English Sky ??

09/22/2009 - 17:19

We have just moved and retired to Abruzzo, Jeff and Suzy, so far it has been a very hectic 2 months and a very steep learning curve. Now that the evenings are drawing in we would like to access English Sky, we have a box and the UK card which we are paying for, yet we can't receive anything. We have tried our local shop but they can't help, our Italian is not yet good enough to understand what the problem is. We would really appriciate any help or advice. Many Thanks

Topic

Living

Location

Abruzzo

Comment

Sorry if I am stating the obvious but have you got your dish pointed at the right degree and is it large enough?My dish is 1.5m for Northern Tuscany and as you are much further south I assume yours would need to be larger.Hope you get sorted.

We can't get English Sky here in Southern Marche so I'm not sure you'll be able to get it at all - sorry. Maybe someone who lives in Abruzzo can comment?

You will need a very large dish. 2.5m plus and even then its not guaranteed that you will receive a strong enough signal. Plus a dish of that size can easily be knocked out by high winds. You could consider changing to Sky Italia. You receive around 20 channels broadcast in English, sky news, bbc prime etc but not BBC123, ITV123etc. SKY UK broadcasts on Astra while SKY Italia is on the hotbird satellite.

A site called (I think) go connect provides an indirect link via the net......I'll find the real name for you.....12/13 euros per month

Hi its called Get connected www.getconnected.com and we've just had a months trial. They say you need at least 1mgb (think that's the term,)download speed which if we are lucky we get it but have managed to watch live tv with little interruption. It tends to depend on the day and time but its much better than when we trialled it last year so things are improving (our broadband speed hopefully!). Its 13.95 for a months trial and then if you sign up for monthly its 12.95. We wouldn't bother through the summer as never watch TV but Strictly Come Dancing is a favourite and the rugby during the autumn and winter and as we don't visit the cinema much we thought we would give it a try. We still watch Italian TV to help improve our language skills. Hope this helpsJo

Yo Jo!,What is your ACTUAL connection speed to the Internet?..............I'd be interested as I may go down this route myself(it does look GOOD!).............you can check your speed through the Speedtest site...........www.speedtest.netIt takes 2 minutes,.............. but you get an accurate reading...........Also,.............. is this 'access' legal ? (it seems a very indirect route?)Cheers,S

Hi Sprostini, I did the test this morning and it was 69, though when we tested it before we signed up it was around 73 - we have Alice 7 but never get anything like that! The service is good but we do get the odd 'buffering' sometimes when watching something you kind of get used to it. I believe the service is legal as they don't retransmit channels, and sorry I gave the wrong link, it should be www.getconnected.com.cy - I'll try and amend my earlier post as well. Hope this helps, JO

Hi Jo,Please try speedtest again ............I'm interested to know the other two measurements , the upload speed, and the download speed (the most important for receiving info), the 69 or 73 will be your 'ping' rate (not desperately important).I have a friend who has just got onto broadband here and is getting only half my speed, and another one gets 4 times my speed!Cheers,S

Hi Sprostini, 0.69 was my download speed and I've just checked it again sorry I suppose the 0 and the. were important! Duh. Upload is 0.27 and Ping is 69. Sorry if I confused you...Had problems last night when we wanted to watch strictly - but not sure if our server was working so will try again tonight. Si watches the grand prix on it mainly to listen to the english commentary! Its not brilliant but we only watch a few things so it suits us for a bit of entertainment every now and then.JO

Hi Jo........Yes it looks like the ADSL conection speed here in PSG is not the best, in the last few days I have spoken with 4 friends and they all seem to have a download speed of roughly the same as yours (just over .6 meg).............A friend in Santa Vittoria is getting EIGHT times that speed(4.6Mbps)!!I am usingidoka and that seems to be a constant 1.2mb, which is 'fine', but certainly not great ! I wonder if it is related to the distance from the telephone exchange?What is your contracted speed with 'Alice' ? I assume it says 'up to 7Mbps'??Cheers,Off to watch Liverpool............S

Hi, yes, it does say up to 7mbps but someone (with a lot more technical savvy than I have) says its v unlikely that anyone would get anything like that. Anyway its a lot better than dial-up!Jo

We live in central Abruzzo (Teramo province, close to the Gran Sasso) and we receive most of the British Sky channels fine on a one-meter dish most of the time. The reception tends to pixelate or fail completely when there's rain and a heavy overcast, but normally the signal strength and quality bars are at or near 100%.Some channels, such as the BBC, you definitely will not be able to receive in Abruzzo without a huge dish since those transmitting antennas are tightly focused on the British Isles. We're also unable to receive some Sky channels, but I'm not sure if this is intentional or due to imperfections in the transmitting antennas. Nor do I know if we would get them if we had a bigger dish.I understand that the imperfections in the transmitter mean that in fringe reception areas - such as Italy - you can have a good signal in one place, but no signal at all a few kilometers down the road.I do agree with Iritalia when he suggests that your first step is to make absolutely certain your dish is aimed correctly.If your local satellite shop is unable or unwilling to assist, I'd suggest that it might be helpful to connect up a cheap, generic satellite box to see if you can get the non-Sky channels available on Astra. Those channels seem to not be focused on the UK very tightly, so they're helpful for positioning the dish.How you proceed if you still have problems once you're certain the dish is pointed at the Sky satellite is something I'm not too sure about.One thing I do know is that you very definitely do not want to ever call Sky to ask for help with your problems. Receiving their channels outside the UK is contrary to your agreement with them and they will disable your subscription card if they believe you are using it in continental Europe.Al

http://www.dishpointer.com/ you will need to point at Astra for SKY and FREESAT 2D is the narrow beam that holds the EPG and is the key to getting Freesat in Italy with a huge dish.This is a great site... just find your house on the map, select satellite and all the directions are given for pointing your dish.

I have a set-top box that gives me Astra 2D and Hotbird but the programme listing information is not in a very friendly format. I just brought out and hooked up a spare Sky box and can get all the Astra channels with the Sky programme listing information which is really helpful.Unfortunately I don't think it receives the Hotbird channels, so it means we can't watch Italian TV to help with language learning. And of course my Sky viewing card doesn't work (but we knew that, didn't we).We have two dishes**, incidentally, neither of which is very big, but we are way up north in the lakes.I think on balance I would rather just have Italian TV and DVDs. It's just too easy to slip into watching too much telly - but at least it enables me to hone up my Soap-Avoidance skills.Terry** two dishes got married. The service wasn't up to much................................... ..................................but the reception was fantastic. (T. Cooper)

We get SKY HD in Calabria through a 80CM dish pointing at Astra 2. We were told that it was impossible but got the coordinates, gave them to our local guy who laughed and said he'd have a go, now we get everything but BBC and ITV2,3, etc.If you want BBC here you need a dish the size of the Denby Dale Pie (for you Yorkshire folk out there) so we have learnt to live without it. Get two dishes though and keep one for Italian TV, its a great way to learn the language if you choose wisely. There are full details on Insat on the web