Sat TV on the boat

[sailorsmum]

Hello - anyone advise me please? Living in the port of San Remo Italy on 45ft. vessel. Would love to receive UK tv. Many boats have dishes attached to the dock, some on poles, but suspect they watch Italian tv. Have made a couple of enquiries here and told "no problem", but first, I do not understand what I need, and secondly,
prices vary enormously. I want just the basic channels, not bothered about Sky. Someone suggested I get a system used by truckers.

Anyone throw any light on this for me please?

Thanks.

 

[nimbusgb]

A 1 metre dish on a tripod and you can use sky and freesat decoder boxes to pick up signals over most of Europe. The best tool to have is an audible tuning indicator or at the very least a field strength meter.

Setting up is a matter of working out the required elevation on the mount, getting the polarization of the LNB right and and pointing the dish at the bird.

 

[Marlin]

This site gives some info about the channels available across Europe from 'our' satellite. http://www.astra2d.com/overseas.html It doesn't look too good for the UK channels in San Remo at first glance, but if you read all the info you'll be able to search for further info and perhaps local knowledge. I used to get UK channels in the Netherlands with normal Sky mini-dish and hardware but you're a lot further away than that so might require a big dish and some luck. I got away with aligning mine with the signal meter shown on the TV from the decoder, but you are likely to need an installers signal meter (beeps louder when well aligned). The dish needs to be very precisely aligned, so you won't stand a hope on the boat and may well struggle on a floating pontoon.

I got a used dish, decoder box and remote from ebay, then a Sky Freesat card from Sky using a UK address. I have seen some Freesat packages sold new for reasonable prices so they may be a good option, and some may allow you to view other satellites, whereas a Sky box is locked to UK channels only.

Good luck.

 

[maxi77]

We had Sky in our marina in the Algarve with the dish fixed to the pile which was not that bad. Alignment was not easy and the local aerial man used a portable osciloscope hang from his neck to get it right.

 

[BAtoo]

Hello - anyone advise me please? Living in the port of San Remo Italy on 45ft. vessel. Would love to receive UK tv. Many boats have dishes attached to the dock, some on poles, but suspect they watch Italian tv. Have made a couple of enquiries here and told "no problem", but first, I do not understand what I need, and secondly,
prices vary enormously. I want just the basic channels, not bothered about Sky. Someone suggested I get a system used by truckers.

Anyone throw any light on this for me please?

Thanks.

Whilst living aboard - in a marina - for a while I used a Maplins Camping Portable Satellite Kit which had everything in it - dish, decoder, basic pointing aid (but I also bought a better one), rail clamp Etc.

Its Here: http://www.maplin.co.uk/camping-and-caravanning-satellite-suitcase-system-217921

Best aligning device was to use this site: http://www.dishpointer.com/

You set your location, choose your satellite and it gives the direction to point (mine was over the 3rd boat from the end on the trot opposite.. ) )

Reception was good most of the time, if it got really windy it would drop out in the gusts.

I know you are not in the UK but it gives you an idea....

 

[agurney]

A 1 metre dish on a tripod and you can use sky and freesat decoder boxes to pick up signals over most of Europe. The best tool to have is an audible tuning indicator or at the very least a field strength meter.

Setting up is a matter of working out the required elevation on the mount, getting the polarization of the LNB right and and pointing the dish at the bird.

San Remo looks far enough north that a 1 metre should be OK. I was setting up a satellite system in the south of Spain last week but could only receive a couple of UK channels on Astra 28.2E (Sky News and a shopping channel) with a 1.5m dish.

You'll need a dish, LNB, and free-to-air DVB-S receiver. No need for a freesat receiver as that only extra it gives you is a fancy programme guide.

Lidl and Aldi regularly have complete kits for around £50 and include a tuner, which is indispensible. If you get one of those kits and the signal's not great then just increase the dish size, the electronics are universal.

 

[vyv_cox]

Absolutely everything you need to know is on this website. I have found it invaluable. You will be looking for Freesat pages.

Here's our experience additional to what is included on the site. I have an oval dish on my motorhome, 80 x 60 cm or something similar. It is mostly used on Astra 2D for BBC and ITV. We have used it as far east as Preveza, where it picked up BBC radio, Sky and BBC News and S4C! In Ancona on the east coast of Italy we watched some BBC TV. In Austria and Switzerland, and all down the French west coast we receive a perfect signal. Good reception around Marseilles, so I would expect much the same in San Remo.

 

[ffiill]

Any FTA(free to air) system will work- those in a suitcase are best.
Of course if you are rich you can get an auto tracking system which locks onto and follows satellite.
Personally prefer to listen to radio or read a good book.
Or these days use a wifi link to my laptop.

 

[V1701]

An alternative to satellite if you have good internet access is services like BBC iPlayer & tvcatchup which can be accessed from outside UK, do a forum search on "tvcatchup"...

 

[Ex-SolentBoy]

An alternative to satellite if you have good internet access is services like BBC iPlayer & tvcatchup which can be accessed from outside UK, do a forum search on "tvcatchup"...

I stand to be corrected, but I dont think iplayer works outside of the UK.

 

[st599]

I stand to be corrected, but I dont think iplayer works outside of the UK.

The public service funded one doesn't, the commercial one does.

 

[Finesse II]

Satellite TV in France

The public service funded one doesn't, the commercial one does.

Where do I find the "commercial I player" please
Can I get Freeview via satellite in France

Thanks

Finesse II

 

[affinite]

Dont think it will work on a boat

I'd love to be proved wrong but I dont think you will get much joy with iPlayer on a boat. There are various ways around the UK restriction using proxy services etc and they might be OK with a decent cable or ADSL broadband connection but over Marina or Cafe WiFi. I found it unwatchable when I tried last year.
PS same with Vodafone 3G

I actually tried watching a World Cup rugby match on ITV Player in a window the size of a business card before my wife declared me totally insane and dragged me to a bar instead.

 

[Finesse II]

Thanks I will try a Sat dish with freesat Humax from home as another option from but I have ordered a WFI booster as well.

Finesse II

 

[duncan99210]

You can get iPlayer overseas if you use something like http://expatshield.com/ to cloak your location. Needs a reasonably fast connection to support the bandwidth requirement; we can get it to work sometime here in Messi but could get it most of the time when we were in Corfu.

 

[prv]

I'd love to be proved wrong but I dont think you will get much joy with iPlayer on a boat. There are various ways around the UK restriction using proxy services etc and they might be OK with a decent cable or ADSL broadband connection but over Marina or Cafe WiFi. I found it unwatchable when I tried last year.
PS same with Vodafone 3G

Just tried it over 3G on my phone. Works fine for me.

Will use quite a lot of data though, so make sure you have an appropriate tarif deal.

Pete

 

[ukmctc]

Hello - anyone advise me please? Living in the port of San Remo Italy on 45ft. vessel. Would love to receive UK tv. Many boats have dishes attached to the dock, some on poles, but suspect they watch Italian tv. Have made a couple of enquiries here and told "no problem", but first, I do not understand what I need, and secondly,
prices vary enormously. I want just the basic channels, not bothered about Sky. Someone suggested I get a system used by truckers.

Anyone throw any light on this for me please?

Thanks.

get the sat in a box system, order from Maplin, Lidl or Argos, costs £50-£99 depending on where you buy it. All you need is a TV and be able to point at one of five satalites listed on the manual, in uk its Astra 28.2, everythings in the box and ours in mounted on the aft rail we get all the uk channels plus 100's of others worldwide.

 

[RichardS]

get the sat in a box system, order from Maplin, Lidl or Argos, costs £50-£99 depending on where you buy it. All you need is a TV and be able to point at one of five satalites listed on the manual, in uk its Astra 28.2, everythings in the box and ours in mounted on the aft rail we get all the uk channels plus 100's of others worldwide.

I put up my own dish about 25 years ago (the old BSB system) and spent ages up a ladder getting the alignment spot on by trial and error. A fraction of a degree either way and the signal was lost. How do you keep the dish in alignment on a boat?

Richard

 

[Nostrodamus]

Where do I find the "commercial I player" please
Can I get Freeview via satellite in France

Thanks

Finesse II

We are in La Rochelle in France. We have a 60cm dish and Humax receiver.
We get about 30 British channels + radio channels. The dish is mounted on a small pole in the cockpit. After the initial set up we did a couple of months ago all we do is point the dish roughly where we think the Sat is, turn to BBC 1, and move the dish until the picture comes up. Takes about 10 seconds and that is the strongest signal so all the other channels work. We even get the HD channels with no problem and get a very good picture.

 

[BrianH]

I put up my own dish about 25 years ago (the old BSB system) and spent ages up a ladder getting the alignment spot on by trial and error. A fraction of a degree either way and the signal was lost. How do you keep the dish in alignment on a boat?
Richard

I don't think you could very well as the alignment is critical with weak signals. It would depend on sheltered mooring, line tension and tidal range to keep the boat exactly aligned within fractions of a degree for a viable signal strength.

In the Italian Veneto/Friuli area I have my dish antenna on a pole on the fixed pier to which I lie stern-to. Whilst at my home in Switzerland I receive Astra 2D (28.2°E) with a 60cm dish, no way does it work for me in NE Italy, but that is also with a 60cm antenna, anything larger for the location is impracticable.

The Astra 2D beam, the only one with all the FTA UK channels, is tightly focused on the UK:

Instead I am aligned on Astra 1 (19.2°E) with most of the German-language channels (I speak German) but also a sprinkling of English-speaking news channels (BBC World, Euro-News, Bloomberg, CNN, etc.).