TV Reception at Sea

[mousebrat]

Not that we plan on watching much TV, but the in-laws are going along and wonder how the signal is while you are at sea for channels received via satellite (ABC, CNN, etc.). They went on an Alaskan cruise and said the only time they could watch TV was while they were in port unless they wanted to watch reruns of the on-board stuff.

 

[jlowejd5]

The tv reception in the staterooms is pretty good. I don't really remember there being any instances of poor reception. The satellite relay stuff up on deck is about the size of a barn, so I would think they get pretty uninterrupted service.

 

[DISJen]

You don't really get regular TV other than a CNN-type channel. Most of the channels are all Disney theme channels, you do get several channels of Disney movies that play continuously. I don't remember watching any "regular" tv otherwise.

 

[crzy4magic]

When we have been on the Eastern 7 Day cruise some of the channels - i.e. ESPN get switched to the Latin American (Spanish) when the ship is south of Puerto Rico/St Thomas. Something about getting out of range of the US oriented satellites.

 

[BethC1952]

When we went on our first cruise (May, 2001) the TV must have had a timer and it was set to turn on at 7 AM. I woke to the sound of a newscaster from the ABC station in New York talking about the local weather. I figured I was dreaming and rolled back over. A few minutes later, DH also woke up, but this time he woke me up. He said "I think I just heard Charlie Gibson say that there was a tornado in..." and he mentioned a town very near to ours. This time, we both sat up, and sure enough, we were watching ABC out of New York, even though I knew that we were pulling into port in Nassau. I guess because Disney is the parent company of ABC it's available on board. BTW, it's the only time I've ever made a ship-to-shore phone call. I had to make sure that everything was OK at home, because there really HAD been a small tornado nearby!

Now when we cruise (usually in December) we love to watch that Channel 7 news in the morning to see the weather at home. It's great to watch people shoveling snow while I decide whether I want to wear shorts or a sundress to breakfast!

Beth