I'm asking my Canadian friends the best way to get satellite reception when travelling in the lower 48. We've heard about issues with Bell not being available once you get past a 100 miles from the border and Shaw is silent/vague on reception. Shaw uses the Winegard Trav'lr dish for RV applications but I guess the portable units might work as well. I'm looking for options right now as we've never had satellite when travelling so any advice would be welcome.

We use Shaw at home, so we put Winegard Travl'r for Shaw up on the roof. At present Shaw uses 3 satellites G1 is the most recent, which they can manage the footprint to just across the border (we have picked it up as much as 300 miles south of the border). They also use F1R and F2.

The Winegard Dish is pre-programmed to pick up G1 at 107.3 & F2 at 111. We are currently in SoCal and cannot pick up G1, but get a good signal from F2. It does limit much of the HD programming and I cannot get Sportsnet World, so I miss some of the UK football.

The Winegard system cannot pick up the F1R satellite, even when used in manual mode. Since we only get 1 satellite, we are unable to use our PVR receiver, so if going with Shaw, make sure you have a basic receiver. Another benefit is you simply bring the home receivers with you at no extra cost. The downside is we keep our receivers on West Coast time, so heading East the times are not consistent.

Going forward, Shaw will replace the older F1R & F2 satellites, which will prevent us from receiving a signal, but I am not aware of their time frame.

I also have shaw and my experience is a little different from Andy. I get both of the two older sats (the Winegard box shows both 111 and 107) so I'm only missing the new third sat. If I tune a channel that's on the third sat I get a message similar to what you get in bad weather. Most of the programs we want are also on the other old sats, and there is still some HD programming on those sats. Like Andy, we are in southern California.

Shaw says they won't support you if you are in the US, but there are ways around that. My VOIP phone gives my Canadian number and the Shaw website allows me to refresh my receivers. I find Shaw to be helpful, and if I got into a problem they would help.

I don't know how the "tailgaters" would work.

On edit, before I installed the Winegard I talked to a teckkie who did installs and trained at Winegard, he indicated that the Shaw set up could not be retrofitted to an American system if Shaw goes dark in the US, something to consider.

I also contacted the CRTC to find out if it was them who are causing Shaw and Bell to range their sats to prevent Canadians from using dishes in the US, They indicated no, it;s not the CRTC. It's the American networks who don't like the rebroadcast of their programs with Canadian commercials.

I'm comfortable that the two older Shaw sats will be up in the sky for a while yet!