Do Med liveaboards all have tv on board?

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Garold

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I was just wondering if liveaboards usually have a tv on their boats (and if so, do they use it?).

I watch tv at home, and sometimes have watched a tv on board whilst sailing in the UK. But I'm not sure if we need one if we are heading towards the Med.

Is there anything to watch on tv if sailing outside the UK? (if you don't speak the local language).

We have lots of old dvds but I can't decide if it's worth fitting a tv just to watch them.

Garold
 
If not a TV, many liveaboard boats have largish flat screen monitors, which can be driven by a laptop and/or receiver. Some, of course, do the same thing on just a laptop. In many liveaboard communities there's a lively trade in external disc drives loaded with TV progs and movies (many of questionable provenance...) It used to be that the trade was in DVDs, but the tumbling cost of computer memory has made that less common.

Plenty of folk stream live 'home' TV or movies via the web, and certainly listening to radio by this means is quite popular. Off the top of my head, watching live tv via aerial or dish is relatively uncommon.
 
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We have a small 19" TV and sometimes watch an hour in an evening if the weather isn't too hot. When it is still 30C on deck we don't feel much like watching TV. However, we have mounted it in the cockpit a few times to watch F1.

We have a huge store of films and TV series on a hard drive and often swap programs with other people. A good few years worth of viewing. I transfer 30-40 hours worth to a HUDL and view on TV via HDMI. A DVD player will use a lot more battery power than a HUDL or USB stick (if your TV already has a built-in player).

I download the odd current UK program via BBC iPlayer or stream live news if Wifi is good (Filmon.com).

I have watched the odd program on Spanish TV but usually don't stay in one place long enough for me to bother digging out the antenna and tuning the TV.

One tip you might not know about is that you can still get a lot of stuff in English, to replace Spanish (or French etc.) When TV went digital it became pretty standard to leave the original sound track in the transmission. If it's a BBC program, most films or American series can be watched in English (Bones, CSI, etc. seem to be popular and quite amusing in Spanish when they completely switch common Americanisms with nearest Spanish equivalent if you revert to Spanish).

Your TV will have a menu option somewhere to allow selection of alternative soundtracks. The default transmission will be in the local language but the "Alt" (there are 2-3 different ways to describe it) will often be English (though you also come across other languages depending on where the program was made).
 
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When berthed in my Italian marina I put the 60cm dish aerial on the (fixed) pier connected to a satellite receiver and 19" flat screen TV - with integrated DVD player. Portable satellite receiver kits with dual voltage (12V/220V) can be obtained for very little cost these days.

The Astra 2 satellite that carries all the UK channels is too focused on the UK to receive with such a small dish so far south but I can receive Astra 1 that has wide European coverage, the channels of which include a fair number of English-language news channels, BBC World, Aljazeera, France24, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, NHK (Japan), CCTV (China), Arirang (S. Korea). It keeps one in the picture for news, if that is what you want.

In addition, it carries three of the excellent Arte channels, funded by France and Germany (no advertisements) with the dual-channel language possibility, normally geared to French/German but with films, one of those three, carries the original on one channel, accessed by the satellite receiver manually able to switch between them.

That satellite also carries all of the French and German channels, which, speaking German, suits me fine as the local German programmes are usually infinitely higher quality content than most UK programming - I don't include such as BBC documentaries, wildlife and period drama in that, which are clearly world-class.
 
Mistroma said:
We have a small 19" TV and sometimes watch an hour in an evening if the weather isn't too hot. When it is still 30C on deck we don't feel much like watching TV. However, we have mounted it in the cockpit a few times to watch F1.

We have a huge store of films and TV series on a hard drive and often swap programs with other people. A good few years worth of viewing. I transfer 30-40 hours worth to a HUDL and view on TV via HDMI. A DVD player will use a lot more battery power than a HUDL or USB stick (if your TV already has a built-in player).

I download the odd current UK program via BBC iPlayer or stream live news if Wifi is good (Filmon.com).
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We did very similar, ideal for winter evenings
 
Used to carry and watch a world-tuneable TV, 25 or so years ago. But not since the advent of DVD's (films and boxed TV series) and streamed news programs.

It's the mark of a non-sailing liveaboard when you see a satellite dish bolted to the pontoon.
 
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We have a very small screen DVD player that I can link to our audio system. I also have the option of using a laptop as the screen but this is more power hungry. I record films onto DVDs over Xmas when many four and five star films are shown, then watch them occasionally on the boat. Doesn't happen often and my stock of unwatched films is building nicely.
 
AndrewB said:
It's the mark of a non-sailing liveaboard when you see a satellite dish bolted to the pontoon.
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Not quite guilty as charged, my dish is not bolted but clamped to a post :rolleyes:. In addition, while it is left in situ (during summer when aboard) when I leave the berth to go sailing, the cable is removed and stored below, along with the shore-power cable. It takes but a few minutes to replace both on returning after securing all lines.
 
it's interesting to read from even a few replies that there isn't really one recurring approach to having and using a tv on board when long term cruising.

I'm still stuck in the dvd era because we have a couple of boxes of them, but if we are to move on board for the summer, it looks like I need to move on to modern storage for films etc and streaming for other content.

Garold
 
Garold said:
if we are to move on board for the summer, it looks like I need to move on to modern storage for films etc and streaming for other content.
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Since the dawn of time, four priceless things have been invented for boats:
1. sails;
2. huge hard disc drives for movies;
3. MP3 players...no need to be scalped by flying CDs any more;
4. e-books, most notable on Kindles. They make your boat instantly twice as big.

Now if they could just makes sails less bulky...

Good luck and fair winds with the liveaboard life, Garold.
 
We watch TV regularly, many films on Portuguese TV are in English with sub-titles. With 4G dongle we can stream live UK TV through computer or watch downloaded (torrent) content with external disk or stick plugged into TV. Lots of film swaps between liveaboards.
 
NO TV , in the winter months we do down load flims to watch ( short days long nights) but while cruising we never have time to watch TV even if we had one too busy socialise or just enjoying the evenings .
 
We don't have a TV. Didn't watch it that much before we left UK and it's pretty pointless having one when you can't easily access English language broadcasts. For the odd time in the winter when we feel moved to watch a movie we use the laptop hooked up to the cd/radio for sound. For the odd sporting occassion that's worth watching, find a bar that's showing it.
 
At sixteen years I started following evening classes. End of watching TV for me. Came home at 22 h, and still had a lot to do.
The rest of my working life I did not even possessed a TV. Had no time.
We started travelling, living on our boat, and in 2005 I finely bought a TV.
Enjoyed a week of Greek ( Rhodes ) television. They broadcasted original films. Great.
Wintering in Turkey, I forgot about TV.
No reception except for the big city ( Fethiye ) and level zero.
After waching a film where even a barking dog was dubbed by a stupid women's voice I ditched the TV.
But the virus had caught me. After all, film is a fine form of art.
So now, I recuperate a life devoid of TV.
Sorry, a life devoid of film.
Now I am totally addicted.
No TV, thank you very much.
A good film, oh boy did I miss a lot. Almost as good as a book. And finaly I have the time.
 
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