Olivesk

Hi

We're only a few months away from the move (hopefully). The one luxury from home HWMBO wants is to get British TV.

We are currently Sky customers in Ireland and as such we own our own Sky+ box and we're thinking of shipping it over. We know it needs to be connected to a dish looking at the right satellite and a bit of research tells me that you can get Astra 2B sats installed in NZ, but is it that simple?

We understand that the + facilities will be gone (not paying Sky subs anymore) but if it works we should be able to get BBC, ITV etc...

Anyone done this or knows how it works?

Charismatic

I think Sky is broadcast from geostationary satallites, so that plant wont work*. You could get a VPN and watch BBC from the on demand website service.

*That said people in Iran get sky TV so I couldn't say for sure. You might need an illegal decoder.

Olivesk

But the decoders we bring will be legitimate. I know of lot's of Northern Hemisphere Sky users (Canary Islands for e.g.) but I'm just wondering about this because I've found info on the web giving the angle settings for a dish to see Astra 2B from NZ.

Assuming the satellite broadcasts the same signal in each direction then plugging a british Sky box in should work and wouldn't be illegal.

Charismatic

Oh...maybe you can then . Tell me if it works out, could be right on that for bbc (set up with recorder because everything will be out of sync with local time).

nik

I'm curious about this, because when we lived in Sweden last year we wanted to try and get sky over there and we got someone in to look at it and were told that if we wanted to get sky we weren't in the right location and would have a 2 metre diameter dish in the garden!

We were only in southern sweden so only about 600 miles from the UK so wondering if it could work at the other end of the earth!

Keep us posted!

mikelincs

Very unlikely as the satellites are northern hemisphere ones, so will probably not be in line with any dish in NZ, even a very large one. Spain can receive UK SKY, but some of those channels have dodgy reception.

simonsi

The NZ Sky satellite signal is different to the UK version, Uk boxes can't receive it even if plugged into a dish looking at the NZ Sky satellite (I've tried). They won't even let you bring up the planner to watch any recordings as they must detect a signal for the software to allow that, not even non-pay-per-view, no free-to-air, nada. Nothing. At all.

Satellites are also line of sight, you have to be able to see the satellite to get the signal but that is not the (only) issue here, the signal is different too.

Yes TV satellites are geo-stationary (that is why your dish can stay still, if they weren't your dish would have to track the satellite...)

Worth knowing that if you get a house that has had Sky in NZ and still has the dish then you can plug a satellite freeview into the cable and it will be able to receive all the freeview channels (assuming correctly tuned), as they come off the same satellite.

Wiki list of channels/satellites etc here, no mention of Astra 2B, that is around 28deg E from Greenwich (ie over Europe), NZ is approx 170deg E from Greenwich so I'm not sure Astra 2B is even visible from NZ....