How To Set Up A TV Satellite Dish And Sky Digibox To Watch English Channels Such As BBC And ITV

What you need

• A satellite dish, 85cm or larger depending on your location (see below)
• A second hand, used, ex-rental Sky Digibox
• A Freeview Card or expired Sky viewing card
• A TV

Optional items

• Sky contract (UK address is required)
• A satellite finder meter or an accurate compass

Choosing a Digibox The satellite we are looking for is Astra 2D which is positioned at 28.2° east, has a footprint focused tightly on the British Isles, making reception difficult in large areas of mainland Europe. So the choice of box is important.

The best place to buy a Sky Digibox is from ebay.co.uk. At the moment most people are upgrading to Sky+ and Sky aren't bothering to collect their old boxes, so people are selling them on ebay, where they are going cheap.

Ideally a Grundig GRD310/2 or Panasonic TU-DSB30 (not a 31) box is the best choice or look for old Pace and Grundig boxes which work superbly with low signals.

Buying a viewing card Once again ebay.co.uk is the best place to get a card if you did not get one with the box. There is no difference in the channels you can get on Freeview card compared to an expired Sky viewing card. If you want to watch subscription channels like Sky One then you will need a Sky contract, this requires a UK address and a UK bank account. One very easy way to do this is to get a friend, who has a Sky contract, to order a second box for 'use in their caravan' and then pay them your subscription.

Personally I have never felt the urge to have any Sky channels. Freeview gives you all the BBC TV and radio channels, plus all ITV channels, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

Choosing a satellite dish The only important thing about a dish is the size, other than that, just pop down your local DIY store and you should find a suitable dish. Note that quite often, the shop will assume that you want to watch satellite TV from that country where a small 60/70cm dish will do, this is not the case here.

Look at the Astra 2D footprint map on astra2d.com and determine the size of dish you need. The bigger the better, but as a guide you will need at least an 85cm dish for central France, 1.8m for Southern Spain, 3m for Mainland Greece and 3.5m for Turkey and Cyprus. I use an 85cm dish in the Southern French Alps and it does struggle on the digital only channels like ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4.

The detector is called a Low noise block downconverter ( LNB ) It is the device on the front of a satellite dish that receives the very low level microwave signal from the satellite, amplifies it, changes the signals to a lower frequency band and sends them down the cable to the indoor receiver.

There is nothing special about these and the one that comes with the dish should be fine.

It is possible to buy multi headed LNBs, the popular one being the Quad LNB which has four output cables that can independently feed 4 boxes.

Setting it all up There are usually local companies who will set up your system for you, especially in the 'ex pat hotspots' such as The French Riviera, but with a little patience and a compass you can do it yourself, I'll cover this in a later article.

• How To Set Up A TV Satellite Dish And Sky Digibox To Watch English Channels Such As BBC And ITV
• How To Buy The Satellite TV Equipment To Watch English Channels Such As BBC, ITV, And Ch4 In Europe

She said, "I have just bought a holiday apartment near Nice and am trying to organise BBC1 and ITV1 and maybe sky channels. I read your info with interest – but do you happen to know if you can get cable TV showing BBC1 and ITV1 English channels? Like Telewest in UK? Or can you only receive them via satellite?

I only have a small balcony and the roof I believe are roof gardens for the top floor apartments. I have been told that it is your legal right to be able to receive English channels in France but where to put a large dish if necessary is difficult.

It is all a bit confusing!

Many thanks

Tina"

Hi Tina, this probably isn't what you want to hear, but…

Cable TV – nope sorry…the truth of the matter is that companies such as The BBC do not want (and indeed do not allow) there transmissions to be received abroad. You and I know that millions of people do have UK TV abroad, but it is still not legal. For this reason I don't think any cable companies such as Canal + (in France) would ever have any interest in broadcasting UK signals through their network.

Because of this, the only option is satellite and the easiest way to do that is with a dish and LNB bought locally from somewhere like Monsieur Bricolage and a used Sky Digibox. If you wish to watch ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 you will also need a Freeview Card or an expired Sky TV card.

The minimum size of dish you will need in Nice is 85cm and yes I do believe that even if you are a coproprieter you do have a right to mount a dish somewhere. The best thing is to ask 'Le Syndic' who manage your building and they will tell you where you are allowed to put one. Do remember that satellite dishes are not like ariels, they don't necessarily need to be high as long as there is a clear path between the dish and the satellite.

I believe there is an english guy called Mark who lives in Antibes who sets up Sky systems who might be worth tracking down, you can call him on 0630021840.

Sorry Tina if this doesn't help much…best I can do at the moment.

Regards,

Rick
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