How to get TV on your boat, the choices expand

It’s no surprise that I get a lot of questions about the best way to receive and watch TV onboard.  The traditional choices for homes were already more complicated on a boat, especially a cruising boat, and now there’s the added choice of streaming TV over the internet. So in this entry, I’ll detail the options and hopefully you can determine which one best fits your needs and budget.

TV Options

First of all, let’s acknowledge that some people regard their boat as an escape from the rest of the world, TV included. If you’re in that camp this article probably won’t hold much interest. But if you want television for entertainment, sports, and/or news, there are four main choices:

1. Broadcast TV — Just about every production sleep-aboard boat ever made was shipped with a broadcast TV antenna. If it was manufactured before the mid-2000s that antenna is probably tuned for both VHF and UHF. Now that nearly all US over-the-air television transmission takes place on, UHF antennas can be much better tuned for this single band of frequencies.

2. Satellite TV — Either from a fixed mount dish on a piling at your slip or from a tracking, stabilized dish that works underway and allows reception all the time.  In some circumstances, satellite service can be an extension of existing home service so the boater only pays for an additional TV.

3. Cable TV — A cable TV drop is delivered to your slip, possibly by your marina or via direct subscription with a cable company. When the boat is in the slip, you connect the boat to the cable; when you’re away from the slip you don’t get any programming.

4. Streaming services — Sometimes known as cord cutting options this covers a wide range of entertainment services streamed to you via the internet.  These can be perfect for on the boat but require a robust internet connection.

Currently, there are so many options for how to receive TV on your boat that trying to evaluate all of them could make your head spin.  So it makes sense to look at how you use your boat, how much TV you watch and how important it is to have TV on the boat (otherwise known as how much you’re willing to spend).

TV is a pretty regional thing, even the satellite services serve a single country (though frequently with pretty wide borders around the country). Stabilized dishes capable of multiple providers and satellite networks to offer global coverage are available, but they come at a very large price tag and tgheir physical size dictates they’re only appropriate on quite large vessels.  So, if you’re planning to cross oceans on something under 80 feet it’s likely the best bet for you is going to be several well-stocked hard drives with previously downloaded content.

If you’re going to spend all of your time in a single country but on the move the very best experience is likely to come from a satellite TV provider like DirecTV or Dish Network and an in-motion stabilized satellite dish.  An over the air (OTA) antenna works well for those who primarily keep their boat in a single city, or are willing to forgo TV until they get near another city.  Streaming options work well regardless of your location but require robust internet connectivity.

Let’s go through the options, their plusses and minuses.