80 cm dish

[johngra]

Would this size dish pick up the bbc, itv, in the southern spain area, was in a large store in torrevieja recently that were selling digital reciever and dish for 200 euro advertising that you can recieve these channels, I am on the top floor of an apartment complex in this area.
Many thanks

 

[Channel Hopper]

Wrong section but yes, assuming you have a Sky card

And a dedicated skydigital receiver O-Ha

 

[johngra]

sorry channel hopper first timer, so you think there would be no problem getting these stations, I have a sky digital subcription at home, if I brought my card over to spain and got a pace 2600 and a 1 metre dish I should get all these

 

[PoloMint]

An 80 cm dish is about the limit for Astra2D in the south of Spain, during the world cup 2002 people were renting out sky digibox systems for BBC/ITV to watch the matches and they used a 1m dish, however that gave perfect reception of BBC and ITV.

Does the €200 include the Pace2600 or other Sky digibox? If not then don’t get it, assuming it comes with a receiver (and it should at that price!) it won’t work for ITV as it needs a Sky card. Carrefour are selling an 80cm dish here with a tiny cheapo FTA digital receiver for well under €100, but it wouldn't work for ITV.

If you get a Sky digibox you won’t get all the Sky channels on that dish, only those on south beams and 2D. Check here for listings of which channels are on which beams http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/skyuk.html - over to the right of the table it tells you the beam.

If you have plenty of roof space and are investing in a digibox it might be better to pay a bit more and get a 1.2m dish, that’s what we use in the far south of Spain and it gets the majority of Sky channels, only loosing a few of the North beam ones. A 1.7 would only just get everything here.

EDIT: your dish size changes between your posts, is it 80cm or 1m?

 

[johngra]

Hello polomint,
Was going to get a 1m dish as I heard I would have a better chance to pick up stations, the pace 2600 is not included in the price, if you think the 1.2 would be better with the pace 2600 would that give me bbc1 and itv, I have a full subscription with sky at home and I could bring the card over.
Many thanks

 

[PoloMint]

A 1m dish should give you BBC and ITV in your area, I think, so if that is really all you want then it should do. I’m not sure how far east Torrevieja is, the further east you go the harder it is to receive BBC and ITV. You should try and ask some local people who have Sky what dish size they have before buying one, or failing that make sure that the installer is confident that the dish is big enough. Unless you are installing it yourself, in which case you should definitely find out for sure that it is big enough before buying.

However even if a 1m dish is big enough and you have a full subscription then you are going to be missing out on many channels that you could receive with just a slight increase in dish size. Also a 1.2m would stand up to heavy rain better than a 1m, when it rains hard here ITV is one of the first channels to show signal loss, so with a smaller dish you would notice that sooner.

Did €200 include the fitting of the 80cm dish? If so how much are they charging for a 1 and 1.2m dish?

One point about your subscription, if you leave your digibox in the UK and bring your card to use in another one here, it will only work for the FTV channels and the Sky family package channels. The card will not show premium subscription channels such as the Sky Sport and Sky Movie channels, as it is tied one box only for those channels. If you want to watch them in Spain you could however phone Sky and tell them the details of your box here (pretending to be in the UK with a new box of course), but then the card wont work in the UK for premium channels and you will once again have to phone Sky to tie it back to your old box there. This isn’t actually as awkward as it sounds, but it is something to consider.

EDIT: Sorry johngra but I have just been looking at a map, you are a lot further east than I thought, what side of Torrevieja will you be using the dish? Torrevieja is getting close to Alicante and that area has big problems with ITV reception

 

[PoloMint]

Okay so Torrevieja is not at all where I thought it was (It’s right next to somewhere called San Pedro, and there is one of those here, but it is not the same one) and so I started panicking, it is much nearer to Alicante than I thought, and like I said that is really not a good place for 2D reception.

So a more exact position of where the dish would be used is important, more important still don’t buy anything until you find out for sure it is big enough.