TV antenna parabolica or normal?

If your house is in a mountainous area, you first need to check whether you can get terrestrial broadcast television at all. It's possible that the hills will block signals to such an extent that you have no alternative to satellite TV. So do the houses near yours have aerials on the roof, satellite dishes or a mixture of both? Digitial Terrestrial Television, or DTT, is becoming the norm in Italy. This is the equivalent of the Freeview service in Britain. One of the strong points about DTT is that the picture and sound quality is excellent when everything is working properly, but the downside is that it's pretty much the case that you either have a good signal or you've got nothing usable at all. With old-fashioned analogue TV, a bad signal meant you had a poor quality picture, but you did at least have the option of watching the programme through a snowstorm. A bad DTT signal means a blank screen or something that looks like an animated cubist art installation. Of course, Italian DTT channels broadcast Italian television and Italian television generally just doesn't do subtitles. Instead, they dub programmes into Italian. If you're not huge telly watchers, maybe that's fine for you. If nothing else, it will probably help with learning the language. However, it is the case that some progammes are transmitted by Italian DTT broadcasters with both the dubbed Italian and original language audio tracks. If your digital television is set up correctly, I know it is possible, for example, to watch NCIS in English. Possibly not your cup of tea, but some people apparently find it entertaining. The alternative to DTT is Italian satellite television. Since we don't have this, I can't comment on the channels available, but I believe the selection is pretty much what you get from DTT plus a few more. You see TivuSat boxes in lots of places (supermarkets, electronics and DIY shops) and this is what you need if you want - or need - a satellite dish and you don't want to give money to that lovely Mr Murdoch. I believe some sort of registration is required when you set up a TivuSat box but, as I say, we don't use the service so my experience is limited. The alternative to Italian television is British satellite TV and this is something I do have experience with. If you live in the north of Italy, getting the UK Freesat service is not hugely difficult in technical terms and it does not require a dish much bigger than what's normally used in Britain. However, the further south you go, the more difficult it becomes to get a usable signal since the transmission by the satellite is focused on the British Isles. Because your house is in Lazio, it's very likely you won't be able to receive UK satellite TV without a pretty large dish. And by "large", I mean you should assume you'd need something around 2 metres in diameter or even larger if you want to get the same service as people in Britain using Freesat. You would get some English language channels with a smaller dish (say, 1 metre), but the choice is very limited and the programmes generally second-rate. While you don't mention radio, it might be of interest to know that you can, even with a relatively small satellite dish, get a large number of British radio stations, including all the BBC flavours. An alternative to getting TV via aerial or satellite dish is to do it via the internet. This is not possible for us and for many others living in rural areas due to the poor quality and dire reliability of our ADSL connection, but you might find that you can get broadband good enough to stream television. Again, this is not something we have, so I can't say much about it other than I know people who use it and they're very satisfied. You do need to do some technical fiddling about because, for licensing reasons, the UK television companies take measures which are supposed to allow only those living in Britain to watch their programmes, but these can be circumvented. For most people, it's also important to consider how you'll get the programmes to appear on your television as opposed to your computer monitor. Hope this is of some help. Al

Thank you so much Allan! A1 advice! It seems No.1 job is to see what the neightbours are able to get and how they do it! Rachel  

I reckon Allan should be downloadable as an 'Ap' for smart phones and stuff!

Rachel, depending on what you choose it may be worth looking at Satellite Internet and Telephone service as well (lots of info on the site for this), as most Rural areas have very poor ADSL signal from fixed landlines (ours averages about 0.7Meg on a good day) There are sevearl companies providing this service Eutelia, Italia WiFi etc which will provide a TV service as well.

Sprostini, it's clear that there are a lot of people in various bits of southern Europe who are - at the moment - able to get Freesat with dishes that aren't too big. We happen to be one of the households benefitting, although I'm not sure that our current obsession with spending a large part of the day watching back-to-back "Come Dine With Me" programmes is at all beneficial in any sense whatsoever... My suggestion of a big dish is because the conditions at the moment are not normal. Freesat is, for various reasons, currently being transmitted by a satellite which was not designed for the job it's doing. Therefore, the "footprint" is much bigger than the BBC and commercial channels want it to be in order for them to comply with their licensing deals with content providers. The last I read, the plan is for the current temporary satellite to be superseded by the planned Astra replacement around the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. The new satellite will have been designed to transmit signals focused quite tightly on the British Isles. If everything goes as the television companies want, people in southern Europe will then again find that they simply cannot get Freesat on anything like a "normal" dish. There is, of course, no guarantee that you'd be able to get a usable signal even if you paid thousands for a three metre dish. It's clear from the expat satellite forums that the signals are far from evenly distributed on the fringe of the footprint and being a few tens of kilometres in one direction or another can make a difference between getting a useful signal and getting rubbish. Al

Hi! We exchanged a pm a while ago and we discovered we will be practically neighbours! My suggestion is wait until you are here and see what the neighbours have.  This area SHOULD have gone digital a while ago, but I know a lot of people in the hilly, rural areas have NOT been able to pick up the signal despite having the right tv / digibox / whatever. Most of those people with problems can still pick up the "old" terrestial channels, but none of  the new ones available digitally.   I happen to have sky, so can the old (not new) terrestial channels on that atenna, but some programmes are blocked from time to time, although I'm not at all sure what criteria they use to decide what to block as it seems to vary so much! If you are not great TV watchers, then don't bother with any pay for tv if you can see the usual Rai channels etc - if nothing else it will help your Italian.  Have to admit however, that I am not Italian TV's greatest fan, although every so often it produces something really good (the Montalbano films for example).  Anyway, you can always listen to BBC radio via the internet if you want to keep up to date with news etc and  I have been told that if you mask your IP address (so it doesn't show up as being Italian) you would also be able to watch UK tv via the internet. Something I've not tried as I don't really understand what it means but.. If you do get Sky (and probably any other pay tv package) make sure that you note the date you sign the contract because if, at some future date you decide you want to opt out, you have to give x months notice (I think it's two) before the date that the contract is due too expire.  So, if you signed up in November  for example, you can't give notice in January a few years later intending to opt out in March! This kind of contract is quite common in Italy -  so always check carefully.  

Look - I've said it before - it is competely impossible and futile to cover all bases - which you are tryng to do. Who knows, when you get here, what the satellite/terrestrial options are going to be, or whether any of that stuff is going to be necessary when everything comes down the phone line or through a tiddly little microwave horn. If you want to feel future proofed, just ask the elctrician for a predisposition - which means he'll run a tube down from the roof to a box in the house. Then - if you need an aerial, or if you need a dish, there will be a tube to put the relevant cable into - you will probably never use it, but it won't have cost a lot. Basta