Satelitte abroad

[acbruce]

I'm keen to equip myself with a satellite system ready for our trip to northern Italy this August. I've read up about needing a dish and receiver for touring in the UK, but wonder just what spec of equipment I'll need for Europe especially northern Italy and also what channels I could receive. The Maxview system at around £300 is what our local caravan dealer is suggesting. Grateful, as ever, for advice.

 

[Woody3]

For most of France, Benelux, and northern Spain a 60cm or 80cm dish will do the job if you want to get UK stations. With this you will need a Sky box with Freesat viewing card, or a Freesat (as in Freeview-ish) box in its own right, a LNB and tripod for the dish, a compass and a satfinder plus cable and connectors.

You will notice I did not mention Italy. If you look at http://www.digitalsat.co.uk/astra2dfootprint.html

you will see that to be successful in Italy you will need at least a 1m or 1.3m dish, and that is getting both unmanageable and will be very difficult to align as it's beam is so narrow.

If you are prepared to view nothing but BBC World TV and CNN (the world accoring to America)and maybe a few others in English and bucket loads of non-English stations then a 60cm dish will work wonders over most of Europe. Have a look at http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-Kingdom.html

and look for stations you recognise on Eurobird, Hotbird, or Astra 2A South. Astra is at 28,2E and Eurobird is at 28.5E but you would need to move your dish as the inclination is different even if the azimuth for both may be near enough for a common dish position. Hotbird is at 13E.

www.satelliteforcaravans.co.uk and www.satcure.co.uk will give you a wealth of info.

Finally, make your mind up what you want and then consider buying it in one of the French DIY sheds (such as Leroy-Merlin or Bricoman) where you will find much better prices and range of kit than over here.

 

[acbruce]

Thanks very much for taking the time to advise me, much appreciated- loads to think about

 

[acbruce]

I've just read that as an existing sky subscriber that I would be able to view abroad the sky channels to which I subscribe if I bought a sky receiver. a) is this right and b) how would I set this up?

 

[NickinFrance]

Alistar,

Your subscription card is locked to your receiver, so you would need to take your home receiver & card with you, rather than buying another.

Setting up is as described above for Astra 2A

 

[Woody3]

Not quite.

The card is only locked to a standard Sky box (i.e. not applicable to Sky+ or Sky HD+) if you have premium channels, viz sports or movies. If you just have the standard package - Discovery, UK Gold, et al, then the card should work in any Sky box.

 

[NickinFrance]

I've got a standard Pace Sky receiver & the basic (

 

[nelmo]

I've bought a Maplins all-in-one kit for

 

[Reg]

Hi Nick

I swap my

 

[Reg]

Neil I've use my 40cm dish in Northern Spain.

Smaller the dish - easier to set up.

Bigger the dish - harder to set up (alignment that is!!)