Forget Sky, try this

ngc451

If you have clear(ish) line of sight to the south and a space to site it, consider a 90cm or above motorised satellite dish. Note, the dishes don't swing around, they swivel through a small arc. No need for your garden to look like Goonhilly Down. For footy fans tune to Hotbird and search out Germany's WDR. Has a lot of matches in the clear. With a dish that size or above you can tune to other satellites and pick up a lot of stuff in the clear. There's 6 or more Satellites carrying hundreds of channels. Do your research as English speaking channels are rare but the audio sub carriers may have an English stream. Plenty of English language channels for News fans. Remember when you could get all the foreign (mainly Gerrman) channels on the larger sky dishes back in the day? It's just like that but with way more variety. Doesn't cost an arm and leg. If you're tech savvy, can use a spanner and can follow simple alignment instructions, you could install yourself. Most of the kit needed can be found on Gumtree or similar. Sky are now pricing themselves into obscurity so it could be good bet for some.

scotsbob

ngc451 wrote: »

Do your research as English speaking channels are rare but the audio sub carriers may have an English stream.

My experience is that nearly all the films shown have the option of an English soundtrack.


There are also a lot more free to view channels in HD than on UK television.

Pincher

The Germans point their dishes to Astra 19.2°East, which has a complete set of German channels.


Hotbird 13.0°East has the best variety of channels.


It's a very popular combination, so much so that there is a Monobloc configuration twin LNB to make it easy to put up one dish for both. E.g.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Technomate-0-2db-TM-1M-Single-Monoblock/dp/B003M8VF7Y


They relaxed planning permission a little bit. You can have a dish up to 1 meter in size, provided it's below the roof line. Not in conservation areas, and definitely not on listed buildings.


Motorised? It takes several seconds from one position to the next. Drives you crazy channel hopping.

C_Mababejive

I currently have a static small sky dish pointing at 28.2E and picking up the active Astra sats plus Eutelsat 28a. The receiver is a Blade media 5000s. Im not a big tv viewer but i have terrestrial freeview issues at some times of the year with one multiplex chopping due to high trees downrange. Its difficult to overcome.

I pay nothing for any subscription channels.

I had considered motorising the sky minidish but i am not sure of results or possibly upsizing to a circular dish..but im not sure its worth the bother due to many channels now being encrypted..

Pincher

C_Mababejive wrote: »

I had considered motorising the sky minidish but i am not sure of results or possibly upsizing to a circular dish..but im not sure its worth the bother due to many channels now being encrypted..

The 43cm Sky Mini-dish only works because Sky satellites focus enough signal strength our way. A dedicated 19.2°East set up uses a 60cm dish, but you need at least 70cm for Hotbird.


The DiSEqC 1.2 motor is not expensive:


http://www.pulsat.com/products/Moteck-SG2100A-DiSEqC-Motor.html


This is really funky, if you must have more than three feeds (28.2E. 19.2E and 13E) :


http://www.pulsat.com/products/Wave-Frontier-55CM-Toroidal-Dish.html


http://www.pulsat.com/products/Wave-Frontier-90CM-Toroidal-Dish.html