My solution to no cable
 

I have a 21fbrs with a tv/entertainment setup. I purchased a roku device which works well when wifi is available. More often than not wifi is not available. So the problem is how to watch tv when there is no cable or wifi or satellite.



My solution.
Since my trailer is equipped with a wifi range extender (basically a router) I turn that on and connect my roku to it as well as my cell phone. Now the roku and cell phone are on the same network. I can use my cell phone and mirror psvue (local channels plus) playing on my cell phone to the roku and see it on the TV. Granted this will eat up any cell phone data plans pretty quickly but I usually am only interested in local weather or news. I do have an unlimited data plan but I'm sure that at a certain point it will be throttled.

If you're just looking for local stations, wouldn't it be easier to just use the over-the-air antenna on the trailer? No data, and really, no fuss. Just set the TV to antenna, (if it's a crank up, crank up the antenna) turn on the booster, scan, and then you have local channels.

For local weather though, we just use the weather network app on the cell phone.

I don't know what type of phone you have but most phones you can turn on the "hot spot" feature and connect directly to your phone and bypass the wifi extender, you can also download an app that will do the "hot spot".

Some cell phone services do not allow hot spots. I've tried. Straight Talk does not work with any hotspot application. They'd rather sell me a device and charge me for a data plan.

Sometimes reception is very poor in campgrounds for OTA. And local news can be important like when we were in DC area with all the rain they had. weather app only mentioned heavy rain. Local news gave more location detail so we could avoid flooded areas.

I keep a small DVD player in the camper and usually remember to throw in a few DVDs before we leave. I've yet to be at any RV park that allows you to use what is almost universally bad wifi for streaming. Some claim they "monitor connections" and will kick you off if they think you're using too much of their bandwidth. (I think they're all full of it, lol) but I have never been able to keep my tablet connected more than 5 minutes straight let alone long enough to stream something IF the connection is even that strong. I use an OTA antenna and have an extender I can connect if necessary. The seemingly rarer times we get to connect to cable, there is usually very few channels and nothing we want to watch unless they have the weather channel for a few minutes. But for the most part, it's sitcoms on DVD when needed for emergency bad weather entertainment.

Understand that this method does not use campground wifi. IT merely creates a network in your camper that connects to something like psvue or hudu across the cell service of your phone.

Straight Talk
 

Straight Talk does not permit "tethering."

However, their detection scheme is fairly simple: They use the information submitted by e.g., the web browser to determine what device is connected. From information they can determine your web browser, operating system, screen size, and a bunch more stuff. Don't believe it? Click here.

But there are a few things that aren't detectable:

• Using your phone and a Chromecast device to "cast" audio and video to a TV.
• Using your phone to tether a tablet of the same type (Android-to-Android or iOS-to-iOS)

Larry

I agree that the native weather app on the phone is usually too vague, but I've found the Weather Network's app to be fairly reliable. What I really like is it's push notifications of weather alerts. Like a couple of years ago when we had the first tornado in 40 years, the app pushed a notification to my watch in the middle of dinner, allowing me to quickly get the kids/dogs in the basement bathroom (only room with no windows in the house). Local news alone wouldn't have been able to do that for us.

Where the local news is handy though, is the news. You only get a few select stories online, and often, you have to hunt for those after somebody else informs you about it. But for us, usually the signal's good enough for anything local enough for us. If the station's not close enough to get us a signal, then it's not close enough to be considered local. But we're also fairly flat around here, so there's not much blocking a signal.

My solution to no cable is a good book, a camp fire and being with my wife.

I record off of the Playon app to my laptop. mp4 format hardly uses any space. Cable from laptop to tv. Works great and no wifi needed.

I’m with you, a few DVD’s and the wife and I are good to go!

X3

Just another option. ...for rainy days and nights. I have a smart tv and an old wireless router in rv. Router has no internet access but does create a wireless network inside rv. I download movies etc (at home) to my phone using amazon prime. I then mirror screen my phone to tv to watch downloaded movies.

If you have an appletv and an ipad... You can disconnect your appletv from "all" networks... then turn on blue tooth and connect your ipad/iphone directly to your appletv. Anything you have recorded on your ipad/iphone can play flawlessly to your big screen. As for live streaming... if you got an unlimited package with your cell provider you will find it nearly impossible to go full screen with any apps like googleTV or netflix or even streaming full screen for youtube. Don't know why but I think it may have to do with the limited bandwidth inherit with bluetooth. Maybe someone here would know why. But if I have downloaded movies from itunes, those play beautifully.


James

We just crank the antenna up if there are no stations we watch DVD's or something off of a thumb drive or you know read a book or two..

Following this :hijacked: for a minute, in the TT I put in an AppleTV, an airport express as a in trailer router, and tried Airplaying an iTunes movie from my iPad to the AppleTV. No go. It needed to be connected to the internet in order to authorize the movie to be played. Ended up having to turn on the hotspot on the phone and connect the iPad and AppleTV to it just to be able to watch a locally stored digital copy of a movie. Never did get it to work with either a local network or a straight bluetooth approach. As long as it was an iTunes digital copy, it required to be connected to the internet to play wirelessly.

So when we got the fiver, I skipped the whole AppleTV approach and just stuck with using a lightning to HDMI adapter. This TV setup gives me room underneath the TV for a spot to put the iPad while it's playing, so it works. Much better than having to have my hotspot on the whole time. When playing over a wired digital adapter, it doesn't need to authenticate and just play.

However, the OP in this case wasn't looking for digital movies, they were sharing their way of getting local television stations.

Apple Lightning Digital AV Adapter
 

We use a Apple Lightning Digital AV Adapter($35.00 on Amazon) and plug our tv’s hdmi cable in to it and plug into our cell phones. Whatever we can watch on our phone can now be watched on out TV! Works great. Used my Apple TV with my phones hot spot but ran out of data after only 2 movie! I have unlimited data on my phone so no problems!

No cable
 

I use a Android TV box, if wifi or cell is not available I have a 1 terabyte hard drive with over a 100 movies I can watch.

I was at the FMCA 98th International Conference last week. The "Free" WiFi was bad to completely non-existent. I have the best and latest WiFiRanger system and, was pulling in a GREAT WiFi signal BUT, with almost 2000 people attending the event, there was LITTLE to NO throughput (internet connection). I also have "Unlimited" data on my Verizon phone AND Verizon Jetpack AND on my T-Mobile phone. The single local tower must have been completely slammed/overwhelmed because most of the time, the cell signals were useless. NOTE: I was NOT trying to stream Netflix or other videos; I just wanted basic internet but, internet connectivity in Gillette, WY is a bad joke. OTA TV in Gillette wasn't much better either. Four channels, two of which were unwatchable due to static. The other two weren't worth watching. I too carry DVDs and programs on my computer so that I have something to watch on down days or during inclement weather. Sadly, universal connectivity is still a LOOOOOOONG way off (especially in Gillette, WY). :(