I got satellite installed last week, and I am quite happy with my decision. It’s not that Sky thing that everyone seems to be getting these days – I decided instead to just grab the stuff that’s going for free from orbit.
The satellite dish has two receivers, one for the Astra2 and one for Hotbird1-5. The main reason I got the service was because I was only managing on Southcoast Community Televsion, lacking any 24 hour news channel. Overnight, and without subscription I have access to BBC World, BBC News 24, ITN News Channel, Sky News, Sky News Ireland, Euronews (in 6 language streams) CNN, CNBC Europe, Bloomberg.
Besides that I have access to all the BBC regional variations of BBC1 and 2, BBC 3 (Little Britain), BBC 4 (Great documentaries), MTV ‘5’ (French one I think), MTV, VH1, Al Jazeera, Al-Iraqia, BBC Prime, Eurosport and many more English language stations including C-SPAN. It also has all the BBC and RTE radio stations in superb quality, and about 700 other radio stations. The total channel count for both satellites is about 1500 TV stations – no lack of choice there I guess.
Gavin,
Do you need two dishes pointing in different directions or do you have to move the dish? What kind of sat. box or receiver do you have? I recently moved into our new house and have the four Irish channels only so I am looking to do something similar. Sky want over 50 euros a month but I’d rather spend it on broadband.
Astra and Hotbird are in the same part of the sky so you can use one dish with two receivers – you will notice all the Polish immigrants using Hotbird – Astra2 is mostly English language channels. I am using a standard digital sat reciever (patchable) that I got for 100 euros with a SCART cable.
Where do you buy them from?
I’d missed this post… I think you know which rolling news channel to watch!