Tailgater First Impression

[Lord_Vader]

I wonder if people in apartments could set this up in the window to get around all of the dish arguments.

 

[Scherrman]

I'm sure you could set in on a balcony of an apartment if you had line of site.

Islandguy, it will only work with Dish and their 211k receiver. You could use it at home and you could do a Flex account which is month-to-month.

 

[Foxbat]

Is the Flex account available only with the 211k? I'd be willing to get something like this for our vacation home. We're there for only a week or so, but paying for a month would be better than paying for a year of service.

 

[Claude Greiner]

Is the Flex account available only with the 211k? I'd be willing to get something like this for our vacation home. We're there for only a week or so, but paying for a month would be better than paying for a year of service.

Yes. Just no discounts on service or equipment

 

[rhalllhall]

I ordered mine from Claude a couple weeks ago & used it at the cabin last weekend & tailgating at the MIZZOU game today & it is AWESOME! It just needs to be fairly level & somewhat pointed south & in 10 minutes your watching tv. It was the highlight of todays tailgate & so easy!!!!

 

[RAllen]

Does the Tailgater need a power source? 120volt or 12volt to operate? I mainly want one for the camper so I can pick up the Big 10 network, and then maybe put it on the patio when not camping and run one cord into the house and watch the same.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Power is supplied by the satellite receiver over the coax cable. No extra power is needed.

 

[gdarwin]

They will need 120 to power the 211...

 

[Scherrman]

This is all I needed to bring Saturday for the Iowa game. Had everything set up and running in under 15 minutes. It was great sitting under the tent watching college gameday while it was raining. Sorry the pic is sideways.

 

[Derwin0]

Tempted to get one for my travel trailer. A few questions though:

- Is it only for the Western Arc? My locals are on 77, so would prefer Eastern Arc.
- Once mounted on a level surface, is any manual adjusting needed (ie pointing)? I'd like to just permanently mount in on top of the camper.
- Will it only support one receiver? Would prefer to support 2 (or have a dual tuner), that way I can have 2 tv's running.

thanks

 

[Scherrman]

It will only work with one 211k receiver. You could mount it to your RV and it the RV is parked in a somewhat level area it should still work just fine. Once you get to a new location and power everything up it should search for the satellites in your area. You'll have to tell it what state you're in of course. I believe it is western arc only and that is why it does it won't work in the Northeast.

 

[pabeader]

plus the antenna inside is small, like 8" so you have to be right in the spotbeam to get locals and stuff like that.

 

[chicobiker]

Gdarwin, Question was does the Tailgater need a power source which Scott answered correctly.

 

[Bobby]

They will need 120 to power the 211...

Not to mention the TV...

 

[Indy]

Not sure if anyone else has see this video of the tailgater in action. Check it out and you will see how easy this thing is to setup. I want one!
Dish Network Tailgater - First Look Dish Network Tailgater - Esquire

 

[donarumma]

Hello Everyone,

I wish I could say the same wonderful things about the TAILGATER as most of you have done above.
My experience with it has been nothing but a NIGHTMARE.
Since I work out of my RV and I am always on the go, I decided that trying this TAILGATER would be a great time saver when rigging up my RV at every new location.
The problem is that everyday, I have a message "COMPLETE SIGNAL LOSS". I unplug the receiver, go out there and move the dish to a new location (As per DISHNETWORK experts advice).
It takes over an hour to do the 3 of 3 check switch test, and once its done I only have a few channels.
If I dare to change the channel, my NIGHTMARE resumes (LOSS OF SIGNAL, CALL 1800-333..., SPEAK WITH DISH NET HELP PEOPLE, NOTHING IS EVER FIXED).
I HAVE CALLED DISHNET EVERYDAY FOR THE PAST WEEK !!! THEY DECIDED TO PUT ME ON THE LINE WITH "king controls" WHO ARE THE MANUFACTURER OF THE TAILGATER (NOT MUCH HELP).
I assume I must have bought a bad system and will return for a complete refund and go back to pointing it by hand as I always done in the past.
I am also considering changing my service to DIRECT TV, since DISHNET could careless about my issues saying that they do no "manufacture" it , so they wont stand behind it.
Do not waste your time and money. Wait for them to fix all the bugs and maybe re-consider it.
As for now, I will wish I had TV to watch until the end of this job, which is not for another 3 weeks.

WHAT A NIGHTMARE... =-(

 

[Scherrman]

I'm not so sure there are any bugs yet. We have sold 6 of them and I have on myself. Everyone loves them so far. I have not noticed any bugs and I have not read any reports online or from other retailers. It's hard to say what the problem is with you system, receiver or Tailgater? Taking an hour to go through the checks is rediculous, the entire set-up should only take less than 20 minutes. I can understand why you would be upset though, I hate when new things I buy do not work. Did you get a technician to look at it at all yet?

 

[richheck]

The unit is great if you are happy without your HD Locals. I purchased a Tailgater and a VIP211K directly from Dish early last month and have been in constant contact with both Dish and King Controls with my problem of receiving my Locals in HD. After a month of trying to get this to work I have instructed Dish to take the tailgater back for a refund. I presently own a VuQube 1000 that is able to receive my locals in HD, being the VQ1000 and the Tailgater are both manufactured by King Controls and share the same exterior packaging and inside dish, you would think both would work close to the same. The Tailgater is controlled by the VIP211K with computer programing and it is self aiming while the VQ1000 is manually aimed. My sig strength with the Tailgater was between 23 and 28 while the sig strength with the VQ1000 is between 48 and 53, go figure how I can manually aim this dish almost twice as accurate as the self aimed unit. While working with King Controls on this issue, after following their instructions on the phone removing the outside cover and changing wires inside, they sent me a replacement hoping to eliminate my issues, well the new unit does the same thing leading us to believe it is a programming issue with Dish.

 

[kennelhelp]

We used our Tailgater for a five day trip dog-show camping over the past weekend and were totally pleased with the results. At one location where we camp every year I was doubtful that we would have any service because of large trees but the Tailgater performed fine. Previously we were using a single LNB manual dish mounted on the RV which required far too frequent pointing when changing channels from one satellite to another. The Tailgater worked exactly as I expected, changing channels on all three WA satellites about as fast as my home setup. As to the previous comment about HD locals... we were right at the edge of the spot beam for our HD locals, an 8 hour drive away, and had no problems receiving all our HD locals.

 

[Coop1979]

I just wanted to jump in and throw in my $0.02 on how AWESOME the Tailgater is. We have been fighting with a 1000.4 satellite for 2 years at our tailgate in Columbia, SC and finally gave up trying to point it each week after having no luck last weekend. This past Monday we ordered the Tailgater from Claude and it arrived in 2 days.

Setup was amazingly easy - we took it out before the SC game Saturday morning to watch College Gameday and then brought it back out after the game to watch the 3:30 games. We would have never dared try to setup the Eastern Arc dish 2x in one day. We were watching football within 5 minutes each time we pulled it out. Amazing.