Fooling Dish on your location

[Boilervol]

I just converted our traveler to Dish from DTV with a hopper 3. My question is locals. I used DNS out of New York with DTV. Changing locals using the Dish App is easy unless you want to select a different market that has locals in HD. I’ve read the spot beam radius is 300 miles. Today I’m parked in Pigeon Forge,TN and getting Knoxville locals in SD. The Tri-Cities have locals in HD on the WA.
Is there a way to specify say Johnson City, TN vs getting Knoxville locals. My location is well within the spot beam for Johnson City.

I also read Dish has DNS out of LA but the three hour difference is not optimal.

Thanks

[B52Rnav]

My experience is that Dish determines your locals based on your GPS location (using MyDish app). At one point you could fudge a little my entering a zip code. You could try using a 'fake GPS' app to tweak your locals. Based on your real location lookup what spot beams are available in your real location, then tweak with fake GPS.

[traveldawg]

Can't you just call Dish and ask the to provide your locals from Johnson City and give them that zip code if you call them rather than use the app? It's not like they know your zip code if you call them.

[lllkrob]

Forget the DISH app. Set up an online MyDISH account if you already don't have one. The go to support and contact DISH technical chat and give them a address in the locals area you want and ask them to change your SERVICE address and local stations. Chat has no way to know where you really are. I do this when I don't like the locals in a location but close by has the locals I want.

[taylorbob1]

Originally Posted by lllkrob

Forget the DISH app. Set up an online MyDISH account if you already don't have one. The go to support and contact DISH technical chat and give them a address in the locals area you want and ask them to change your SERVICE address and local stations. Chat has no way to know where you really are. I do this when I don't like the locals in a location but close by has the locals I want.

good info
i did not know that.
Thank you.

[LynnD]

We usually set it up for our home location and it stays with that for the remainder of the season.

[Bigd9]

It can get more complicated as Dish satellites can broadcast local station footprints in varying shapes and sizes. Some may be 300 mile circle, but others could be hotdog shaped or football shaped areas.

Also when in the Eastern side of this beautiful country, Dish will use the Eastern Arc to broadcast HD content in some markets. My portable Winegard X2 is capable of getting both the western and eastern arcs.

As said, I use the Dish Chat function to get them to change my locals as we travel.

[garry1p]

Same here contact Dish chat and give them an address.

You cannot give "any" address within 300 miles and hope to get locals however; I have gotten locals within 100 miles of a major city.


Example: NE MS locals are not very good (5 stations) so I use a campground address in Memphis TN 71 air miles away.

[TechWriter]

CONUS locals are good anywhere:

[Boilervol]

Thanks for all the great info everyone. It appears the only national WA conus feed in HD is Sacramento. I’ve looked at using the EA feeds but the Traveler is limited to one bird at a time. If we want HD all the time “easily” it looks like the west coast is the only option. We can use prime time recording to solve the time issue and DNS to get HD networks all the time.

I guess I could carry a tripod dish for the eastern feeds but that kind of defeats the purpose of the traveler.

[MRUSA14]

Originally Posted by Boilervol

Thanks for all the great info everyone. It appears the only national WA conus feed in HD is Sacramento. I’ve looked at using the EA feeds but the Traveler is limited to one bird at a time. If we want HD all the time “easily” it looks like the west coast is the only option. We can use prime time recording to solve the time issue and DNS to get HD networks all the time.

I guess I could carry a tripod dish for the eastern feeds but that kind of defeats the purpose of the traveler.

Which is one reason why I am sticking with DirecTV. All HD everywhere.

[TechWriter]

Originally Posted by MRUSA14

Which is one reason why I am sticking with DirecTV. All HD everywhere.

I don't think you understand. With DISH in an RV, as you travel from one place to another, you can contact DISH to have them change your local TV stations to where you're currently camped. This is an on-demand service. You can change DISH locals as much as you want.

This thread is talking about ways to stick with a single local TV station instead of changing. Those CONUS ("Continental US") locals I posted above are available everywhere in the US. For example, you could use a fake address to get Sacramento, CA HD locals everywhere you travel. Convenient, but all your programming would be Pacific Daylight Time.

So getting HD everywhere with DISH isn't a problem.

Finally, as I recall, DirecTV only lets you change your local TV stations a few times at most. So much of the time with DirecTV you're probably not going to get ANY local TV stations, much less HD ones.

[PbdBlue]

Originally Posted by lllkrob

Forget the DISH app. Set up an online MyDISH account if you already don't have one. The go to support and contact DISH technical chat and give them a address in the locals area you want and ask them to change your SERVICE address and local stations. Chat has no way to know where you really are. I do this when I don't like the locals in a location but close by has the locals I want.

That’s what I do as well. Never had any issues.

[Boilervol]

I saw on another post that Billings MT on 129 is conus and HD. This maybe an error as tech writer shows Billings as 119 SD