Advice on satellites, please

Hi,

Last time I checked the spot beams intended for the UK are indeed highly directional, and need a massive reflector dish to pick up from this far, like you say.
You might have better luck getting your programs on the internet, there was even a discussion about some options in this forum.

Welcome to Expat.com, Ria

I hope some of the active members of the forum will come forward with some useful information permitting you to see your preferre channels!

Cheers
Arlette

FeeAcer wrote:

Welcome to Expat.com, Ria I hope some of the active members of the forum will come forward with some useful information permitting you to see your preferre channels! Cheers Arlette

You can use streaming devices to install back home on your own satellite then use good upload broadband to stream to yourselves.

I do this as a business and have a lot of English TV including getting all live 380 EPL games as well as a host of other sports and football. My wife is in Hungary now and can connect fine there.

I have one system for myself on Sky in the UK and stream to where I live in Taiwan.  I cannot offer SKY UK but can offer pretty good English TV content.

contact my skype blackcrusader or msn [email protected]

riahun wrote:

Hello

We have just moved to Hungary and having a hard time trying to watch British TV. We bought a freesat box and a used sky box prior to us leaving and a 1 metre dish.

We have no trouble finding eurobird and astra 2a but we were told we would need a massive dish (about 3 metre) to watch itv and bbc. Has anyone got a large dish that works? We could buy a 2.4 m prime focus dish but we are not sure if it would do the trick or not.

Browsing the internet, astra 2b should have itv1 on it and our dish is more than enough for it but we still can't get it. 2a and 2b are in the same direction?

Any idea at all? Or any other suggestions?

Thanks a lot for reading and trying to help.


Ria

I've been doing the same kind of thing for almost 20 years in this region. I was here when Sky was all analogue. In Austria, you can get quite a few Sky channels on the Astra satellite with just an 80cm dish but BBC/ITV is difficult - the Astra 2D channels are hard to come by this far East. You are West of us here in Budapest but the even so the signal is quite bad without a large dish (and a place to put it). My own research is that Astra 2D is possible on a 1.2m dish around Linz, Austria.

I've tried quite a few dishes in the past with variable results. I've presently got a 1.2m, 1 x 60 cm, 1 x 80cm and a prime focus 2.4m dish. This one is still in a box as it's performance is considered no better than some smaller quality dishes. For my own viewing I've found the recent quality of programmes on the main UK channels to be very poor or full of repeats so the kids are the only ones watching British TV on Sky (Nickelodeon etc).

The setup (especially the skew) on Sky TV is incredibly fiddly to get right. The signal in the UK is mega strong and it's hard to get wrong. However, over here, it's difficult with cheap meters (sold for example, by Maplin).

Of course if you are watching Sky over here, you shouldn't let on to Sky what is going on. I once heard there were 500,000 "illegal" Sky watchers in Europe, mainly in Spain. As Sky has 10 million UK subscribers, you can imagine with that kind of revenue, even if effectively from overseas, they are not exactly chasing the 0.5 million to close them down.

What I do now is watch my TV over the Internet. This is incredibly easy to do. I use a low cost commercial VPN (Virtual Private Network - mine costs £6 a month - I'm not advertising them nor am I connected with the company) to fool the nazi geographical IP address checks into believing I am in the UK or the USA. I can easily watch BBC1, BBC2 and some other channels and programmes using the on demand service. I've actually got a dedicated "media PC" for my TV watching - I just connect it up to my big flat telly using an HDMI cable. The speed of my Internet connection is not that high, 5 Mb/s download but this is easily enough to watch 4OD etc in a reasonable degree of comfort. For some programmes, it looks like downloads - while obviously illegal - are the only alternative.

The Freesat box will be of no real use here in Hungary. Most people are on cable. Freeview boxes work in Austria I'm told and they even support dual language sound. However, I think here most people get their digital TV over cable or UPC satellite (don't bother - there's nothing in English except the dire CNN). So no Freeview to speak of.

If you want to chat about it further, send me a PM (Personal Message). I will tell you all that I know.

fluffy2560 wrote:

For some programmes, it looks like downloads - while obviously illegal - are the only alternative.

Actually, due to some freak loophole in Hungarian copyright law, downloading unlicensed copyrighted material is not illegal.
(Distributing unlicensed material is.)

And who exactly are you hurting by not installing a phased array of dishes the size of a football field in your back yard anyway?

But that's just the anarchist in me talking, don't listen to him :-)

Ok then as you are awear of the two Astra and Hotbird
I have not sure weather on the mounting plate you must set out the folling
1/ The Dish on a true LINE NORTH use a cuompase to do this avoied any think in its way
2/ you have the antenna height is set using the scale on the mounting plate To set the Highth =Astra 35.4 =Hotbird 35.1
if you have this ajustment then once set move dish to the East
this should inprove as moving if all dails I have set of seting up a Sat Dish hear in district 2 I am hear till the 30th before returning to uk, pleas I not good at speling
regads stu goff

If you want to calculate the important angles, then here's some guidance...

Go to www.satlex.de and plug in your numbers. I entered the following data for a 2.4m dish in Budapest.

http://www.satlex.de/en/azel_calc-param … diam_h=240

OR

You can also download this Swedish one (it's the one I used). http://www.smw.se/SMWLink.htm

AND

You can also find a lot of expat info on satellite here (including reception reports):

www.astra2d.com

Hello again

Thank you all for the help, very much appreciated. I managed to find an alternative that's working for me well so far.

It's nice to know so many people went out of their way to help us.

Thanks a million,


Ria

Hi there....I have just read that you are having problems with English tv, apparently you cannot get it via satellite dish.  All you have to do is go to Film.com and select uk tv and its free.

Have uh watching tv, I hope that I have been able to help

Hello Vicky1972 -> Just to note that this thread is dated 2010.

Thank you,
Aurélie

It's filmon and not film com .....sorry

Vicky1972 wrote:

It's filmon and not film com .....sorry

"Filmon" used to work but they withdrew the BBC etc so it made it useless. Are you saying (Vicky1972) that it's back again on Filmon?

Hi there.....filmon is back on....all the programmes that you could wish for ). Hope I've been of some help

Looking for a satellite option for watching BBC1 BBC2 BC4 ITV while we plan to spend the coming winter in Budapest.

Any help would be appreciated.

T

EvaMargaret wrote:

Looking for a satellite option for watching BBC1 BBC2 BC4 ITV while we plan to spend the coming winter in Budapest.

Any help would be appreciated.

T

This topic has been covered a few times in these forums. You can search for it.  Satellite is out of range unless you have very good equipment and a very large dish. Use the Internet via a VPN. It's not HD but it works.