Finally pulled the trigger on an automatic satellite dish

[JSK76]

After reading a lot of reviews on the Tailgater and seeing how many people said they quit working for them and how much of a pain it was to get them fix I decided to get the Wineguard Pathway X1 instead. "The World's Foremost Outfitter" sells them with the receiver so I cashed in my points and ordered one tonight. I'll give an update when I get it fired up.

[Hawg]

I better put the antenna back in the shed then. Congratulations.

[dougger222]

That's the way to go. Have not heard many reports on the tailgater but most people I know with dish don't like it...

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

I like the looks of that. I have the manual crank satellite, which works, but every time I set it up I kick myself for not spending the few extra $ on an auto tune dish.

Did you get the extra mount for it? I'd like to get a roof mount, if I were to do anything.

[Hawg]

JSK, that probably gets you HD too then right? It's amazing how good Standard looked 5-6 years ago and how bad it looks to us today. It's light years better than an antenna though around here, and up there too I bet.

[dougger222]

Those are a lot cheaper than getting an auto tuner compatible with DTV. Last I looked auto tuners for DTV were well over a grand.

[Nisswaguy]

I purchased a Dish Tailgater over a year ago and I love the thing. I have the crank-up dish on top of my fish house and it just became a pain trying to tune it in all the time. I haven't had a single problem with my Tailgater and it's worked awesome. (Knocking on wood as we speak!!) In the non-winter season, I have the tv from my fish house on top of the beer fridge in the garage and the Tailgater out the back door so I now have tv in the garage. I was surprised how much I actually use it out there. I do try and take care of the 'gater though. It's not mounted to anything so when going down the road it's in a comfortable, less bouncy spot in the back seat of my truck. I enjoy having HD in the fish house in the winter and the garage in the summer. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone.

[JSK76]

Yep it's HD. I'm not sure if I'm going to get roof mount kit for it because I use the house for camping too and I think it might be better to be able to move it into an opening away from trees if needed. Although on the other hand it would be slick not to have to deal with setting it out on the lake and have someone run off with it, just turn on the tv and start watching. Not sure if the roof top AC unit would block it or anything. I think if I had a choice I would have got the black one just to help the snow melt off but it wasn't an option through them.

[hunter76]

I have the winegaurd crank dish. The other day I tried for about 45 minutes to find the signal and gave up. Yesterday it took me 30 seconds. Our problem is that when the wind blows, the dish goes up and down and we lose the signal. Its very irritating and when doesn't the wind blow in the winter. We tried everything to make it stable and not move but no luck. The self tracking domes are nice but they are all around $600. That's pretty spendy to watch Direct TV. So we are on the fence yet on what to do.

[JSK76]

I got the dish yesterday and got it working although I don't get every channel because I live in the woods with too many trees blocking the signal, out on the lake I'm sure it will be fine. It really is a lot of money to spend, if I didn't have about 1/2 of it in points I wouldn't have done it.

[Hawg]

Just out of curiosity- why would you have limited channels? It would seem you either have a signal or you don't, digital is all or nothing isn't it?

[JSK76]

I'm thinking it's because I'm at only 42 for a signal strength. Also it's picking satellite 129 instead of 119 or 110. I wish I had a clearer view of the southern sky so I could get a better idea if every thing is working correctly.

[JSK76]

I'm getting a little frustrated, tonight I put it on top of the fish house and it did pickup satellite 110 at as high as 60% signal strength. Now I can't get my local channels in HD I'm pretty sure I was getting at least one local channel in HD last night when it locked onto satellite 129. Even if I try to override it to satellite 129 it just goes back to 110. I shouldn't get too worried until I have it out on the lake with a clear view of the ski. I do get about 10 HD channels but they don't interest me except the Sportsman channel. I might have to call Wineguard to make sure the local networks are capable of coming in HD.

[JSK76]

After some research it looks like I need to lock into 110, 119 and 129 satalitte and I was just locked into 110 and 119. 129 actually carries most of the HD channels. Yesterday I had my truck right next to the fish house and the dish sitting on the roof of the truck, tonight I had it on the roof of the fish house. When on the roof of the truck it had a slightly clearer view of the sky because I was parked on my driveway that runs north and south.

In the setup a pop up did come up and say "all satallites not found" and may result in some channels being unavailable.

As of now I'm confident everything is working as it should.

[RiverChuckNorris]

Once you get this situation buttoned up, it's time to move your problem solving to the next level (think water into wine, cure for cancer, etc)