Community Forums

lbaldwin · 07-16-2015, 05:35 PM

I will be upgrading the rv entertainment system from at least the sat receiver forward to TV and receiver.

What are the pros and cons of the above and which do you prefer?

Will be replacing at least TV and dvd player.

Thanks

luvlabs · 07-17-2015, 08:13 AM

From your question, it's a bit hard to figure out what you want to do. IMHO, forget the SmartTV and the Roku box because you will never have an insternet connection on the road that is good enough to power streaming TV. Those are best in your sticks and bricks house where you can get a true broadband connection.

All you really need is a good satellite dish and maybe a good OTA antenna. A DVD player if you have lots of DVDs, otherwise even that is not really worth it. I haven't used mine since we bought the coach.

On the satellite side, I would get a system with a whole house recorder (Directv Genie or Dish Hopper) and a Winegard Trav'ler antenna. Equip each TV with it's own receiver (Dish calls them Joeys, not sure what they are in Directv land) and you will pretty much state of the art for TV.

bobioknight · 07-17-2015, 09:11 AM

We just upgraded our system as well. We had an incident with our satelite on our last trip so I ended up removing it off the roof and will replace it later if I find we even need it anymore. So far we are using OTA which pulls in some nice traveling shows, our smart tv & roku is a nice combination the TV allows us to browse the Internet, watch Netflix and plug a usb hard drive into a port which has all our movies stored. The roku streams movies and shows as well.

1 thing we added to our system was a bullet nt antenna, for wifi connections, it allows you to connect to open and secured networks at great distances.

So far our trip from sandiego to Portland had been great, the kids have their movies while traveling, wifi when we are parked and my power consumption went way down, especially with that dang satelite box that always ran hot enough to fry an eye on (hated that box).

The smart tv allowed us to get by without the need for satelite, the extra OTA box which did not give us a channel guide now the smart tv does, DVD player is gone all DVDs converted to 1 simple hard drive behind the tv so no need to store all the disks opening up two cupboards.

I plan on canceling my salelite when We get back, we simply did not need it... But that's us. Again, power consumption went way down because I did not have all the extra boxes drawing power even when powered off. Removing both tube tv's in the living room and bedroom, well that's an obvious savings as well. We boondock so saving power is a real benefit.

This is just our experience and our setup, may not be right for anyone else but it works great for us.

Terminex · 07-17-2015, 10:56 PM

The most important question is where you will get media. (I.e. The stuff you will watch:-)

If you are like me and have several TB of 1080P movies on nas / San at home, then i would lean towards a separate media player. Most of the media players built into tva are VERY slow to deal with when trying to scroll through your media files on a hard drive or usb stick. A Roku3 is much faster, and will give you output to the tv, as well as audio output to a sound system. It would also let you connect to a streaming service.

If you are really adventurous you could do something like my setup:
Netgear media router with a couple USB 3.0 drive attached with all my movies, and an amazon fire tv connected via ethernet cable runnign kodi for viewing local movies, but it also allows me to use it for netflix, slingplayer, plex, and amazon prime video.

I also use a ubiquity antenna to steal wifi from the racetracks i am camping at for all of those streaming services. (Ubiquity is connected via poe injector to the wan port on the netgear router.)

volvik · 07-19-2015, 08:59 PM

As the OP mentioned, if you bring along your own media, TV shows, movies etc, that you have on your laptop or large flash drive I personally would recommend a Roku 3.

Most of our TV viewing as above and I store it all on my laptop and run the 'free' Plex Media Server. It is simply fantastic, easy to navigate and very feature rich.

You can use this in your RV if you have access to a good wifi network however if not you can plug a USB flash drive or USB HD into your Roku 3 and play those files through the Roku media app.

Its very slick with a small learning curve.

bobioknight · 07-20-2015, 12:24 AM

Yes plex is a fantastic resource. I have a plex server running on my home server and stream to my coach also.

Terminex · 07-20-2015, 10:19 PM

+1 on plex.

I have 2 servers at home in an HA cluster running Plex.

I also have it running on my laptops for travel.

a little bit of setup involved, and if no local server, requires an internet connection. (hence the reason i like Roku 3, or FireTV with Xbmc / Kodi for people whpo have a little less technical experience)

TechWriter · 07-21-2015, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by luvlabs

. . . forget the SmartTV and the Roku box because you will never have an insternet connection on the road that is good enough to power streaming TV.

Two things . . .

If you rely solely on campground WiFi systems, then, yes, you can pretty much forget about streaming video. However, if you "bring your own" broadband data source (that's Verizon for me), you can stream video. How much depends on your data plan.
If, instead of a Roku, you use an AppleTV, you have the option of either (1) live streaming video from YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc or (2) using Apple's AirPlay peer-to-peer technology to stream video from your PC, iPhone, or iPad to an AppleTV. When an AppleTV and you PC are on the same WiFi network, no broadband data is used.

volvik · 07-21-2015, 09:18 PM

Apple tv is great however the Roku device has a USB port should you wish to play your own media. That's what I rely on if the available wifi source isn't sufficient to use with the laptop and Plex...

Both good systems..

dcampbell · 07-30-2015, 07:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by volvik

Apple tv is great however the Roku device has a USB port should you wish to play your own media. That's what I rely on if the available wifi source isn't sufficient to use with the laptop and Plex...

Both good systems..

I built a PC with an Intel I3 proccessor and 8 GB's of RAM. Bought a Netgear wireless router and two Roku streaming sticks. One Roku in each TV and the PC wired directly into the router. Loaded the PC up with all my movies, TV shows, photos and music. Stream everything through Plex. Can watch movies on each TV without any buffering. Real sweet setup.

Oilbrnr · 08-10-2015, 04:05 PM

If you are in the Apple walled garden like myself, you might want to wait until Sept. as an announcement of an updated and expanded AppleTV is expected. The next couple of years are going to be interesting as Apple and possibly others, move into what was traditionally cable and satellite TV provider's territory.

I have a couple of Samsung SmartTVs in my home and there is no way I'm letting them join my network.