GL: sat TV Feeds

[Randy Pickelmann]

There has been quite a bit of chatter in the past about getting DirecTV
national feeds.  The long and short of it is that it is against FCC regs to
broadcast the national feeds to boats...only long distance truckers and
RV's...theirs is a better lobby than ours.  However, we still used DirecTV
successfully while cruising for the past several years.

We subscribe to the local programming for the Tampa Bay market, our home area.
This costs an additional $5/mo. and has served us up and down the west coast
of Florida, through the Keys and up the east coast as far as about St.
Augustine.  When we went to the Chesapeake in '06 we contacted DirecTV as we
changed locations and they changed our home area.  All we had to do was give
them the address of the marina we were at.  In fact, when we got to Norfolk,
we gave them the address of the marina in Solomon's we were going to be at for
the summer.  This gave us the Washington DC local programming.  Summer of '07
we went up the Hudson River and out the Erie Canal.  When we got to NJ we lost
our DC programming so we called DirecTV and switched to the NYC local
programming.  As we traveled south we never did run out of the NY local
programming.  Turns out that the NY programming IS the national feed.  Your
problem is solved.  Although we enjoyed the NY programming, we personally find
that we prefer getting a more local view so we change programming as we move
from one place to the next.

There is a misconception floating around.  DirecTV does NOT care that you are
on a boat.  In fact, we tell their Customer Service rep that we have moved our
boat from A to B and need to change our service address, NOT our billing
address.  They have been extremely helpful, never taking more than about 5
minutes to make it happen.  We have heard of people hatching grand schemes,
photocopying RV or motorhome registrations or taking a boat trailer
registration and altering it to look like it is for an RV.  Why?  Tell em what
you are up to and they will accommodate to the best of their ability.  After
all, at the end of the day all DirecTV cares about is two things.  One, that
they stay out of trouble with the FCC and two, that you pay your bill!

Regards,
Randy Pickelmann
MORNING STAR
lying in Clearwater, FL
www.morningstar.talkspot.com