totally new

TraciAnn · Jun 30, 2014

Hello,

My fiancee and I have talked for the past few years about getting an RV and living in it. Well on Saturday we bought our 1st RV. My Grandparents lived in an RV 3/4 of a year, and came home for winter. My father has an RV, my Mother and Step Father have RV's so I have *some* experience with using one, but this one is ours! I am SO excited. We have 8-10 years to retirement, and then we can be off, but for now, we have weekends and vacations and we get to try this out before we take off.

I think I will have a ton of questions. I know our 1st project is to research satellite dishes or internet options for when we are out. We don't need cable TV service, but we use the internet a ton, and watch netflix as TV. What do you use?

Thanks for letting me read all your posts and learn new things!

Traci-Ann

PastTense · Jun 30, 2014

Welcome!

There have been several discussion thread about internet access, etc; browse this forum:
https://vanlivingforum.com/Forum-Communication-Cell-Internet-Mail-Delivery

Unfortunately Netflix uses a lot a data and there are few options for heavy data use which are reasonably priced.

Vic. · Jun 30, 2014

I ripped/obtained a ton of movies, TV shows, etc. and keep them on a 2TB external hard drive.

(This is after I learned the costly lesson about streaming netflix on a data plan).

VJG1977 · Jun 30, 2014

I have not posted lately but I have been reading every post. I’m still 2 years away from retiring. Since you are in a RV, a roof mounted digital TV antenna will bring in all of the major network stations from most locations. A couple CD wallets holding 100 discs each will fit in a shoebox. I pick up movies and seasons of TV shows from Good Will stores for $2 or $4 each. My current library has 1600 movies and over 4000 TV episodes on disc. I’ve been collecting for a while. Throw away the box the movie comes in and put the disc in a paper sleeve.

WheelEstate USA · Jun 30, 2014

Millenicom has a 20G broadband plan for 90 bucks a month. They use Verizon towers and seem to be the best if you plan to use it a lot.
Quite a few here use it.

PastTense · Jun 30, 2014

To see how much data Netflix would use visit this site:
http://www.gci.com/kb/netflix-movie-and-data-usage

As you can see: Users can choose from three quality settings by visiting the “Your Account” page on Netflix’s website and looking for the “Manage Video Quality” link. “Good quality” consumes up to 0.3 GB per hour, “Better quality” burns up to 0.7 GB per hour, and “Best quality” consumes up to 1 GB per hour for standard definition or 2.3 GB per hour for HD.

So your lowest quality setting of .3 GB/hour would only provide 66 hours of usage (2 hours per day) if you get the just mentioned 20 GB plan--while if you wanted HD you could only get 9 hours of Netflix.

Some of us can't stand the advertising on the commercial networks.