Is there any way to take recorded shows with us when we go camping?

Ktuck said:

We enjoy watching movies in our camper but don't want to add a satellite dish. If we have Directv service in our house, is there any way to bring our Directv recorded programs with us when we go away for the weekend?

We have gone without Directv this year but are getting ready to sign up again. Ideally, I would like to just be able to grab the receiver/recorder and bring it along with us on camping weekends, however it's my understanding that we would just get the "Acquiring Satellite" screen and not be able to get at the playback menu.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

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A UPS is the only way I can think of. And you will have to insure the UPS never loses power long enough to kill the battery.

Maybe power the UPS with a car lighter DC to AC converter during the trip.

armophob said:

A UPS is the only way I can think of....

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Thanks for the reply but power is not the problem (we have solar charged batteries and an inverter). I'm thinking that the challenge will be to get the receiver/DVR to do anything when it's disconnected from the satellite dish.

Or are you saying that if we can keep it powered up, it won't care whether it's disconnected or not?

It sounded like such a simple idea at first, just record a bunch of shows while at home and then take the receiver/DVR camping with us and watch the shows whenever and wherever we wanted.

Just to cover another base, there's the nomad, but it's $150, and you have to load it with shows from your DVR before you leave. On the other hand it works in a backpack, not just car camping, and runs on an iPad or laptop, low power.

Ktuck said:

Or are you saying that if we can keep it powered up, it won't care whether it's disconnected or not?

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Right. If you keep it powered up, it will not go through the searching for signal power up process. Now when you not watching a recorded program, it of course have the 771 error bubble popping up.

The minute it loses power, you are done until it gets hooked back up to a dish. But it does not need to be your own. In a crunch you could barter your way into firing it back up.

armophob said:

Right. If you keep it powered up, it will not go through the searching for signal power up process. Now when you not watching a recorded program, it of course have the 771 error bubble popping up.

The minute it loses power, you are done until it gets hooked back up to a dish. But it does not need to be your own. In a crunch you could barter your way into firing it back up.

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Haha, I like it! There's usually someone else around in a motorhome with a DirecTV dish. Now I understand how the UPS would come in handy. But, in the long run, it might be easier to just bring an old dish with us.

Laxguy said:

Just to cover another base, there's the nomad, but it's $150, and you have to load it with shows from your DVR before you leave. ...

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Thanks, looks like I came to the right place with my question. I had never heard of the Nomad before and every article I found has a bunch of negative comments complaining that it doesn't offer streaming video. But it looks perfect for my use. As I understand it, the Nomad will rip my recorded shows and copy them to my Galaxy SIII phone, where they can be played back by using the Directv app. I just got my Galaxy SIII hdmi output cable in the mail two days ago and it looks like the Nomad will make this work perfectly. Thanks again.

"Ktuck" said:

Haha, I like it! There's usually someone else around in a motorhome with a DirecTV dish. Now I understand how the UPS would come in handy. But, in the long run, it might be easier to just bring an old dish with us.

Thanks, looks like I came to the right place with my question. I had never heard of the Nomad before and every article I found has a bunch of negative comments complaining that it doesn't offer streaming video. But it looks perfect for my use. As I understand it, the Nomad will rip my recorded shows and copy them to my Galaxy SIII phone, where they can be played back by using the Directv app. I just got my Galaxy SIII hdmi output cable in the mail two days ago and it looks like the Nomad will make this work perfectly. Thanks again.

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Correct. The nomad will copy shows from your DVR and put them on a portable device like a laptop or iPhone/iPad. Someone can correct me, but I don't think there is an Android app yet for nomad.

- Merg

I have not tried this recently, but you used to be able to press EXIT, then MENU or LIST and get to your recorded shows without a connection to the dish. Try it at home and see if you can find a workaround to getting to your recordings.

carl6 said:

I have not tried this recently, but you used to be able to press EXIT, then MENU or LIST and get to your recorded shows without a connection to the dish. Try it at home and see if you can find a workaround to getting to your recordings.

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That will work, however, if the receiver tries to check for authorization while the OP is camping, it might disable playback of the recordings until it has a satellite signal again. The authorization time can be anywhere from 24 hours to whenever. I still have an R15 that I can watch recordings on and it has been decactivated for over 2 years.

- Merg

Does the DTV app allow video out? I know some apps will let you watch content on the device (iphone, samsung, motorola, etc) but not pass the video to an external monitor.

I've used nomad's IOS client on an iPad, with the HDMI adapter, on TV's and as long as the TV supported HDCP it worked if that helps.

Yes, at least the last time I tried the Nomad iPhone app does allow video out. I have used it to play recordings from my iPad over HDMI like RAD said. This was a while ago though, so there could have been an update that turned this off, but I haven't heard anyone say that it has happened.

However, the big issue here I think for Ktuck is that there still isn't a Nomad app for Android devices yet as far as I know. So he can't use it with his Galaxy. However, if he has a laptop with video output he could probably use that instead.

Last weekend, I took several movies, sporting events, etc., with me last weekend.

I took a USB external hard drive with over 100 events recorded on it. I played some of these back on a TV using a WD TV box. (~$100) HD connects to it, then it will play to HD TV via HDMI cable.

I recorded these to the external hard drive using Hauppage HD PVR (~$200,) using a component cable.

With this setup, I can be "portable" with what I want to watch, where ever I want to watch (either with a TV with a HDMI connection using the WD TV box, or a computer with USB.) An added bonus is that once I have these recorded to a hard drive, then I can keep them for as long as I want an not be concerned about filling up the DVR.

As a FYI - recordings occupy approximately 2GB per hour of recording at 5 MB encoding rate. In round figures, that is about 250 HD movies on a 1TB drive.

@OP...no you cant...not with the DTV rcvr anyway