WJS

Won't be moving for a little while but does anyone know if it's possible to receive UK TV by satellite in the SE US?

Michael

No. The following is the pattern coverage for UK SAT TV.

http://www.ukfree.tv/extras/satellite_footprints

SatBeams - Satellite Coverage Maps - Sat Footprint Intelsat 10-02 (Intelsat 1002, Intelsat Alpha-2, Intelsat X-02, IS-1002) / Thor 5 (Thor 2R) / Thor 6 (Intelsat 1W, IS-1W)

WJS

Oh no. By the looks of the maps you kindly posted it's a no even with one of those horrible big dishes?

GeoffM

Simplifying somewhat, the UK satellites are too far beyond the horizon to be "seen" from the US.

Slingbox if you have a willing person in the UK with a STB, or VPN over the internet, or the more legal way: pay channels on TV/internet.

WJS

So I assume a VPN won't work in the US like it does in Europe?

Michael

Since the communications satellites are 16,000 miles up, it might be possible to receive signals in the US if the satellite dish was pointed at the desired location in the US using a very small beam. However the satellite dishes are pointed at Great Britain and the beam is not very wide. The smaller the beam (more directional), the more signal strength to where they want to get.

If a satellite was directly overhead and pointed directly downward, a 1 degree beam would cover a circle diameter on earth of over 250 miles. Ku-band satellites (typically communications satellites to homes) have a very narrow beam and therefore have a high effective power so a small dish can be used to receive the signal. C-band satellites have a larger beam and are commonly used by network program providers to get their programs to TV stations, cable providers, and SAT providers in different time zones in the US. Because of the larger beam, effective power drops and therefore receiver dishes must be quite large.

Michael

Many in the US use VPN or Smart DNS to get to country centric video web sites including the BBC. If you aren't concerned about encryption, Smart DNS should be faster, less cumbersome, more reliable, and cheaper. That is because Smart DNS only authenticates the web site to make the web site think that the connection is local and then all other communications is directly to the web site and not through an intermediate server. The main disadvantage of Smart DNS is that the Smart DNS server has to have a customized authentication procedure for each country centric web site but good Smart DNS providers support a large number of country centric web sites.

With Smart DNS, if the web site is not supported by the Smart DNS server, all traffic is direct to the web site as if the Smart DNS server wasn't in the picture and enabling and disabling is not needed.

GeoffM

I can't get my head around angles, triangles, etc at this time of night but is 16,000 miles enough? If we assume the OP meant Orlando, FL then that's about 4,500 miles away from London, and 80 degrees longitude (London obviously being 0, close enough). The dish in Orlando can't point any lower than flat with the ground. By my reasoning, if the satellite were to be directly above London, and the dish were pointing directly at the horizon, then the two angles converge at a low angle - and must surely be a fair way out? Ignoring beams, atmospheric effects, latitude etc.

Michael

I learn something new everyday. Geostationary satellites "only orbit the equator" at about 22,300 miles up and can beam to about 40% of the earth's surface.

The first geostationary satellite was Syncom 3, launched on August 19, 1964, and used for communication across the Pacific starting with television coverage of the 1964 Summer Olympics. Shortly after Syncom 3, Intelsat I, aka Early Bird, was launched on April 6, 1965 and placed in orbit at 28° west longitude. It was the first geostationary satellite for telecommunications over the Atlantic Ocean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_satellite

Therefore satellite "Astra 2E" which carries many of the UK Freesat and BSkyB TV channels is at 28.2°E over the equator. Since Astra "2E" is at 28.2°E, that would be too far to reach the US east coast. A satellite would probably need to be west of 0° to reach the east coast of the US since "Astra 2E" has coverage to 70°N.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_2E

Coverage and Orbits


"Astra 2E" Ku band Spot bean coverage for the UK.

scrubbedexpat097

OK guys, this is way too complicated.

Us simple folk just use a Roku, subscribe to Acorn TV and when we need a Brit fix we watch Sky News and lots of old Midsummer Murders

Actually they do add something new each month, this month the original Taggart is being shown plus every episode of Time Team

Makes me happy. Plus if I need to catch up with Casualty I watch YouTube and when I am really really feel the need for a Brit fix I also use You Tube for Eastenders

We do still have Dish, mostly used for football...⚽⚽

petitefrancaise

mediahint browser extension works well for us for getting bbc iplayer.

If you want to watch any series then a friend tells me that there are sites like watchseries that put up links for people to watch. This friend advises the use of adblock plus extension to avoid all the ads.

Not that I know anything about this ....

WJS

At least there is some hope. I'm with Sugarmooma, too complicated for me! But it sounds that satellite at least isn't possible which is very disappointing.

kodokan

Netflix/ Amazon Prime only here, plus occasional VPN use so hubby and son can watch Top Gear and any BBC documentaries about engineering/ bridges/ transport/ the Industrial Revolution.

Plenty of Brit stuff to catch up with on Netflix and other streaming services - we're currently watching the excellent Being Human.

scrubbedexpat091

Have companies figured out how to tell when someone is using a VPN? I've been having some issues lately with US websites blocking content again for being outside their region but the VPN is on and working and works fine with netflix still.

Michael

The Whois lookup utility returns a lot of information about the user such as who is the customer providing that address. It doesn't seem that it would take rocket science to implement a Whois lookup during the country centric authentication process. The following is the information returned when doing a Whois lookup of my IP address and you can see that the customer is Comcast. If the customer was Overlay, that should indicate either a VPN or Smart DNS.

Whois IP 50.185.239.38

That may not always work since the VPN service provider my be hiding under a 3rd party provider or fake name but all someone developing the authentication process would need to do would be to subscribe to the popular VPN services and access a private web site using the VPN servers and capture the IP address. From that he/she could extrapolate the IP addresses that the VPN server is using and create a table of those addresses. Once a table of the addresses of the popular VPN providers was created, those addresses wouldn't be authenticated. However it could be a cat and mouse game since the VPN provider could pay for new IP addresses so the developer would have to constantly run his/her test to make sure that VPN providers aren't changing IP addresses and it they do, the table would be updated.

Therefore it seems that if country centric web sites really wanted to greatly reduce or eliminate usage from users outside the country, I'm sure there is a company that would be willing to develop and maintain the authentication process for a price.

In fact I suspect that many financial institutions have already implemented software that identifies VPN and proxy servers (Smart DNS is not an issue for financial services) during the sign up process to try to stop money laundering, tax evasion, or other illegal activities. Without a real IP address, it would be difficult to trace the customer back to it's source. PayPal for one seems to know that the person is behind one of those services during signup. Of course everyone using "silk road" is using VPN but since all transactions are illegal, both the customers and "silk road" want anonymity.