Hulu, YouTube TV, VPNs or what?

[Morrones]

As we are planning our summer (hopefully)...buying our first camper 32bhds and getting out there with 3 small children. What do you use for live TV? Seems like cable hookups are spotty. We use hulu at home but cant move location with it because of geocaching. Does anyone use VPN for this? What do you use for live TV? If sports ever start back up, my wife and I would want solution for that. Thank you!

[Reverse_snowbird]

We just use OTA or cable. Lots of people use a portable satellite disk and that works well as long as you don't camp in the trees.

[Morrones]

Yea, I'm trying to avoid satellite altogether. Thanks for the reply.

[bikendan]

We use OTA signal or our cellphones as a hotspot, to stream Amazon Prime or our Dish Anywhere app.

[jdshockman]

Hey we use a service called Locast.org to stream local channels in Los Angeles area. Have used it with cell phone hotspot in Barstow.

[Sammici]

YouTubeTV plays anywhere and gives you local channels. Cost is $50 month with 3 simultaneous streams. I got rid of cable 2 years ago and use YouTubeTV at home, our summer rental and the RV using fire stick over tmobile hotspot. Works great!

[5picker]

Providing television reception is ever-evolving for a campground.

Cable TV isn't always available in rural areas where many campgrounds are located.

Geographical location can make OTA channels hard to receive, especially in the digital signal world. You'll either get the channel(s) or you won't.

Streaming has it's own set of issues. First you have to subscribe to a service to get any kind of meaningful content, then you have to have internet. As with the case of cable TV, many rural campgrounds don't have access to the infrastructure to provide the larger bandwidth packages needed for streaming.

The campgrounds often limit the connectivity as streaming TV eats up a lot of bandwidth so the experience of streaming can be frustrating. And if they don't limit data withing the campground, a few folks streaming TV will make the internet unusable for others. Don't be that guy at a campground.

Using your cell phone for an internet connection places the internet data usage onus on you but be prepared to pay for an unlimited plan. It is easy to use 200+ Gigs a month streaming.

Satellite TV is still the best method for those with kids or those who simply feel the need to do a lot of TV watching. Sure it takes a little set-up and a clear line of sight for the dish but you pay the monthly fee and that's it. Watch as much as you want. You aren't hogging the campgrounds bandwidth and you aren't paying an exorbitant fee for mobile data.

There are some economical unlimited mobile data plans coming on the market (Visable, etc) so there is some hope for the future. Some campgrounds are now starting to offer paid upgrades to your WIFI connectivity and I expect more will follow suit as that infrastructure evolves as well.

As I said, TV reception is evolving just like telephone did may years ago. Remember when you could hook up a land line telephone at your favorite campground site pedestal? LOL! Who does that any longer!

[OYO]

+1 on the YouTube TV. It comes with several other 'free' channels. Plus if you have Amazon Prime or are PBS members, there's more than you could ever watch. Plus unlimited DVR anywhere via cloud.

I stayed with Direct way too long.

You just need Wifi or a phone hotspot.

[Sarahcat]

I concur about YouTube TV. We use it at home, in lieu of cable and on the road, for anything we can’t miss, via 4G, provided by a WiFi hotspot we carry. Mostly, we sit by the fire and play with our Dachshunds.

[OYO]

Originally Posted by Sarahcat

I concur about YouTube TV. We use it at home, in lieu of cable and on the road, for anything we can’t miss, via 4G, provided by a WiFi hotspot we carry. Mostly, we sit by the fire and play with our Dachshunds.

Yup. The TV is just something we do to put us asleep, just like reading. But on a rainy night it's sometimes nice.

It's probably different if you have young ones.

[dbledan]

I use OTA and I have a hard drive full of movies. We pretty much only watch on rainy days. My son will use all the wifi anywhere we go and get us band so I just stay places without it. Keeps me away from the electronic leash....aka my phone as well.

[AudiDudi]

Download programming at home and play it back in the RV.

[RitaB]

Television reception can be spotty even in a private campground unless they provide cable. When I use to take my grandson camping, I would try to get a campground with cable, so he could watch during meals and late evening. If there wasn't any cable, I would bring along several kids movies and cartoons DVD's but tried to spend most of the time outside.

[RandK-M]

Originally Posted by Morrones

We use hulu at home but cant move location with it because of geocaching.

I also have Hulu for my live TV at home and I used my Hulu live TV in the camper last season. I didn't find a VPN that works, but here's what I did. Since mobile devices can use Hulu live away from your home network without changing your home location, I used an HDMI adapter to connect my old phone to the camper TV. I already had the old phone mounted to the wall by the entertainment Center that I use as an iPod, MP3, MP4 player, etc. It worked pretty well as long as I had a good enough internet signal. You could use a tablet, phone, or even a laptop and if an HDMI cable won't work for you, another option may be something like A Google Chromecast dongle, or a Fire Stick with an Airplay app for iPhone. Although I haven't verified that Chromecast or Airplay work with Hulu myself. I do have a Firestick on my camper TV for Netflix, HBO, Prime Video, Etc.

Ray

[lewisra]

I’d try OTA before paying for anything. I was really surprised by the amount of channels you can pull in since things have gone digital. Not just local channels but several others broadcast as well. Try the App NoCable, it will give you a list of channels in the area you are in as well as a guide to what is on. Also tells you best direction to “point” your antenna. You won’t get all the channels listed but at least you’ll know what is possible. In settings you can put in a zip code and it will give you the possibilities for anywhere you may go.

[formerFR]

... I think you're seeing that there are a LOT of options out there, but there is also no 'best' way to be entertained, as everyone has a DIFFERENT need, watches 'tv' differently, and expects different experiences while camping and traveling and RVing and off-gridding, etc.

While you may like the effort and time it takes to watch 'Hulu' and the like, and the internet speed and bandwidth and cost that has to be in place to make that happen, I like satellite tv, and all the channels, and the ability to not have to be concerned with whether I have internet access, or 'close to' an area for local channels - only to have a sightline to the satellites in the sky, or at least one of the three.

Some will be satisfied with picking up a random few channels from the roof antenna, if they are available, at all. Many of these are now in HD, which is great, but may not be any channels you ultimately want to see. It's amazing how the 'public' channels come in so easily and clearly, and there are quite a few of them, but 'regular' ABC, CBS and the like may be harder to come by, depending on your location to a metro area that has them.

Some will be satisfied with an RV park or Campground's CABLE tv options, if any. Parks are really starting to let this technology fall by the wayside as other entertainment options are coming to light, like streaming and satellite. The infrastructure and costs for cable is something that some parks now just don't really see the need for anymore, and probably will rarely impact whether campers will come, or not, just because of that.

Satellite tv is an option that many are choosing, especially if you already have satellite tv at your home, as you can most easily just carry one of your receivers with you, and deploy a small portable 'automatic' antenna to pick up the signals. A small portable can be as easy as $200 or so. Dish also offers a 'pay per month' plan for part-time campers who want it when they go on trips, but don't want to pay when they're not.

Internet-based options are certainly available, IF the internet is available, and IF the speed and bandwidth is there to handle it. Many rv parks and campgrounds, with their own 'wifi', even if an additional charge, is not designed to handle streaming and high-usage - they will even post warning that it's 'only' for checking email, web-site viewing, and low usage - "Do not attempt to stream anything thru our Wifi", or similar warnings.
If your own cell-phone internet plan is Unlimited and the signal is strong, then you may can do whatever you'd like, but many rv parks and campgrounds don't have a strong cell signal - they are in areas where people like to 'camp', and not near metro towers.

OTA is free.
CABLE might be free, or it might have an additional charge
SATELLITE will depend on your 'programming' package, and the cost of any hardware/equipment
INTERNET entertainment will depend on any 'free' wifi, 'paid' wifi options, or your own cell-plan package(many folks don't realize this, but you can probably also 'upgrade' your current plan to a more 'Unlimited' plan while you are on a trip, then change 'back' to your original plan when you return, check with your provider)...
INTERNET devices and equipment will also depend on 'what' or 'how' you are wanting to be entertained, whether directly on your 'phone', or a tablet, or a computer, or laptop, or casting that to your TV, including our 'consoles' for gaming, etc.

(and, of course, there's DVDs and the like, but you knew that already!)

[roderunner]

The topic of having media entertainment in the camper is a practice I've been doing for a couple decades. Even among criticism that going camping does not include TV... Ah, what do they know!

Your first inquiry was about VPN. This is certainly a way to get your geolocation to be close to home. I think many options are available for VPN services, but you would still need to find a VPN service in your home geolocation to trick HULU into thinking you're near home. Another option is to set up your home internet router up as a VPN server and VPN to your house. This way all of your traffic will look like it's from your home. Many modern routers have VPN capability but setting it up does take a bit of network geekary.

Many of the other responses are great ideas too. OTA, YouTube TV (streaming services) and Satellite are all very good options with $0 to $$$ fees to make it work. What I've ended up with is a hybrid of almost of the above solutions including Netflix in the mix.

My media center for the camper has ended up using a cheap android TV box (under $60) connected to my camper intranet and the TV. These boxes are similar to AppleTV, FireTV, or Roku (have one of these in the camper too.) Google ChromeCast connected to the TVs is also a nice way to play media from devices.

To make sure we have media, even when there is no internet or OTA, we use syncing features of the apps to move media to the TV players when they do have internet. Depending on how the sync service works, this can take a bit of pre-planning to get some programs downloaded for the trip. Netflix offers a sync /download service. Several other services do too. I know YouTube TV has DVR, but not sure if media can be be synced/downloaded for off line play back. Google Music can download your music for off line listening.

We recently switched to cell a plan with a major carrier that offers unlimited data, generous data for hotspot, and free YouTube and Netflix streaming. This now allows our very nice media center at home to travel with us in the camper. We have a travel blog with a section on some of the technical aspects of RVing. We will soon have a post about some of the IT we use when traveling.

[boogiejack75]

Originally Posted by Morrones

As we are planning our summer (hopefully)...buying our first camper 32bhds and getting out there with 3 small children. What do you use for live TV? Seems like cable hookups are spotty. We use hulu at home but cant move location with it because of geocaching. Does anyone use VPN for this? What do you use for live TV? If sports ever start back up, my wife and I would want solution for that. Thank you!

We changed to You Tube TV at home, so we use that in the RV. Roku's on the televisions, Netgear hotspot router. Works great if you have cell service. Check out Unlimited Internet Provider for an AT&T plan that is very affordable. Have fun!!

[Morrones]

Wow! We really appreciate all of your feedback. I think we have our options here and are leaning in the YouTube TV direction. Great detail from so many of you - thank you very much for that!

[ArkRVHog]

Originally Posted by Morrones

As we are planning our summer (hopefully)...buying our first camper 32bhds and getting out there with 3 small children. What do you use for live TV? Seems like cable hookups are spotty. We use hulu at home but cant move location with it because of geocaching. Does anyone use VPN for this? What do you use for live TV? If sports ever start back up, my wife and I would want solution for that. Thank you!

Cut the cable several years ago now happily using YouTube TV at home and on the road. Here's some cool things about this streaming platform:

* Whatever city you took out your YouTube TV account in, you can continue to receive your local channels using a streaming device (Roku, Apple, etc.) No matter where you are, it feels like home with local channels.

* But you can also tune into local channels to catch weather and local news using the YouTube TV app on your phone and casting it to your TV device (Roku/Apple.) That's very nice too.

* We're streaming via our mobile provider's hotspot. Our main service is AT&T but we bought a cheap Verizon smartphone purchasing unlimited data on a month-to-month plan. No travel...no expenses. Some parts of the country are stronger than others for these providers but between them we have it covered...IF there's any cell service.

* Finally, we invested in a WeBoost RV system to find/max our signal...if available. Even a one-bar improvement can really make a difference. Our external antenna is mounted on the RV roof (about 11 foot high) but I've heard of some that use an extendable pole system to really jack it up high which can't hurt...but more hassle. Be sure you get some good expertise in your install to keep from receiving feedback and receiving the best signal.

Oh, and you mentioned sports...YouTube TV has all of the ESPN channels as part of their basic $50.00 package...that gets my vote too. Good luck.