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Stuart Sweet
Staff member HERE TO HELP YOU! Pub Member / Supporter Cutting Edge
· posted in The Solid Signal Blog
Let's say you found this article because you own an RV park. You know it's not the same as other types of rental ownership. It's a big chunk of land and maintaining the services for every space can be rough. It takes a lot of work and it's a full time job. Even when you have everything running smoothly, there's always the possibility that your tenant will just up and drive away. You can't say that about traditional apartments or even other forms of manufactured housing.

So, you're always thinking of ways that you can add services without adding a hassle to yourself. Well, I have a great one.

Satellite TV for RV parks


Why not give every space an option for live satellite TV? It's a crowd-pleaser, even today. Giving people dozens of live channels that they can't get from antenna or streaming is going to give you a lot of happy customers. And it's not as hard as you think.

Most RV park owners have this vague idea that you can't do satellite TV without a lot of trouble. I'm here to tell you it isn't true. There are two options, and one's incredibly easy.

You can pre-wire each space for satellite TV using a central dish. This is going to make it easy for tenants to choose satellite TV for themselves. They can opt to subscribe, get their own equipment, do whatever they want. This is the most flexible option but it's also the most expensive for both you and your tenants.

Or, you can choose something like the COM3000 headend system from DIRECTV or Smartbox from DISH.

COM3000 and Smartbox


This is a COM3000:

COM3000_COM3000A_crop.webp


and this is a Smartbox:

DISH_SMARTBOX_2-1024x389.jpg


Both are small devices about the size of four pizza boxes stacked on top of each other. Both will give you over 100 channels on a single cable that can be distributed to each RV space. Depending on a number of factors, that cable can go straight into a TV or can use a simple and inexpensive box that you can supply your tenants.

This sort of "compact headend" as they call it is a higher expense for you but it builds a lot of value into your RV park and it's likely to be seen as a better benefit to your tenants.

Satellite TV? Isn't that dying?


People do ask that. I get it. But it's just not true. Combined, DIRECTV and DISH have a bigger slice of the pay-TV pie than any other provider. That "pie" may be shrinking here or there but it's still millions upon millions of people. Satellite TV is still a proven crowd pleaser. That's a simple fact.

Yeah but wouldn't it be better to supply internet and Wi-Fi?


This is another question we get a lot. I would think you might want to supply both, but if you could only supply either satellite TV or Wi-Fi, I'd suggest satellite TV. A lot of people have strong cell service and that gives them what they need. Maintaining enough internet capacity for everyone can be expensive and it can take a lot of equipment that you might not know how to maintain.

On the other hand, satellite TV is generally a "just works" kind of proposition. If you bury the cables, they generally go years without problems and you only have to worry about people not knowing how to connect up. Teaching them to screw in one cable isn't really that hard, luckily.

Count on the satellite TV experts


Our Signal Connect division has over 20 years' experience helping owners like you get the satellite service they need. We will help you figure out the best option, find ways to make it affordable, and even recommend an installation professional in your area. We'll do everything we can to make it easy for you to attract and keep your tenants. We know there's a lot of stuff in this world is hard. We want to make this decision easy.

Call the experts at 888-233-7563 during East Coast business hours. If it's after hours, fill out the form below. We'll get right back to you!


The post This tip will keep your RV park from losing tenants appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.

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Scott Greczkowski
Staff member HERE TO HELP YOU! Cutting Edge
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
Sometimes a thread gets so many posts in it that is can cause issues for the server so that why today we introduce The Song Name Game Part 3!

So let the game continue!

The last song was added by Bobby who posted...

One Meat Ball - Andrews Sisters

CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!

Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game

Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.

Example:

Long Live Rock and Roll -- Rainbow

Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio

Another example:

Ride the Lightning -- Metallica

Lightning Strikes -- Ozzy Osbourne


Get it?


An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....
68658 Replies · 2680179 views
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dishstaller
I Wanna Talk About Me - Toby Keith
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Bobby
98.6 - Keith
harshness
I'm Easy - Keith Carridine
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gms49ers
It's Easy - Boston
RaiderPower
Take It Easy On Me - Little River Band
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R
Last reply · posted in Computers and Gadgets
Lately my eight year old Dell laptop has been shutting off even when I have a full battery. I have had to keep it plugged up all the time to keep this from happening. Any idea what is causing this? I replaced the battery about three years ago.
2 Replies · 43 views
arlo
A recalibration might be needed. Even if it shows full, the individual cells may have become unbalaced. And the BMS chip in the battery reports false information to the pc.
Try this. Start it up in the bios/uefi and leave it there until the battery dies and it shuts off.
It might just keep running longer than in Windows. Or run for a short while and shut off.
If it's the first case. Probably just needs a balancing. If the latter, the pack might just be dead.
Not throwing stones but perhaps just a cheaply constructed battery with substandard cells. Could be.

Patience. Keep restarting it in bios/uefi until it won't fire up anymore.
Then plug the charger in and let it complete a full charge. And see what happens. If it's better.
Do the same thing one more time. Run it until it dies dead-dead. Then just let it charge, pc shut off.
When charged, it might be better. It might not be.

There are bench jigs that read the actual BMS and override it to let a tech manually monitor and charge the separate packs. They can also reset any "time bombs" in it that cause an otherwise good pack to show bad.
Maybe Santa will be good to me some year.

You might just need a new battery. Maybe the PC power management chip is going. A Dell common thing.
Leaving a laptop plugged in with a full battery is known to reduce the life. Asus for one recommends that you don't leave the charger plugged in all of the time even when shut down. And setting Windows to charge the battery to 85% instead of 100% increases life.
That's all I got.
dishstaller
That's all I got.
That was quite enough....I definitely learned something from your post. Thanks
TRG
TRG
Pub Member / Supporter
Last reply · posted in Computers and Gadgets
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
5 Replies · 282 views
b4pjoe
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
If you can't get into the router to reserve an IP address just don't use DHCP on the device that needs connected and assign it to a specific IP address in the network settings.
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HipKat
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
They are not. Your best bet is to set up a third-party router, attached to the Starlink for your server, that you can get into, like a Linksys, etc
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Foxbat
…it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
The Starlink V5 Install Kit I just got comes with the Mini Router. It is pretty limited in what it can do. For example, it can provide only one IP subnet at a time, no Guest Network, but it does support the pass-thru to a third-party Router. You can also split the Wi-Fi into separate 5 GHz & 2.4 GHz SSIDs to help some IoT devices that don't support 5 GHz bands to work.

The larger Starlink Router that still comes with the V4 Kit does support a Guest Network with separate IPv4 Subnet, but it's $120 from Starlink. And it still won't do DHCP Reservations.
harshness
If you can restrict the DHCP address space to assign addresses to one end of the subnet (i.e. x.x.x.50+), you can manually assign the IP address on pretty much any operating system. This is a default behavior on several popular routers. As the Router Mini only supports 235 devices, I expect that's already done.

Another option is to use a router that supports PoE to power the antenna. This article discusses that option (under PoE Power heading):

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Foxbat
Now that I've had the v5 kit with the Mini Router, it's not as bad as I first thought. Yes, no DHCP reservations, but you can set up multiple SSIDs that have separate IPv4 subnets, and like the big brother, you can select from 192.168.x.0/24 or 10.x.0.0/16 (where "x" is 1-4).

You can also split a subnet and have different SSIDs for the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz channels to handle some IoT devices. I haven't discovered what subnet the 2nd NIC on the router assigns, I'm guessing it's the first subnet.
dishstaller
Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
2 Replies · 50 views
dishstaller
Sorry for posting the wrong link. Just corrected it.
dishstaller
Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

2 Replies · 53 views
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Jimbo
Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

They will have to look at the switching sections to determine WHY 2 trains were on the same track ... at the same time.
dishstaller
Thought this article might be of interest to some of you who might travel via train.