fugley

ok I will try and bump up my post count to get the pm!!!

fugley

bump bump

duffer

Perhaps the dish was poorly aligned and then your guy fixed that problem and now it's been blown out of position again. Did they not tell you what they did to fix the original problem?

Efes123

Just moved to the Panicle (Perugia) region. I had a local man install a 1m dish on the house & used my Sky box from the UK. Here, 1m is the maximum allowed on a house, else it needs to go in the garden. I can get all the channels as in the UK except the terrestrial ones (due to the small dish).

There is a company called skyeurope that allows you to use your box with a UK ip address on it, or you can order a whole package from them. This will allow you to view everything. To access On Demand/Catch Up you need to have internet with a UK ip address. This can be done two ways:
1) with a dedicated UK Router, or 2) using a UK VPN service
Buying a router is the simplest way, but it can be expensive (several hundreds of £s). I'm trying the VPN route and it seems to work great. I can view all the UK channels on my PC, including catchup. I've just ordered a Chromecast dongle and a USB WiFi stick and am hoping I can then start watching on my TV.

duffer

You can upgrade the firmware on a router free of charge, even routers costing €50 or so, then add your VPN details have all internet ready devices connect to that. Google DD-WRT or Tomato VPN.

mikethomo

We are just down the road from you ! Good luck with chromecast we found it useless as the Alice internet is pants . We find it more reliable to use the hdmi cable to watching anything from the PC

Capo Boi

If you have a stable 2mb internet access then there is no need to flaff around. Something in the region of €500 buys you a 40 plus LCD TV with built in wifi. (Wifi integrato). Set your home page to Film On, Zattoo or one of their derivatives. Job done. Very very simple. No need for satelite dishes, VPNs, IP UK addressed routers, leads attached to PCs or anything else. Technology moves on.

And you are right mikethomo, unless you want to put YouTube on the TV there's not much point in using Chromecast outside the UK as BBC I player for example involves a big reset of your router which also requires incorporating a VPN.

Duffer, with the best will in the world, times have moved on and 20mb internet is becoming the norm from the likes of TIM ( I think TI have or are going to be rebranded under the TIM banner) and more and more (not torrent) broadcasters are coming on line. No need for a VPN or VPN enabled router. Keep the innuendos coming though.

duffer

Capo Boi, my VPN is for security and anonymity online, not for watching UKTV, although it comes in very handy for catch-up TV in HD on my UK Sky decoder. I prefer to keep it like that because I use the Sky EPG to organise my viewing and recordings. Nice and simple.

My Internet has been stuck on 7Mb for 3 years, this is for a 20Mb service. I can get 13-14Mb using my mobile as a hotspot but as far as I know, there isn't an Italian operator offering eat as much as you like data package so it's not really an option.

Times have moved on it is true, but not where I live.

I mean what's the point in having 4G+ enabled mobile phones if you only have 2GB of data per month to use? It's silly having an UltraHD 4K TV when there is no 4K content? Unless you use a VPN and access Netflix USA. Or you could use torrents and download it, so then it would be very wise to use a VPN.

So I don't really get your point? I was just offering an alternative to something mentioned in a post above.

Efes123

Hiya,

Appreciate you're trying to help, but:

I already have a 42" TV, although not with wifi, I really don't want to spend that much when a wfif dongle will give me the same thing. Or am I missing something?

Will this give me the UK Sky channels as well as BBC etc?

From what I can gather, and I could be wrong, but you don't need to touch the router, just use a wifi to Chromecast through a VPN?

Cheers

Capo Boi

Duffer, always respect your knowledge. If you want to use a VPN for privacy issues then that's fine. All I was trying to say was that the simplest solution to watch UK TV is now to buy a TV with integrated wifi and to use the remote to change channels. No PC, IPad or leads involved.

Efes 123, without a VPN you will not be able to broadcast the BBC I player to your TV and this will almost certainly involve resetting your router to support Chromecast. Unless things have changed the ITV player and channel 4 are not currently set up to broadcast through Chromecast.

FilmOn and their derivatives do not have access to Sky.

A wifi dongle probably works but involves changing channels through your PC.

For what it's worth I gave up on Chromecast some time ago.

duffer

Yes this is very true Capo Boi, so many ways to watch UK TV now. To be honest, our viewing habits have changed so it might be worth pointing our satellite dish to Sky Italia, considering the cost of the UK version. I mean, it's being used for Cartoon Network and mostly recording TV boxsets which we watch when we have time.

Efes123

Just a quick update. There's a beta version of Chromecast for the Chrome browser that allows broadcasting from any device on the network even if it isn't wifi connected. It seems to work well with the terrestrial channels, apart from iPlayer.

So my current setup is:
D-Link router connected with Tiscali
A VPN connection on the PC through CyberGhost - they offer a free version, but for £36 a year you get a premium version that's a lot more stable & faster
Chromecast on the TV

I did have to disable iv6 protocol on the PC to get this to work. Oddly, my status now shows "no internet access" but my actual connection seems to have speeded up

I'm waiting on delivery of a Wifi usb dongle for the PC that will allow me to use the Chromecast App, this might sort out the iPlayer issue.

Further Update:
Now got iPlayer working
By clicking on the upper right Google Chrome cast App and then clicking on the tiny upside down menu icon to the right of the BETA symbol and then choose the device to "Cast this tab" then by clicking on the Device it seems to work perfectly

Another note: My Chromecast kept rebooting every now and then. I found by changing the power supply to a UK one rather than the European one supplied with it, that this solved the issue

Efes123

Just another update

I've now moved from a VPN service to a SmartDNS one. This service basically fools websites into thinking you're from the correct country. By changing the DNS settings on my Sky box, I can now access all the On Demand services. It is a bit flakey in that it needs resetting every now and then, but it's a damn sight better than using a vpn from the pc, and at $50 pa a lot cheaper than getting a UK VPN Router.

An another advantage over VPN is that it's a lot faster & you can use it to access any country rather than having to set a single one

duffer

I have bought myself a Minix Neo X8-H plus from Amazon. It can do everything although it's a bit of a bitch to set up, i.e. not really a plug in and plug sort of device -

BBC iPlayer, Sky Go, Fox Sports, VPN, Smart DNS, Android games, Kodi media server, BEIN sports, Chrome and everything on your large screen TV via HDMI.

Efes123

looks interesting, 3 times the cost mind you But I do like the idea of one bit of kit for everything

What I like about the SmartDNS service is that there's no faffing around with the router, or ip addresses. Just a simple change of DNS in each piece of equipment and if you have a subscription, you're good to go for any county.

Mind you I am finding that I need to go into the Network settings on the Sky box every now and then, and re-save them. It seems to forget them But it's a small price to pay for perfect picture and access to On Demand