duffer

In theory yes as long as it's got a DVB-T receiver, FWIW I purchased a TV from Amazon UK a couple of years ago and it works fine here in Italy. All channels received.

tinca

My Amazon UK TV with built in freeview also gets the Italian digital channels.

Scratcher

Duffer / Tinca, Thanks for the replies.

Scratcher

Isakat

I discovered an interesting thing today. The builders are insulating DD's room and are also putting cables in the wall so that she can have a TV on the wall, with an internet connection. OH also wanted to have the ability to have an HDMI switch, in case the TV is connected to the PC. However, everyone gave me funny looks when I asked for the HDMI plug. The electrician said he never saw one in Italy, so now I have to bury a whole HDMI cable into a corrugato into the wall as the cable already has the HDMI connections at the ends.

profsid

HI, Any uptake on the TV situation. Have we survived with the channels we have or hasn't it changed properly yet?

Isakat

I do not think we are out of the woods yet.Wait for Duffer to come back from his hols, he knows more.

manning

hi guys n girls. i recently moved to italy, well 3months ago and im seriously starting to die without UK tv, bit extreme i know. ive read quiet a lot of the posts on here all be it not all 55 pages worth so apologies if my questions have already been answered.

firstly i live in the marche area, about 20km south of ancona does anyone have any idea what size dish i might need? i know im quiet far east so im guessing quiet big. also does anyone know of a decent site to buy a dish from and also a cable, ive read over and over a good cable is needed but if anyone could actually suggest what a "good cable" means or looks like, my intention was just to buy what ever was most expensive as i have no idea on cable quality.

onto my next question which is a little stranger. i live on this holiday village all year round. (i play wheelchair basketball professionally and this is where they put the team up) this meant no phoneline for internet so i ended up getting satellite broadband. its good but with only a 26GB data allowance streaming still isnt a option. however it does give me a uk ip address it seems, as i can watch iplayer and so forth.
now the question: i read on here somewhere about multiroom and that needing a internet connection as part of the rules of sky (something along them lines). well im over here with a friend (also a player) and he wants sky aswell, do you think its possible for me to get sky and hook it all up as suggested, but with multi room? i already have a quad lnb (it was a spare that come with my internet) and if internet is required for it to work have it plugged in and it all work fine?? this obviously splits my sky bill in two if i can do it with my friend so thought it was worth asking the guru's on here.
do you think this would work? also expanding on that, any ideas how much if any data this would use? or is it simply a case of it needs a active internet connection? im just slightly worried about usage as there hasnt been a single month where ive been under 26gb anyway.... whoopps


any help/ advice would be greatly recieved.

duffer

Hello Manning,

Not sure about the dish size for Marche because everything is up in the air so to speak regarding sizes due to a changeover to new satellites. We're looking towards the summer before we have more concrete info regarding which sizes work. Lots of expats have been blessed with UK TV recently as channels have been broadcasting from Astra 1N, which is relatively easy to get without a big dish. The new satellites will be harder to get a signal from in Marche, i.e. huge dish required.

Regarding cables, don't get the cables from your local DIY (Brico) store which are usually the thin black ones. Look out for double screened low loss cables and usually these are more expensive! Highly recommended is the Webro WF100 cable as it's good for long runs and is flexible.

Regarding your satellite broadband. I would think 26GB is quite a lot but then I don't watch a lot of streaming. Check out iPlayer for the MB size of the TV programs you usually watch and make a guestimate for the month based on a typical days viewing.

So you have the satellite broadband already, I presume this dish will work alongside the dish you require for UK TV? Which satellite are you using?

Another thing to consider, the UK terrestrial channels (BBC, ITV, C4, C5) are different to the channels offered by Sky (non-terrestrial Sky1, Fox, Movies, Sport, Watch, etc.) because unlike the Sky channels they are free to air and therefore are harder to obtain, i.e. bigger dish required as they are on a UK footprint. The Sky channels are encrypted and (although we need to wait until the summer for confirm this remains the fact) are easier to obtain with a smaller dish because they are broadcasting on a European footprint. So in theory, you could get a subscription to Sky for their paid for channels and all the free terrestrial channels can be watched via streaming - maybe on the same TV if you have a smart TV with iPlayer built in (or smart blu ray player).

BTW Sky multiroom works by having the 2 decoders constantly connected to the same phone number. So unless you have a UK voip number AND it works on an ATA that ALSO can communicate to the 2 decoders you will fail with the multiroom. I'm sure somebody has got this to work but so far I haven't found any news. I did try and get a UK voip number to work on a Netgear ATA for Sky box office movies but didn't manage to get the decoder to work with the Sky callback - if the callback doesn't get an answer from the decoder you will not be eligible for Multiroom.

Let me know if you have any other queries.

CIAOOOOOOOOOO

manning

ive got a 80cm dish for broadband and it goes to the ka-sat. me and my mate watch a lot of basketball which when streamed at 800kbps is ok-ish but like ur watching a game of lego bball. back home in uk i used to stream them at 3200 which gave a hd picture. so pretty much after 3 games and a couple of bbc iplayer programs the useage is all gone.

i like the idea that i will be able to get the paid channels easier for the reasons u said (i can then watch bbc stuff online n so on) so my internet will definatelly stretch further. im guessing that sky sports for example should be relatively easy to pic up? which means i can watch my sports n basketball without killing my DL limit.

i had a quick look at if i could set it up off my existing dish usin 2 lnbs but it then looked really confusing to set up, as its not as simple as just pointing the dish the way you want as its bouncing back off the lnb at a different angle so im now thinking i definately need another dish. am i right in thinking its that hard to set up or is it easier than i think / if i got a guy out to do it would they be able to do it easy enough, with my small vocab of italian words and some pointing and written down numbers or what two sat's i want them at.

im pretty good with tech, not quiet a geek but nearly there lol but setting up satellites is something i have never done before.

at a guess and i know its a complete guess. even after all tht happens in june do u think ill need a dis bigger than 1.2 or am i going to be around the 2m mark

duffer

No idea as to the dish size sorry, I'm resigned to losing the terrestrial channels on my 1.25m dish myself but as long as Sky UK works I'll be happy, I'll just stream from the iPlayer the rest.

1.2 to 1.5 might be OK for you just for the Sky. BBC, ITV, etc might be off limits unless you get a very large dish but it's important you get some info from any expats in or around your area to see what they are using.

The UK satellite is at 28.2E. Where is your broadband coming from? 13E? It's really not that difficult to get 2 satellites off 1 satellite & 2 LNBs because you just need to get a decent arm and position the LNBs accordingly. The problem arises when one of those satellites has a weak signal, then you really need to be accurate in your alignment of the LNB because its not channeling the signal dead centre as it does when there is only 1 LNB, if you follow me. If 1 satellite has a really strong signal then the LNB can be out slightly and you'd still get a picture, allowing you to be more accurate on the 2nd LNB but if both signals are weak then there will be problems or you would need an even bigger dish than normally required.

Also, the UK Sky box doesn't support DiSEqC so you will have to manually change between the 2 satellites.

Scratcher

Can anyone recommend a uk vpn (preferably free) or another programme/method so I can watch BBC iplayer or listen to BBC radio broadcasts through my laptop?

Scratcher

Garbatellamike

I use EXpatshield

37100

And me.

ononno

ditto

tinca

Manning

I have property in Southern Marche. The dish size will depend on whether you want BBC, ITV, C4 and Channel 5. If you have a Sky subscription and are using that Sky box you should get most of the Sky channels with the exception of BBC, ITV, C4 and C5 with a 85cm dish. I get some of the movies and Sky Sports 1-3 but the house is in quite a elevated position. You should be able to get a 85cm dish from a decent supermarket for about 40 euros.

When I was in Italy at Christmas I changed to my LNB to a good quality one. To my surprise I was able to get virtually all channels including BBC, ITV, C4 and all the movies channels. I could not get C5. I did start to lose reception for BBC, ITV and Sky movies late on in the evening.

I think that I will continue to get these channels until the summer when a lot of the channels are going to moved to a different satellite making it much harder to receive them without a very large dish. I hoping that I will be able to continue to get most of the Sky channels after this summer even with my 85cm dish.