1322 British TV

I definately miss English telly....just spent a fortune on Ebay buying videos and dvds of tv programmes.....i find that if I'm speaking Italian all day , I want a bit of English in the evening to relax ....not so much during the summer but once winter is here will want to watch a bit of TV.
My German friend is the same ...she has satelite tv tuned to German. Keep meaning to look into the Sky thing.....just haven't got round to it yet.

Hi Alex and Lyn

We have a SKY box and card on the Costa del Sol and pick up all the UK channels.

I had thought we could just take the box with us to Puglia and have another dish installed pointing at the right satellite? Maybe not : ((

We don't watch a lot ... but you're right. When you just want to sit around and 'veg' out some rainy evening it's good to have the option to tune into an English programme.

Maybe someone out there can give some advice and the name of a good engineer.

Hi,

Can you actually watch ITV ot Channel 4 with a dish from Italy? What does one need? Anyody know?

David

There are quite a few threads on TV here
Anyway, in answer to the original question, not really, I have Italian Sky which gives me the news BBC world and BBC prime, many other channels have English soundtrack. The box and card from spain (I presume you are paying in England) when properly aligned will probably still work, providing you have a dish around 1 mtr. dia. BUT, I understand most UK programmes fade out mid afternoon. But you will get more info. by searching the forums, button above, near your name.

You need a rather larger dish to pick up BBC, ITV, E4, Disney. The other channels work with an 80cm dish in the north west. To be able to see all but ITV in Tuscany you would need a dish of 1.8meters although BBC, E4 and Disney are only able to view during the day due to the signal from the Astra 2D satellite. All the way down in Puglia though you would need a huge dish. I think someone in Rome got it working with a 2.5M dish.

[QUOTE=Davide & Ursula]Does anybody miss ITV, BBC or channel 4?

Davide[/QUOTE]
Not really, but we have Sky Ital so can get a fix of programmes from all above mentioned channels via BBC Prime (it buys programmes from Channel 4 etc.)when we feel the need!

Hi everyone,

I bought a sky box in England and a freeview type Sky card (Box and card cost £110 and then there is nothing more to pay). I am in Verona and using a 85cm dish I pick up BBC1, ITV, Channel 4 and 5 and a few others such as ITV2 and 3. I lose BBC1 about 2100 hours and ITV about 1800 hours, although sometimes we pick everything up all evening, depending on the weather. However I pick up 4 and 5 at any time, even through storms. You can also pick up the BBC radio stations etc. We live on the ground floor of a block of flats and the dish is on our balcony, we are also surrounded by other flats so we are quite pleased with the stations we get.

Ciao for now

I'm told that if you live in southern Italy then you will need a dish between 3.5 and 4.2 meters in diameter. This should give you full reception of Astra 2D 24/7, this should include all the UK terrestrial channels and all the Sky movie and sports channels.

We'll be trying it when we get relocated and will let you know!

Bob

Jesus, 3.5 to 4.2 meters, do you realise how big and expensive that is?

Honestly you would be far better of with Sky Italia, you get lots of English and American tv to watch, you get to practice your italian and watch Miss Italia on Rai uno which is worth it on it's own if you ask me. :)

I had sky uk here for a while on a 1m dish and to be honest it just made me feel isolated and excluded as I never got to watch any local/national Italian news.

Hi Sam

I think I'm with you on this one. We have SKY UK in Spain and hardly ever watch any Spanish T.V. (unless it's sport, better coverage of international football)

On reflection we should have as it would have helped enormously with learning the language.

Not too late to go native for the grand puglia adventure though ;-)

I heard there is an internet company that, for a monthly fee of course, can get you all South African (my wife's very pleased), Australian and UK channels via ADSL.

As soon as I know more I will let you know. Let me know if you are interested.

Davide

If you just have a portable, I presumme all the channels are Italian only. So if you get Sky Italia, isnt it going to be expensive when you arnt there fulltime? Also do Italians have a freeview channel? I guess a portable with DVD player is an option. I must admit it is lovely chilling out at night in front of CNN or BBC worldwide, if only because I also feel on holiday watching these channels. Hummm must remember to pack the games.

Umm some of us are here full time... :)

oooowwwwww that hurt
wish I was there full-time

[QUOTE=elainecraig]Also do Italians have a freeview channel?[/QUOTE]
Yes, Elaine, the Italians do have 'free to-air' terrestrial digital TV. You can buy boxes here, for about 85 Euros, or bring one over from the UK and it should work, as far as I know. I beleive that the service has CNN and BBC World.

Marc, cheers mate. I'm going to be making up Ikea furniture and I dont know if I'll have the energy for a conversation every night.

Hi Marc (and everyone else)

Is there a website that would show the available free to air digital channels available in Itay ?

Thanks, Lesley

You can check here [url]http://www.digitale-terrestre.com/[/url] but you need to first select your area. I only get 21 of the channels listed while a friend 15 minutes away gets 49.

We merrily bought a digibox (in Italy) and plugged it in hoping to get the italian free-to-air channels, only to disocver that it doesn't work without a card. Does anyone know how we get one of those? (Someone suggested we need to pay the TV licence, but I don't even know how to start with that one).

hi, we lived in Tuscany, and brought our UK sky box with the card (naughty) plus we installed a gigantic dish (1.5 metres) as we were very far and BBC has just obscured the outside of the UK on purpose. We watched all 5 proper UK channels. We bought the dish online from a distant shop in Italy, and the motor to move it from Korea!

Interesting to read everyone's experiences and queries here. Still leaves us wondering what will ACTUALLY work here in Abruzzo (near Atri)! We are living here full time but can't afford to pay minimum of 22 euros a month for SKY channels we won't watch. We already watch 15 Italian channels fine on our portable TV. What we really want to get is BBC Radio 4 (or failing that, which seems likely, BBC World Service). Our local satellite dealer says we can't get ANY other UK channels here anyway, so it'll be that and BBC World tv. A dish will cost about 150 euro plus installation. Anyone in the area know anything different???

[QUOTE=selva]Interesting to read everyone's experiences and queries here. Still leaves us wondering what will ACTUALLY work here in Abruzzo (near Atri)! We are living here full time but can't afford to pay minimum of 22 euros a month for SKY channels we won't watch. We already watch 15 Italian channels fine on our portable TV. What we really want to get is BBC Radio 4 (or failing that, which seems likely, BBC World Service). Our local satellite dealer says we can't get ANY other UK channels here anyway, so it'll be that and BBC World tv. A dish will cost about 150 euro plus installation. Anyone in the area know anything different???[/QUOTE]

You should be able to get the freeview box and dish for under 100 euro,from supermarkets or electronics stores, it is possible to fit your self and align to a sattelite, there are some strange "English channels" available free to air, I remember an Egyptian station broadcasting films in English, you just have to play for a while with the options.. Good Luck. I think you may be able to get some radio stations via the internet too.

[QUOTE=selva]...What we really want to get is BBC Radio 4 (or failing that, which seems likely, BBC World Service).[/QUOTE]
You can listen to BBC Radio 4 online ([url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/)[/url]. Just click at the top right of the screen on "LISTEN LIVE"

does anyone know a website we can access to listen to italian radio-speech if possible.my son is trying to learn italian and it would be helpful for him to listen whilst he is chatting on MSN.

I'm looking to make the move to Italy from southern Spain. Now that ITV has gone Free to Air, I have all the BBC channels plus ITV1, 2, 3 and ITV4, as well as the usual free to airs. I have installed the new 'small dish' system thats out from [url]www.Soleil-Satellite.Co.Uk[/url]. I'm on the Costa del Sol with a 75cm dish, where the others use the expensive 1.4metres. This system is working in all weathers and seems a better alternative to the Digibox with a big dish. Has anyone else any results?