sky tv abroad ?

[greyman1]

since the freesat tv footprint changed requiring the installation of huge dishes, the current trend towards watching uk tv abroad [esp in southern france and spain] is to access it via a wi-fi connection. however my question is does this reduced footprint effect sky box reception via a standard dish ? from what i can remember a few years ago it was quite common for people to take their sky boxes away with them and watch their normal sky tv package [after all it is still being paid for while you are away] do any of you still do this ? or [being mindfull of any legalities involved] know of someone who does ! thanks for reading garry

 

[Don Quixote]

If you have have a Sky sub then take your box and with standard 80cm dish you will get 90% of sky sub channels, less BBC ITV etc. In some areas in Spain BBC and ITV will clear, but not easy to find. You will get BBC ITV etc across most of France.

 

[Sheddy]

The reduced footprint does not effect the SKY channels as they are on a different beam from the satellite.
We have received all our subscription sky channels on a Camos+ crank up (equivalent to 60/80 cm) while as far south as Rimini in Italy, and others have reported good reception in Sicily.
We are currently in Benidorm and are getting all the SKY and UK channels including BBC, ITV, C4,C5 on a fixed 1.1m Triax dish with a good quality LNB.
We occasionally loose some of the HD channels with the weather and around sunset, but still get all the SD channels with good signal quality.
Cheers

 

[greyman1]

thanks guys, your helpfull responses are very much appreciated .as my home set up involves a hd box,phone line and broadband, could anyone tell me after unplugging would i encounter any problems when i come to switch back on after being used without the phone line connection ? the reason i ask, is that when i switched the box off last year at home for 8 weeks when we were away i came back to find sky had shut down the whole system due to [in their words a system compatability issue] !! i could only assume that they suspected something might be amiss because the phone line connection was interrupted ! they still carried on taking my monthly payments though !! cheers garry

 

[Speve]

We are currently in Cabo De Gata,Almeria, with a pace 12v box and 40cm sat dome receiving Sky but no all programmes can't get BBC or ITV in the main most of the others. have also brought our SKY+ HD box but that does not work as well

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[Billy23]

The reduced footprint does not effect the SKY channels as they are on a different beam from the satellite.
We have received all our subscription sky channels on a Camos+ crank up (equivalent to 60/80 cm) while as far south as Rimini in Italy, and others have reported good reception in Sicily.
We are currently in Benidorm and are getting all the SKY and UK channels including BBC, ITV, C4,C5 on a fixed 1.1m Triax dish with a good quality LNB.
We occasionally loose some of the HD channels with the weather and around sunset, but still get all the SD channels with good signal quality.
Cheers

Best not come to this side of Spain then (Seville/ Huelva as you will not get many channels.

 

[Speve]

Best not come to this side of Spain then (Seville/ Huelva as you will not get many channels.

Too late already been there and agree couldn't get much at El Rocio or Tarifa.

 

[Billy23]

Too late already been there and agree couldn't get much at El Rocio or Tarifa.

Should have called to my house ( just down the road from El Rocio) then you could have watched it

 

[Speve]

Should have called to my house ( just down the road from El Rocio) then you could have watched it

What a great place to have a house very kind offer but we can manage without the telly with such nice places around there to see to tired to watch the box.

 

[Satandpcguy]

The reduced footprint does not effect the SKY channels.

Actually it does!

UK TV channels come from various beams on the current 4 satellites.

Astra 2a- has a north and south beam with the north beam being tricky to receive in some areas of Spain even using a 2.4m dish (see the SD versions of Eurosport 2, Sky Sports 4, Sky Sports News at around 4pm). Hopefully when these move to 2G then their reception should become much easier. South beam is very easy to receive.

(This is one reason why you use to have to change your sky box's default transponder from 11778 to another to help the sky box boot up - 11778 used to be on the hard to receive north beam, so if you could not boot your sky box using this 11778 frequency, you had to change it to another frequency, preferably a south beam frequency, to allow the sky box to download the channel list and starts to work. However since Feb 2014, 11778 is now on the easier European beam of 2E, so no more changing of default transponder frequency to help boot the sky box up).

Astra 2E and 2F (and the forthcoming 2G) has UK and European beam.
The main BBC ITV C4s and Five's are on the UK beam (as are a few Sky pay channels also - Dave HD, Watch HD, some Sky Sports red button stuff), and reception varies a lot across Spain, from just about receivable on an 80cm dish near Valencia, to requiring over 2m dish around Barcelona and almeria areas, to 6m dish in CdS!
The European beam is much easier, designed for European coverage. Currently the majority of channel on the European beam are Sky pay channels.

Eutelsat 28A (formally Eurobird 1), coming to the end of its life,. Carries some pay channels, and a lot of free to air less popular channels. Fairly easy to receive in Spain. Expected to migrate to the other Astra satellites soon...

[being mindfull of any legalities involved]

Nothing illegal about using a viewing card from one EU country in another EU country - that pub landladys court case a few years ago sorted that one out...
But it is still against the T&Cs of your sky contract to do so...

the reason i ask, is that when i switched the box off last year at home for 8 weeks when we were away i came back to find sky had shut down the whole system due to [in their words a system compatability issue] !! i could only assume that they suspected something might be amiss because the phone line connection was interrupted ! they still carried on taking my monthly payments though !!

Phone line connection (or connection to your internet router) is usually only required for new installs and multiroom contacts. Personally, I have never ever had any phoneline connected to any of my sky boxes, in the UK (when I lived there) or Spain...

If you do disconnect your sky box from the power for about 4-6 weeks, the card stops getting its "active" signal, and "goes to sleep". It shows the "wrong card" message on all sky pay channels. Usually when you plug in and restart the system the channels should pop back in within 24 hours... or sooner if you call SKy to reactivate your card.

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[Bailey58]

No help to those who go south for the sun but we're getting a better signal, both strength and quality, in the Faroes since the switch in satellites. Hang the dish up when we get there, point it to the house on the hill, plug the sky box in and, bingo, we're watching TV in 5 minutes.

 

[greyman1]

cheers for taking the time to explain things satandpcguy it is much appreciated . so am i right in thinking that i can take my present household hd box away with me , hook it up to my roof mounted dish and align towards the astra sat via my signal meter in the usual way and i should in theory be able to get at least some of my normal sub paid channels, ?

 

[callumwa]

I work on a ship. We have a 1.2m motorised dish.

Since the changes to the Astra 2 satellite, we can still get a lot channels in the south of Spain and Portugal and even north Africa from Morocco to Malta. On Astra 2 if you use a Sky HD+ box with a card (Sky HD package) you can still get almost all the HD Channels but not the SD (weird I know).

So we can get all Sky Sports, BT Sport, Eurosport, all Sky movies, National History and Discovery Channels etc, Sky News, CNN, RT etc. also Channel 5 in HD, ITV 2,3 and 4 in HD, but not ITV 1 or any BBC, we lose them just north of La Coruna when we are going south.
We can also get Channel 4 (Ireland) if you manually tune the frequency into the box and save it.
We get BBC and ITV1 back from just north of Barcelona up to Marseille and all along the south of France to Genoa.

 

[Satandpcguy]

cheers for taking the time to explain things satandpcguy it is much appreciated . so am i right in thinking that i can take my present household hd box away with me , hook it up to my roof mounted dish and align towards the astra sat via my signal meter in the usual way and i should in theory be able to get at least some of my normal sub paid channels, ?

yes

 

[busby]

The reduced footprint does not effect the SKY channels as they are on a different beam from the satellite.
We have received all our subscription sky channels on a Camos+ crank up (equivalent to 60/80 cm) while as far south as Rimini in Italy, and others have reported good reception in Sicily.
We are currently in Benidorm and are getting all the SKY and UK channels including BBC, ITV, C4,C5 on a fixed 1.1m Triax dish with a good quality LNB.
We occasionally loose some of the HD channels with the weather and around sunset, but still get all the SD channels with good signal quality.
Cheers

On a 1.1 dish in Benidorm you can get BBC ITV 4 and 5 and lots more without Sky...BUSBY.

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