# Satellite TV update



## travelling-man (Jun 17, 2011)

For what it's worth, I had to have the satellite TV man in today to move a cable or two because we're moving from the main house into our newly converted barn and he redirected our dish to a different satellite, moved the cable & decoder etc and we now have something in the region of 400 channels. 

Most appear to be foreign language but we do have BBC world & Sky News and although I haven't had time to through all the channels, I'd guess we probably have a few more English language channels as well......... but the only one we really felt was important to us was Sky News.


----------



## sangerm (Apr 4, 2014)

You can get Sky News from a Sky box with no subscription pointing at the old sky satellite.


----------



## travelling-man (Jun 17, 2011)

I'm told Sky News is coming off of the old satellite sometime before the soccer world cup......... but as I'm not a soccer fan, I have no idea when that is.


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

So what satellite did your techie tune into?


----------



## sangerm (Apr 4, 2014)

I've not heard that but would find it surprising since my understanding was that Sky subscription channels such as movies and sports would continue on the old satellite - so can't see why they would remove Sky News (but could be wrong here).

The last time I looked at the Sky box in March there were also quite a number of English channels still broadcasting (I think around 30+) including American, Middle Eastern and European news channels (CNN, CBS, TV5, Algezera etc), various music channels and some of the old movie channels such as Movies for men etc. There were also a few lifestyle ones such as food network. 

My personal opinion is that none of these are very good but that's a question of taste! I doubt whether you'd find more English channels on another European satellite. If you want to find out list of channels by satellite they are here:

Europe, Africa & Middle East - LyngSat

Mike


----------



## travelling-man (Jun 17, 2011)

canoeman said:


> So what satellite did your techie tune into?


I'm sorry to say I forgot to ask but it's an Astra something or other.


----------



## Sharoncf (Aug 20, 2012)

travelling-man said:


> I'm sorry to say I forgot to ask but it's an Astra something or other.


We have ours on Astra and it has a lot of channels. Not many English channels but quite a lot with English news including BBC, Skye and others. Often you find English movies with other language sub titles.


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

Sharoncf said:


> We have ours on Astra and it has a lot of channels. Not many English channels but quite a lot with English news including BBC, Skye and others. Often you find English movies with other language sub titles.


If your picking up channels from the Eutal sat then you should be able to get a signal from the Asra

Would have thought that in Viseu you should still be able to receive UK channels via FRA or freeview, providing you have good line of sight to 28.2E might need an increase in dish size.
I have friends slightly south but further west than you that still get reception 

Eutelsat 28A & Astra 2A/2E/2F at 28.2°E - LyngSat


----------



## Sharoncf (Aug 20, 2012)

canoeman said:


> If your picking up channels from the Eutal sat then you should be able to get a signal from the Asra Would have thought that in Viseu you should still be able to receive UK channels via FRA or freeview, providing you have good line of sight to 28.2E might need an increase in dish size. I have friends slightly south but further west than you that still get reception Eutelsat 28A & Astra 2A/2E/2F at 28.2°E - LyngSat


Thanks will try


----------



## caravan (May 18, 2014)

I just assumed that you can do like people do in Spain and have a Sky contract billed to a UK address, put your dish up and then can get Sky and BBC channels plus freeview! but, reading these threads, could someone enlighten me!


----------



## sangerm (Apr 4, 2014)

*Not any more..*

It all went pear shaped in February as they moved the freeview channels on to a new satellite. See this article:

Dismay over loss of more UK channels in Portugal - The Portugal News

You now have the following choices:

Sky UK subscription for a some but not all channels - excluding BBC, see:

Latest Astra 2E news and potential loss of BBC & ITV satellite channels in Southern Spain and Portugal.

or some kind of Internet based TV.

There are a number of options with internet TV - set top box, PC etc and various methods of fooling the UK providers that you are watching from the UK rather than continental Europe.

There's lot of stuff on the internet on this.


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

caravan said:


> I just assumed that you can do like people do in Spain and have a Sky contract billed to a UK address, put your dish up and then can get Sky and BBC channels plus freeview! but, reading these threads, could someone enlighten me!


Astra have/are replacing older satellites with new ones which beam a tighter narrow signal to UK, which means that a lot of Spain and Portugal has lost UK TV, for Portugal roughly south of Coimbra has lost all UK FTA, Freesat, Sky regardless of size of dish, the main option is now TV via internet in one form or another


----------



## caravan (May 18, 2014)

ok thanks for that will explore that option but I should imagine that a good a good broadband speed is essential a lot of things to think about before picking an area


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

Broadband faster the better but it's an issue regardless of UK TV wherever you end up as coverage is still bad in a lot of areas


----------



## sangerm (Apr 4, 2014)

*Broadbandr streaming speeds fo*

It is true that the higher speed broadband the better but there are a few things to bear in mind:

1. Standard definition TV only requires around 2-3 megabits per second speed. A lot of vendors offer this now.

2. HD TV requires at least 3-5 megabits per second and again on the face of it this is not a lot.

There are a few problems to consider though outside of the raw speed thing:

a. A lot of Portugal is rural and an you may be limited on choices on broadband.

b. As in the UK you will be sharing the connection locally with your neighbours. If they all want to watch Portugal vs. England in the final in Brazil in HD - you may find this is a problem.

c. The route from where you live in Portugal to where the TV content is located (e.g. UK for BBC iPlayer) is a long and tortuous one. When I analysed my BBC connection in the Algarve it was going through about 15 intermediate devices before it reached me from London. Some of these will be outside of Portugal and most will be controlled by third parties, not the company with whom you contract you service in Portugal. Many of them are shared with other users in other countries and are therefore subject to delays when overall traffic is heavy. This problem has been severely exacerbated by the TV switch off since as Canoeman says most expats south of Coimbra and in mid to southern Europe are now wanting their 2-3 megabits of cross channel capacity!

So the upshot of this is that whilst generic browsing and email is not a problem, reliable and consistent streaming and especially in HD is some way off. However, remember when we all used dial up? that wasn't so long ago and things have moved on substantially since then.

Having said this many people do experience perfectly acceptable performance and only get buffering some of the time. My own experience, living north of Portimao with a 20mbps 4G internet connection, is that most times it is ok but a certain times it is either slow or unwatchable.


----------



## travelling-man (Jun 17, 2011)

There's also other factors besides internet speed to consider as well....... for example, even with the fastest connection speed in the world, you're never going to get good online TV if your laptop can't process the info at the required speed.

As an example of that, we're currently getting 55.21 Mbps from our fibre optic connection but we still get occasional pauses when watching Filmon and the reason for that is my laptop must be something in the region 5+ years old so it's a bit slow.


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

As HD has come up this is* not* a real internet option as 
a. you need a good reliable internet connection
b. all internet contracts have some type of useage, fair useage T&C especially Dongle or satellite, HD uses not quite but nearly double the mbps, the net result is the quality will be poor and your internet connection will more than likely be throttled.

Stick to SD transmissions


----------



## sangerm (Apr 4, 2014)

*Also the service..*

True, the other thing to consider is what type of service you are going to use. Some of the Sky services such as Sky TV and Sky Go both are able to download content before you watch it - as is BBC iplayer. This gets around the consistent speed issue for streaming as long as overall you a reasonable amount of capacity. But if you want live as it happens TV you will need to stream and that's when you need the consistent speed.


----------



## sangerm (Apr 4, 2014)

*depends on how much you watch*

it varies depending on the compression techniques used but all TV will consume a lot of data - SD or HD, it's more dependent on how long you watch it. For instance DVDs hold 4G Bytes of data and a film might last around 1 hour 40mins? Do the maths for a night's viewing!


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

True the point I was making is that if you watch HD TV via internet you reguire a better stable service and you'll more quickly use up your "unlimited" internet access and risk throttling


----------



## smudges (May 2, 2013)

In a previous life, I was involved with selling TV advertising to networks. Sky News has (or did then, 4 years ago) two feeds, one is for the UK, the other is specifically for Europe and the signal encompasses all of Europe (and probably North Africa too). The content is pretty much the same, but the advertising is much cheaper than on the UK only feed!


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

Except that it doesn't carry BBC1,2,3 ITV's, Ch4's, Ch5's apart from some of the news channels, it's the sat being referred to by Travelling Man & Sharoncf


----------



## In 2 bikes (Apr 18, 2013)

By way of being advogado do Senhor Diabo, what is it on U.K. telly that we are missing?

What are the top 10 programs we are mourning for? Or is it just to still feel the pulse of the U.K.?


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

My wife a bit more than me would miss it, not that we watch hours of TV but have you seen Portuguese TV


----------



## In 2 bikes (Apr 18, 2013)

I'll fess up.....its things like Country File, Ben Fogel stuff, new documentaries and fly on the wall jobbies. ..


----------



## canoeman (Mar 3, 2011)

AH well you'll want UK TV then nearest Portuguese TV is probably National Geograhic


----------



## travelling-man (Jun 17, 2011)

In 2 bikes said:


> I'll fess up.....its things like Country File, Ben Fogel stuff, new documentaries and fly on the wall jobbies. ..


We get all that on filmon


----------

