Which antenna/satellite with flatscreen tv...?

well....you can subscribe to dish or directv. you dont mention specifically if you ride with him or stay at home, but sort of implied you dont go out together. if you get it for the house as well, you can get it VERY cheap for the truck as well. buy extra dish and get one more converter box (or whatever they call em) than you will use in your home. so if you wanted connections to 3 rooms, youd ask them for 4. the 4th room will be the truck. essentially you will be paying for your home's satellite service, with a nominal fee for the truck's box. the dish you would have to buy on your own, unless like me you have a source that does installations. its like bringing your living room with you in the truck...all the channels you get at home you will also get in the truck. a bit of a chore to mount it each time you want to watch, but not horrible...a few minutes of his time is all.

 

I recommend you find the best 4G data plan you can get and use a tablet. Then he can use hulu, netflix, espnwatch, or any other video app. Most of the big networks now stream their most popular shows the day after they are originally aired. It's kind of a crap shoot figuring out what your total data usage (cost) will be, but you'll have a better idea after the first month and can adjust from there. There's also something called slingbox that lets you broadcast from a tv in your home to a mobile device, so you can basically 'mobilize' whatever your home service is, but my guess is that it would cost you whatever an additional box on whatever plan you have. Hope this helps.

 

I've had good results with my 30" flatscreen with an RCA antenna. Flat square box looking thing that may be what he saw. Got it at malwart around $30. Now my cascadia has a tv hookup wired into the sleeper using the stock antennas on the truck and it works just fine unless I'm just stuck out in the middle of nowhere. No more downtime than I have a dish or other of the more expensive options would not be very cost-effective.

 

Since he des have 4g I would suggest getting a slingbox and hooking it up at home. For $14 he can buy the app for his phone and stream what's on the tube at home or access what's on the dvr.

This is what I'm going to do when I get going. iPad slingbox app, slingbox connected to a life subscription TiVo. It won't be hooked to a tv since I will only watch it on the road. Slingboxes can be found on eBay for a decent price.

 

google and look at slingbox if you havent already. i looked at it, and im now changing my answer. id recommend slingbox to anyone who is a cable subscriber...and maybe even for dish subscribers as well. no need for 2nd dish, just an extra box it seems to devote to the truck's slingbox if im reading it correctly. to have control of what you watch, do you need to have a box devoted to the slingbox? thats what im reading.

 

The slingbox feeds whatever channel the cable box is on. If some one is watching tv at home and you decide to change the channel on the slingbox it changes on their tv too. If you dont care about the dvr portion you can get a free non dvr box from your provider and hook it up to it.

 

The problem with the Internet-based solutions is that you need to have Internet connectivity at all times. I can tell you from experience that no matter who you have as a carrier, you are going to have LONG stretches of road where you will not have any significant data service.

If you can swing the costs, the Winegard DuraSAT In-Motion model will work while the truck is moving. It's not cheap, with a list price of $1199 (plus the mounting bracket), but it is designed specifically for the trucking industry. (FYI, I found it in the Prime company store for $1050; it appears that the store will sell to anyone.)

Not cheap, but the option is there.

 

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It's sold at truck stops also. However, it isn't worth a crap. Bought one when at the same time I bought my flat screen, rigged it all up and watched TV. Then disconnected it and connected to the truck antenna instead to see the difference. Anyway, ended up getting about 40 percent more channels with the truck antenna and the reception of the channels was much better also. The RCA is now on my top bunk collecting dust. Live and learn...but if you want it, I'll make you a deal.