Can anyone please help. We have at the moment a TV and DVD player. I am thinking of upgrading to use a Satelitte Dish and Receiver. We do not want to take our satelitte box with us but would like to use a free view box. Is this possible? If so what do we need. (we want to use it in southern germany and just across into Austria.
So far we have
LCD TV.
What else do we need?
Sorry to sound vague but havent thought of using this before.
David Sullivan is a great source of information as Terkkin Trekkie has indicated. Your freeview box won't work outside the UK.
You will need a skybox and suitable dish. We use a 66cm Maxview Dish and 0.3LNB provided when we are travelling. This will pick up BBC/ITV as well as many of the other free to view channels across Nothrern Europe and into Northern Spain as far as Barcelona. In Southern Spain you can still pick up Sky News, Men & Motors and a few other free to view channels as well as some radio stations like Radio 2 & 4. Basically the larger the dish the more you can pick up although once you get this far South you will be lucky to get BBC & ITV without at least a 135cm dish (we are using a 165cm here and get everything except Channels 4 & 5. Some of the newer dishes come with 0.2 LNB's and these are generally better the further South you travel.
The other factor is the Digibox you use. Having tried quite a few we have found the Pace DS430N about the best although the new Sky Box(DS445NB) seems to work pretty well as well.
The Free to View Card is only required for Channels 4 & 5 although that is due to change I believe. We have friends who subscribe to Sky in the UK and use the cards out here. Normally, if you leave the Card in the Box for 24 hours there is no problem with matching cards to boxes (providing of course that the card has been activated in the UK)
I find it easier to locate the satellite using a Sat finder meter rather than relying on the visual indicator from the digi -box .
We bought everything from Ebay for under £100.00 (except for the larger dish which I obtained locally)
The first few times I used David Sullivan http://www.satelliteforcaravans.co.uk/ and it took me quite a time to get it set up. I find it easier now than trying to set up a normal aerial when I'm in the UK.
Of course if you have a spare £2,500+ kicking around there are fully automatic systems that do it all for you at the touch of a button.
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Topic: Satelittes What Do I Need?
