Trav'ler?

We did, but it's been a few years ago. Don't know if anything has changed since then.

Thanks Dutch! I'll look up those videos.

So what do you have to do to stop the buffering? What is it a function of...signal strength, speed (Visible's hotspot is limited to 5Mbps), or something else? What do I need to do to make streaming a viable solution for me over Dish? I could, of course, go with a regular ISP such as xFinity (or, perhaps even Starlink), but I hate paying for something that we wouldn't use 5 months out of the year -- and would that even solve the problem? What I really need, because of my lack of knowledge on this whole matter of streaming and the technical aspects involved, is having someone come hold my hand and guide me through the entire process! 😂

That's interesting! A few days ago we watched an episode of "Welcome to Earth" on the Disney+ National Geographic channel and got buffering. It wasn't terrible, but it happened throughout the episode. However, yesterday we watched a movie on Netflix and didn't once get an instance of buffering! Are you still getting buffering on some streaming channels after the addition of the WeBoost? How do you find out where the towers are? I've been on several websites that purport to show the location of the towers based on the service you use (in our case, Verizon) and they all show different locations, so I don't know *where* the Verizon tower nearest our house is! The Network Cell Info Lite app has a map that's supposed to show the location of the Verizon towers around me, but the lines that point from my house to a tower keep changing direction. I'm guessing that means there's more than one Verizon tower around here, but how would I determine which one to point the directional antenna to? First, I must admit that I know nothing about dbm levels or any of the other technical aspects about cellular workings. But based on the above conversations, I got the impression that a higher dbm level was better. No? According to the Network Cell Info Lite app, the dbm at my house ranges all over the place, but it's normally around the -115 level -- a bit less, a bit more. Thanks for that information! I've always been a bit leery of buying refurbished items, but it sounds like you haven't had a problem with doing so.

Yep, I got that from watching the video. We don't camp where their are trees. We need a clear sky for our solar panel and Trav'ler. During the winter, we stay at Pilot Knob LTVA. Not a tree in sight! 100 watts over what period of time? It's not something we would leave on when we're not actively using it.

Thanks, I hadn't read that. It doesn't answer all the questions , though. Like how much does it cost for the mobile equipment? What if you don't have a ladder on your RV...can it be mounted on a tripod? He said it has to be *plugged in" but he also said they do a lot of boondocking, so I assume it runs from an inverter. Wonder how much power it consumes? My biggest concern at this time, aside from the initial equipment cost, would be finding an open cell. Other than the travel time it takes to get down and back each fall and spring, we camp in one place during the winter. What if we arrive and there's no open cell? Or what if we get home in the spring, and the space we had is now filled? Just seems a little "iffy" to me at the present time.

If we stayed here 12 months of the year, I might think about it. But it can't currently be used in a mobile situation, and I hate paying for a service we wouldn't use 5 months out of the year. This year is an anomaly for us as we're usually in Arizona at this time. I know Starlink says they're going to go mobile at some point, but what kind of equipment would you have to carry and how difficult would it be to set up? We had HughesNet many years ago and it was a pain in the ___ to set up. What's the monthly GB limit, and how fast is it?

I'm getting that with my Verizon phone, too. It's gone from a low of 1.9 Mb/s down, 428.6 Kb/s up to a high of 15.9 Mb/s down, 3.4 Mb/s up.

Well, at this point, I'm not seeing ANYTHING from Visible because I cannot download apps at this time, so have not been able to run any speed tests. As of right now, I have no idea whether the results will be the same as my Verizon phone, worse, or better. It's an unknown. I *could* use my Verizon phone, but I only have 50GB/mo, which isn't going to go very far streaming much of anything. What I'm *trying* to do is get rid of Dish and watch everything I watch on satellite. But I can't do that unless I have unlimited data.

I mentioned the phone I have in my first post -- Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G. That's a pretty new, advanced phone. There might be newer, more advanced phones out there, but they are also way more expensive. However, I must reiterate that the S20+ phone, mentioned above, is my Visible phone which I'm using as a hotspot to *try* to stream. It is NOT the phone that I used for the test numbers, above. *That* phone is a Verizon TCL 10 5G. I cannot run the tests on the S20+ yet because of the problem I mentioned about not being able to download apps. Visible is working on it and, hopefully, there will be a resolution soon. Assuming that when I get the app download problem solved on the S20+ and the speeds are about the same as the TCL, what's causing the buffering -- and how do I get rid of it?

I hear you! The times we've visited Quartzsite, especially during January, the signal is so bad, it's sometimes useless for even the most basic uses -- and I wasn't even trying to stream then! Besides other reasons, that's one of the main reasons we rarely visit Quartzsite anymore. We're usually at the Pilot Knob LTVA west of Yuma and our signal there has always been better than we can get at home!

I actually have this app on my Verizon phone, but none of what it shows means anything to me. I assume by dBm you're talking about the two "gauges" shown when the app is first opened up. If so, then as I'm sitting here the top one has ranged from -108 to -112 and the bottom one has ranged from -113 to -116. The speed test has ranged from 11.6 Mb/s to 18.0 Mb/s down and 2.5 Mb/s to 3.4 Mb/s up. However, the other day after I first downloaded the app, my speed was 1.9 Mb/s down, 35.0 Kb/s up. As you can see everything ranges up and down, sometimes by quite a bit. This is the reason I thought an amplifier would help -- to get a more consistent signal so it's not hopping all over the place. I'll have to run all these tests again once the phone switches over to 5G -- I can't get a consistent 5G signal where I live. Mostly it's 4G with an occasional 5G. Note that these tests were done on my Verizon phone NOT the Visible phone which is the one I'm using as a hotspot to stream. I'm having an issue with downloading apps which I'm working on with Visible, so -- hopefully -- the issue will be resolved soon and I can download this app and get some numbers on the phone I'm actually using. Where do I find the "signal quality measurement" on this app? And what numbers should I be looking for? Well, that's nice, but I'm not about to spend $600 - $1000 just to test it out.

We got stuck at home this winter instead of making the trek south to Arizona, so I've been looking at ways to boost the cell signal at our home. We do have 5G here, but only one bar, and not all the time. Even the 4G/LTE signal usually only has 2 bars, 3 if we're lucky. I just received the Amazon Fire Stick, got it set up and tried it out (I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G phone through Visible as a hotspot). The Fire Stick works great, but I get some buffering when watching something. I'm assuming that it's because of the low signal here at the house and if I could boost the signal, I wouldn't get buffering. Am I on the right track? I've been looking at three different boosters: WeBoost Home Single Room Booster WeBoost Home MultiRoom Booster WeBoost Home Complete Booster The Single Room Booster covers "up to" 1500 sq. ft. (our home is ~1300 sq. ft.). However, if the outside cell signal is 1-2 bars (it is), the coverage is only 200 sq. ft. We plan on installing whatever booster we get in the office, but the TV is in the living room. I'm pretty sure that's more than 200 sq. ft. although I haven't measured it. The MultiRoom Booster covers "up to" 5000 sq. ft., but only 1000 sq. ft. with an outside signal of 1-2 bars. The Complete Booster covers "up to" 7500 sq. ft., but only 1500 sq.ft. with an outside signal of 1-2 bars. I think I can rule out the Single Room Booster, so that leaves the other two. The Complete Booster has the strongest booster according to this site, but I wonder if the extra $430 is really worth it for my situation? Where would you purchase the WeBoost...weboost.com, wilsonamplifiers.com, Amazon, or ? Buying from Amazon has some perks for me, but I like the idea of having support if something goes haywire. Final question: Are there boosters that perform better than the WeBoost at the same price points (the $999.99 for the Complete Booster is a stretch for me, so I dont' want to pay more)? Thanks!

Good suggestion. Our taxes are simple enough that I can use TurboTax's free tax preparation online service.

It's really deceptive to compare gas prices from 2021 to those of 2020. 2020 was the start of the pandemic and people stopped driving, so the price of gas fell like a rock. The $3.02 price quoted in the article isn't that different from normal. And even the current price of gas, which is higher (at least around where we live) isn't all that different from normal...I've seen it higher. 2020 was an outlier.

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, neither of the solutions worked. So it appears that with the Visible network, you must do system updates over wifi. Bummer.

I just recently signed up (again) with Visible and my phone wants me to do a software update. But it wants me to do it over wifi which I don't have available. Visible is telling me that's the only way to do the update. Anyone know of a work around so that the update can be done over a cellular network?

Also, getting a front-end alignment, if that hasn't already been done. I'd do these two things first before spending the money on additional equipment.

Well, that could be if you have a newer model of King Dome. We had ours many, many years ago when we first started fulltiming in 1998, so it's not surprising that it's been updated and the method for changing from one service to another changed.

There should be instructions in the manual for changing from one service to another. As I stated previously, you'll have to go up on the roof, remove the cover, and change the position of the switches.