Sky in Spain (again)

[old-mo]

I have looked through most threads but cannot see one with this question ie...

Have any Funsters toured Southern Spain and taken their Sky box and Card from home (UK) and picked up a few uk channels? And if so What size dish and any info on LNB used will be much appreciated.

Not expecting to pick up the full package like we do at home, but would just like a few UK channels to while away the evenings.

And can other Satelittes be picked up with English spoken from our Sky Box? In Southern Spain.

We have toured Northern France and Belgium and with a 42cm mesh dish & tripod and Sky box & card picked up sky, (Just) after a lot of aligning and fiddling.

Thanks.

 

[Pikey Pete]

I have looked through most threads but cannot see one with this question ie...

Have any Funsters toured Southern Spain and taken their Sky box and Card from home (UK) and picked up a few uk channels? And if so What size dish and any info on LNB used will be much appreciated.

Not expecting to pick up the full package like we do at home, but would just like a few UK channels to while away the evenings.

And can other Satelittes be picked up with English spoken from our Sky Box? In Southern Spain.

We have toured Northern France and Belgium and with a 42cm mesh dish & tripod and Sky box & card picked up sky, (Just) after a lot of aligning and fiddling.

Thanks.

It does depend on dish size and the biggest roof mounted dish (to the best of my knowledge is 85cm)
I have my Sky box and I can get some channels on my 85cm dish in Southern Spain.
I have a subscription card with Sky Sports 1,2,3 and as it's an HD box I can also get Channel 4 HD.
To get all BBC, ITV and C4 channels you need a 150cm dish.
Your Sky box is not designed to decode signals from Satellites other than those transmitted by SKY.
The experts will be along shortly I'm sure, to offer advice on multi satellite boxes.

Pete:Cool:

 

[keith]

I have looked through most threads but cannot see one with this question ie...

Have any Funsters toured Southern Spain and taken their Sky box and Card from home (UK) and picked up a few uk channels? And if so What size dish and any info on LNB used will be much appreciated.

Not expecting to pick up the full package like we do at home, but would just like a few UK channels to while away the evenings.

And can other Satelittes be picked up with English spoken from our Sky Box? In Southern Spain.

We have toured Northern France and Belgium and with a 42cm mesh dish & tripod and Sky box & card picked up sky, (Just) after a lot of aligning and fiddling.

Thanks.

Recently a long discussion was had on this thread. Check on this first then see if it answers your question, & remember www.satelliteforcaravans.co.uk will probably have most things that you need to know.

 

[LyndonRV]

hi i have a omnisat automatic if you go father south like benidorm alicante you change the settings on the freqencey of the lmb you go to system set up on4 then no 4 then change the frequance then you will pick up some chanels sorry but i have forgoten the freqencey numbers

 

[keith]

hi i have a omnisat automatic if you go father south like benidorm alicante you change the settings on the freqencey of the lmb you go to system set up on4 then no 4 then change the frequance then you will pick up some chanels sorry but i have forgoten the freqencey numbers

All on www.satlliteforcaravans.co.uk. Another useful site is Satellite Finder / Dish Pointing Calculator with Google Maps | DishPointer.com which tells you where to point the dish.

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[Satandpcguy]

on an 80cm dish you will get most of the eurobird 1 and astra 2 south beam channels (approx 50-60% of the sky pack). for example you can easily get sky sprots 1,2,3 but xtra and news are on the north beam so you may not get these...similarly, alot of the UK TV channels (GOLD watch Food) are on a south beam, but their timshifted +1 channels are ont he north beam.
in many areas along the CBlanca you need a 1.8m dish MINIMUM for bbc and itv. a smaller dish may get you them during the day but maybe not late evening / night....

and remember that you may have to help your skybox boot up by asking it to look at another default transponder as the 11778 it initially looks at is very weak in spain. (services 401 select 2 12129 save). and, just before people ask, this does not make channels last longer, just helps the box get its boot up info from the satellite, and it is normal for the DT to revert back to 11788.

you cannot really use a sky box for reception of any other satellites due to the limitations of the "add channels" function - sky box limits the channels avauilable by having just two FEC option - many other satellites use other FECs...so it will work on other satellites but with great limitations...

a generic free to air receiver will be much better at this although the number of english languagfe channels on other satellites is very limited - bbc world is pretty much on all satellites....on arabsat (26e) you can get the MBC / Fox movices and Dubai1 package of channnels (mainly US programmes with arabic subs!)

hi i have a omnisat automatic if you go father south like benidorm alicante you change the settings on the freqencey of the lmb you go to system set up on4 then no 4 then change the frequance then you will pick up some chanels sorry but i have forgoten the freqencey numbers

there are not many other channels available than those already loaded into the EPG (apart from ITVs on 12402 and C4 on 12480) - can still be tricky to get these on an 80cm dish!

 

[old-mo]

on an 80cm dish you will get most of the eurobird 1 and astra 2 south beam channels (approx 50-60% of the sky pack). for example you can easily get sky sprots 1,2,3 but xtra and news are on the north beam so you may not get these...similarly, alot of the UK TV channels (GOLD watch Food) are on a south beam, but their timshifted +1 channels are ont he north beam.
in many areas along the CBlanca you need a 1.8m dish MINIMUM for bbc and itv. a smaller dish may get you them during the day but maybe not late evening / night....

and remember that you may have to help your skybox boot up by asking it to look at another default transponder as the 11778 it initially looks at is very weak in spain. (services 401 select 2 12129 save). and, just before people ask, this does not make channels last longer, just helps the box get its boot up info from the satellite, and it is normal for the DT to revert back to 11788.

you cannot really use a sky box for reception of any other satellites due to the limitations of the "add channels" function - sky box limits the channels avauilable by having just two FEC option - many other satellites use other FECs...so it will work on other satellites but with great limitations...

a generic free to air receiver will be much better at this although the number of english languagfe channels on other satellites is very limited - bbc world is pretty much on all satellites....on arabsat (26e) you can get the MBC / Fox movices and Dubai1 package of channnels (mainly US programmes with arabic subs!)



there are not many other channels available than those already loaded into the EPG (apart from ITVs on 12402 and C4 on 12480) - can still be tricky to get these on an 80cm dish!

Thanks for info,
I have just been down and bought a freestat box (Humax Digital HD) to leave with the house sitter while we are away..
Would we be better of leaving our Sky box and card, and taking the new box with us to the continent.
Thanks.

 

[PeteH]

Size matters?

Hi

From observation, It would appear that those wanting FULL UK reception need AT LEAST a 1.5M and better a 2M dish down of the Med; coast. At Mar Menor last year, you could tell the "brits" by the size of their "thingys" (dish), I got a sneaky look at the Rugby on someone elses dish!! (he`d gone home for a couple of weeks!!). needed a long lead though!!

Pete

 

[Satandpcguy]

both systems will receive exactly the same free channels (apart from the Freesat with ITV HD!) - but you will have to mess around with your freesat and nonfreesat modes for channels not in the freesat EPG....(slighly annoying as it stops some major channel hopping).

the sky box and card will get you five, fiver five US - a freesat box will not get you any of these in spain (freesat five is on the same frequency as bbc2, fiver and five us are not on freesat!)

the sky box and card may get you the other itvs and C4's where normally you would require a BIG dish to get them...

PeteH - no one can get 24/7 full reception here on the Costa Blanca - many channels can almost be received 24/7 with a 1.8 or 2.4m dish but it is estimated that a 4+m dish would be required to get BBC2 and disney channels (and many others) 24/7!!!

 

[Teasy2007]

I have looked through most threads but cannot see one with this question ie...

Have any Funsters toured Southern Spain and taken their Sky box and Card from home (UK) and picked up a few uk channels? And if so What size dish and any info on LNB used will be much appreciated.

Hi,

We bought an 85cm floor standing dish in Malgrat and took our sky + box last Autumn and it worked exactly as it does at home! We bought a twin LNB and have all the channels and facilities of Sky+. We have not gone down as far as Southern Spain so you will have to rely on others for information on how well it works there.

Ginny and Mike

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[ronald4874]

Ron W

We are always in Spain -- Garrucha- most years in our Motorhome . We use a standard Sky dish and Lnb which we break down into smaller bits for ease of transporting, this is dug into the ground on a pole or tripod and pointed in the correct direction. The Sky box services button will allow you to retune box to 12051, which will give you BBC24, Sky news and approx 20 other programs. We generally need to refer to the news during our time in the South of Spain and any other areas further north. We use only the TV for tuning in -- Signal Test. we don't have a signal tester. Advice, always take a long TV co-axial cable with you so arial can be placed in good spot.

 

[N&K]

Hi Old-Mo

Back in October I asked a similar question Link Removed and received some great advice.

I ended up getting the 110cm dish, we have just got back from Spain yesterday (as Keith mentioned you can read the long thread) and thanks to the SatandPCGuy we were able to get BBC1 near Cartagena. Other UK campsite neighbours could not get BBC with an 80cm dish that far south. Although its not just about the dish, its about the LNB too. We got all channels on the south beam and the additional channels using SatandPCGuy's technique. In the UK we have a full Sky HD subscription so were able to get 150 channels including the +1 channels (south beam) but not all movie channels (Astra 2D)

In October after absorbing a lot of advice from this site, and exchanging many mails with this ebay shop (they were very helpful and created a custom package of hardware I needed for our Spain trip)

Link Removed

They also had great advice and I ended up getting this dish + lnb + tripod
£59 = Link Removed

Tripod
Link Removed = £35

but they also have some great deals on
Link Removed ~ £32

or an 85cm dish directly from Alsat for £28 Link Removed

:thumb:

if you only plan on the south beam an 80cm will be fine, if you want more, size matters. As Link Removedsize matters and you could spot brits on the campsite with bigger dishes, but a 1.1m dish is harder to transport to spain than an 80cm dish. Out SKY HD subscription got us a few extra channels on the south beam (including Sky Screen HD movies) The Sky box even downloaded some 'Sky Anytime' programmes from the south beam. Depending on your location in Spain a bigger dish may get you the same number of channels as an 80cm dish (on the south beam) but if you are under a tree of have slight obstruction on the campsite you have a better chance of a signal with a bigger dish.

Link Removed is something I have saved onto my laptop for future trips, its perfect :thumb:

N&K

 

[Satandpcguy]

The thread on tuning from SatandPCGuy is something I have saved onto my laptop for future trips, its perfect :thumb:
N&K

Glad to be of help...

 

[old-mo]

Thanks to you all especially "Satandpcguy" & N&K,, got there in the end, :thumb:

I will buy a try your set up N&K, cheers, I owe you a pint.. :thumb:

 

[N&K]

Hi Old-Mo

Glad you got there in the end. I would add, the choice of dish....is all pro's and cons depending on your typical trip. A crank up roof mounted type Sat Dish is perfect while you are the move doing odd nights stop overs (less effort to watch some TV and then wind it down), but if you plan to get somewhere and park up for a long stay a big dish is perfect (better chance of a good picture, rocking van, obstructions to the line of sight to the Astra Satellites and more channels in the south of Spain or Italy). Even though I measured out 1.1m to see how big the dish would be before purchasing, I was still surprised when it was delivered to the house . The wife's didnt look impressed...but she was very happy when watching the 3 hour special of Eastenders on BBC1 on boxing day in southern Spain :helpsos:. The dish isnt round its slightly oval hence its bigger than 1.1 vertically, maybe 1.20 and slightly narrower than 1.1 width wise.

Apart from that, the dish did get a bit of attention on the Spainish campsites and the usual question from UK people was, can you get BBC with that :thumb:

I replaced some of the Nuts with wingnuts (from B&Q) for quick construction, a lot easier. I can upload of photo of the dish if you want to get and idea of its size.

N&K

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[old-mo]

I replaced some of the Nuts with wingnuts (from B&Q) for quick construction, a lot easier. I can upload of photo of the dish if you want to get and idea of its size.

N&K

If you could please,
Going to order one and it will help to see where we will stow it when travelling.. is yours a solid dish or mesh?
And will it fit on a bog standard tripod.
Thanks.

 

[N&K]

Sent the links in a PM , an image link to Blogspot didnt seem to work, to show the images here.

N&K

 

[C7KEN]

Sat TV in Spain

We are in the Sat TV business here in Spain located between Alicante and Murcia and supply UK TV to thousands of homes (Legally)
On my van I have a Kathrein Cap 900 auto system generally regarded as being the best pan european system. The system is balanced to use the complete dish area.
With no changes to the Kathrein receiver I pick up all channels at all times down as far as Peniscola. Then no BBC/ITV until Cabo de Gata and even then its patchy late at night.
However if I used a sky box set to the southern beam I would expect to get Sky sports and the other channels like 5 previously mentioned in areas between Peniscola and Cabo.
I do have a sky box on board but frankly dont find its needed as I also have spanish TV and can see sport on that and around 5 movie channels free to air via the Kathrein receiver.
Where we are located a 2.4m dish is essential and even with that they will not get BBC2 clearly all day. Furthermore it requires planning approval and most dont bother (future problems maybe)
Matching dishes with LNB makes a difference the LNB needs to get reflection from as much dish area as possible, Have a look at the Andrews 1.2 mtr dish with the Titanium LNB on this site
Satellite dishes. 45cm to 1.8m from the Satellite Superstore UK. Transparent satellite dishes Scroll down to the Andrews dishes
Note ..We have no connection with this firm, have never bought or been in contact with them The crazy thing is reception in Almeria is better than in Alicante possibly due to reflective signals or some such thing. Its way out of the Astra 2 footprint.
So the easy way is a cheap free to air box such as Lidl or Maplin and a larger than 1100mm dish on a tripod or settle for less and enjoy the sun and just keep up with the news with the same free to air box and a dish around 600mm to 850mm dia.
Finally turn the LNB on its bracket to 8 oclock position and try the channels with the strongest transmissions like ITV central south, ITV 2 +1.
I often have people contradict what I have just said and that's fine. However not one person has been prepared to meet up with me between these two locations and prove they can get ITV/BBC with any other system that uses any dish up to 85cm dia. Anyone care to rise to the challenge ?: Laughing: