vorsman

I have an ordinary Sky box over here. If I upgrade by buying an HD box can I phone Sky in the UK and have the box activated over here?

Rural Hungary

Shouldn't be a problem if number is withheld. If you're feeling especially paranoid, set up UK caller id in Skype and phone them using that.

Rural Hungary

You're welcome!

duztee

I use Smartstream VPN.
With this I can watch live TV or catch-up players.
It will also allow you to play the National lottery on line (illegally) should you wish.
It also has the option of connecting to an American VPN which means you can watch all the US series up to date instead of getting them a year behind via an English channel.

vorsman

On Wednesday SES issued a statement about Astra 2E. The transfer of BBC, ITV etc to the UK narrow spot beam will commence in February 2014 and 'will take a few weeks' and we will subsequently lose the signals we have been getting from the temporary home Astra 1N.

Rural Hungary

Thought this was accepted as a given months ago? Just as well we don't watch much tv

John Gilbert

Unlimited monthly data internet contracts must be the answer to the new restricted satellite footprints.

While the rest of the world sees international broadcasting as "soft power & influence", the BBC & its born again Daily Mail culture see the free satellite broadcasting as an unwelcome sharing of "Little England's" culture.

All very sad & a very good reason to live outside the UK without access to UK tv.

FenTiger

I don't understand the logic of this "spot beam" broadcasting because I thought the EU believes in free movement of EU residents and it would not want its residents to be denied access to TV from their own country. I would have thought the EU would promote TV broadcasting across the whole EU. I know for a fact the Republic of Ireland can access British TV but they are not part of the UK. Seems odd they can access British TV but not British people in other EU countries!

fidobsa

I have thought for some years that they should scrap the BBC and break it up into private sector companies. It would mean adverts on all the programmes but there would be no licence to pay and no endless stream of threatening letters to those who don't watch TV. My neighbour in Scotland was in a brethren church that did not approve of TV so she didn't own a set. She had so much bother from the TV Licensing people that she started buying a licence.
There seems to be loads of adverts on BBC TV anyway, so they might as well go the whole hog and become commercial broadcasters. If they did that they would want to widen rather than restrict the audience, as a lot of the advertisers sell their products throughout Europe.

klarika

It might be possible to get ITV player / BBC player (don't know about live) direct using a Smart TV through a Smart DNS (Domain name System) as people are saying they are already doing this in Germany.

Tapsony-Hungary

Leave the BBC as it is, it is one of the best broadcasting services in the world with their coverage of sport and current events, it would be disastrous if they had adverts interrupting programmes, like the american programmes. They also give us excellent radio content which would go if they became commercial. The adverts they do show at present are for their programmes and products which raises revenue for the BBC thus keeping licensing payments lower.

FenTiger

I don't watch many BBC programmes/films, etc. The TV licence would be even lower if they didn't cover certain events way in excess of what they should.

llareggub

The smaller distribution 'circle' is all down to commerce, if the Beeb broadcast far and wide it would be very difficult for it to sell it's content which it currently does exceptionally well, almost a 3rd of all of the BBC's income comes from other commercial activities including the selling of BBC productions abroad. They also have an obligation to ensure that content that they purchase is not distributed far and wide as part of the licensing agreement they have with whom ever they purchase content from.

No need to have a smart TV, just plugin any old PC to a relatively new TV with either a VGA or HDMI socket, grab a VPN or a proxy and orft you go

klarika

I currently use VPN and yes it is great. What I am trying to find out is can VPN be used direct to the Smart TV without having to use laptop? Some people in Germany claim to be already doing this using Smart DNS ?? (not quite sure what this means or how it is done though) Any advise welcome

llareggub

Sorry, my misunderstanding...

It does seem as thought is is possible from a brief web search all the the mechanics of getting it working vary depending upon make of TV and also to a degree the provider of your VPN

It would seem that quite a few of the VPN providers seem to have walk through instructions on how to set it up by make of TV...