Hi will a sky dish work in spain or will i need a larger dish ?
thank you.

Cue The Guy

A "sky" dish will work fine in Spain for viewing some satellites.
But if you want to view sky channels you will need a bigger dish.

As the Guy (search his posts) will say, yes it will work, but ............ !

Hi and welcome to the forum. Our expert on Sky dishes is called The Guy who will probably respond to your question when he comes on line.

Rosemary

Yes a Sky dish will work in Spain, but your channel choice will be very limited.

UK TV comes from 4 satellites, and each satellite has it own difference "signal reception footprints". AS channels are spread over these 4 satellites, some channels you can get on a Sky dish, others may need a bigger 2.4m dish.

For example, Eurosport 1 can be receive on a "sky dish" or a 60cm dish, but eurosport 2, in some areas, will not be available mid afternoon even on the 2.4m dishes, due to it being on a different signal / satellite "beam". Similarly Sky News you should get OK on a "sky dish" or a 60cm dish, but Sky News HD in some areas, will not be available mid afternoon even on the 2.4m dishes, due to it being on a different signal / satellite "beam".

YOu may be able to get about 50% of the Sky pay channels. But for the main UK channels (BBC, ITV, C4), (which have nothing to do with Sky), thats when you may be looking at much bigger dishes.

It all depends what channels you want and where in Spain you are (update your location on your forum ID) as signal reception varies greatly across Spain, which determine what size dish you require.

Hi 1964paul and welcome to BritExpats and the travails of UK TV in the deep south beyond the edge of the British Isles.

We have a 1.8m dish down here in Ayamonte and it works just fine for most channels most of the time but you also need to consider the quality of the tuner in your TV and sat box. Yesterday was the perfect example our Panasonic plasma freesat TV held onto our weakest terrestial channel ITV 1 Anglia (west) all day. The Pace Sky + box had it in the morning but lost it toward lunchtime so we retuned to ITV London and that held until early afternoon then lost it. The Amstrad Sky + box never gets Anglia. All this was in an effort to record Monk for a friend at 2.15 pm which just happened to coincide with a strong rainstorm.

Waiting in the wings I have an Ultra Black LNB which I must fix to my dish and see if that improves things.

Whats reception like on ITV1+1 on channel 131?
Many people dont know that it is there, and is useful if recordings clash or rain affects play! There are about 6 versions of ITV1+1, some excellent, some good, some weak. For example, my 103 ITV1 is ITV West, and goes off at 6pm. BUt 131 ITV1+1 is 24/7 even on a 80cm dish!

I fitted one recently and did notice some improvement - but not massive. The previous LNB was the Black Premium.

We are on the Granada coast with a 1.3m dish. Apart from during really heavy rain we never lose any of the Freesat channels at any time.

On the Freesat diagnostics the normal signal quality on most channels is 80% and on the worst it's usually 60%. Most of the Freesat channels are on Astra 2D with some on Eurobird. Generally 2D reception is better than EB but to be fair I set up the dish for Astra rather than EB.

Didn't think of that work around! just had a look and it is good and strong just now but then we have a "gin clear azure blue sky" from horizon to horizon this morning. Will give it a try later when we next loose our postcode station.