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Reported on another forum that today is the start of the big switchover to the Astra 2F sat.
Any reception reports ( freesat ) from the Algarve will be welcomed.

filmon is a good source for no hassle free british t/v.

Already reports of lost channels, C4HD, C5, 5*, 5 usa and some local ITV ones.

I'm in Tavira. I have a Humax Foxsat HD+ receiver with a 1.33m dish.
I have lost C4HD,channel 4seven, all of the C5 channels BUT I now get THREE channels I never received before - Sky News, Challenge TV and Pick TV.
The rest seem unaffected.

That's not as bad as I feared but I understand that when they put 2E up in the spring they will transfer the rest. Someone told me that you can still get channel 5 hd. I wouldn't really miss Ch5 to be honest.

Yes. The frequencies carrying these channels, and a few ITV1 regions, moved from 1n to 2f last night.

Nothing to do with 2F.
These channels have been free to air for a while (sky news since it launched i think).
They have been there for several months and have been available to freesat users via "non freesat mode".
All that has happened is that they have now been addded to the freesat channel list.

So it looks like a larger dish will be needed in the spring.
Rather than having to buy a completely new dish, can't you get 'extensions' to attach to the edge of an existing dish? Just a thought.

you can try extentions, but how big will the need to be and how accurate they need to be to receive the channels you want.....

I've heard that the extensions move in the wind. Someone will have to tell us what size dish we will need and i don't imagine anyone being able to tell us with any certainty until they have migrated all the channels in the Spring. These big dishes are a horrendous price, I believe, bulk buying anyone?

I have a 1.8 meter dish in west algarve [I went oversize when I installed it last year], but I seem to get more or less the same as everyone else.
4HD has disappeared for me too.
Thanks for the warning, I had a recording scheduled for this evening.

It's useful to know what others are/are not getting with different set ups. I'm in UK at the moment and of course there is no difference with ch.5

What we really need is someone to report they can receive these channels down here and the kit they are using!! A local installer was testing on a 2 .4m dish....will be interesting to see results now...
A solid dish will outperform a petal dish by some margin.

2.4mtr dish, I just want to watch TV not live under itufeira

Friends in Albufeira with a Sky+ box and on a hilltop say that they have not lost anything yet !

There hasn't been a full switch over, only a few channels. Ask them to try Channel 5.