Satellite tv in Europe

I have to admit I'm pretty confused by which dish would cover Europe (would need to cover Austria as we plan to stay there this Summer for a while) and which system to buy.

I don't have a great deal to spend, so any advice would be much appreciated.

Probably not the advice you want but why not watch the sat tv for the country you are in?
Even without language skills you'll be able to see the weather forecast - Scorchio

I use an 80cm portable dish on a tripod fed directly into my Avtex TV aimed at Astra 2 and get freesat at least to the Dordoyne but I have not tried it in Austria.  An 'Easifind' LNB makes it so easy to set up when needed.  The time it takes to set up makes purchasing a fixed system to my van not cost effective.

I also use an 80cm dish on a tripod with a £55 Satlink WS-6906 satellite finder. we have had good reception as far as beyond Barcelona. set up takes about 5 minutes, we have found it more difficult beyond this point to pick up BBC and ITV  channels but still find some english
all the way down to Murcia.

hectormain wrote:I have to admit I'm pretty confused by which dish would cover Europe (would need to cover Austria as we plan to stay there this Summer for a while) and which system to buy.

I don't have a great deal to spend, so any advice would be much appreciated.

You don't mention what you want to watch. Give some detail and you will get appropriate advice.

I too am in a similar position, being  at the very start of my search for a Dish, and have spent hours looking at the wealth of information available here and on other forums.

My perception ( and this could be way, way off ), is that unless l am prepared to stick Jodrell Bank on my roof l can more or less forget about getting a decent, regular signal for English speaking channels once l am South of Bordeaux. 

This leads me to the next bit - if the above is more or less accurate, is there really any point in say spending £1,300 - 1,400.00 on a dish when l can get the Snipe variety at a fair bit less. From what l can read, the Snipe is (signal wise ) very reliable down to Bordeaux, just like all the rest, and if reception thereafter is all a bit iffy on most other dishes, would l be wasting money on forking out an additional few hundred pounds.

I might add that my budget is at about the £1,300 to £1,400 mark and either a Dome or collapsable = no real preference.

Considered and experienced views would be most welcome.

What do you want to watch? If its the Astra 2 channels targeted at the UK then you won't get robust coverage in the south or far east of France (or outside those boundaries) whatever you have.

I moved from a tripod mounted dish to a roof mounted Camos Crankup Plus three years ago and am extremely satisfied (the aerial uses the same technology as the Snipe).

I regularly watch German RTL on Astra 1 even at home for F1, a lot of films and programmes shown on continental TV are of UK or US origin and I can live without an English sound track. Astra 1 has BBC and Sky English news channels.

Terrestrial digital TV in France and Italy is very good and a lot of stuff is transmitted with dual sound tracks, if you have an Avtex TV you can switch between sound tracks and often find English

parigby wrote:
My perception ( and this could be way, way off ), is that unless l am prepared to stick Jodrell Bank on my roof l can more or less forget about getting a decent, regular signal for English speaking channels once l am South of Bordeaux. 

In which case you might like to look at the latest flat array from Oyster - Cytrac DX with a 56X56 special array (honeycomb structure - ex military technology!)  and which they claim provides unrivaled reception in all weathers (unlike current dishes which can be affected by rain etc.) and covers almost all of Europe! It appears better that the current 85cm dish.
Prices appear to be about £1500.
Liam

Liam, its the same technology as Camos and Snipe and Vanbitz only claims English coverage 3/4 of the way into France which is the same as the aforementioned.

I know  - but that's not what Oyster show on their web site! 
http://ten-haaft.com/rmc-en/product/premium-series-reception-range-oyster-65/
They show all of France and beyond and indeed the Oyster rep confirmed this when speaking to him at the October NEC show - he stated that it was superior and would outperform all current dishes!! I am referring to reception range 2 from France.

I got the price wrong - it is £1800!!

Liam

That yellow line is only for Sky. The red line for other UK channels just touches France.

Peter and Liam   -   thanks for your input. l am starting to come round to the idea that at my budget, l've kind of got to forget getting further much south than Bordeaux :  if however l am prepared to increase it by approx 50%, then l could achieve my ultimate goal.  

As always with a question of this nature, the answers invariably throw up many more questions for the OP to personally answer.

I know this is an old post but really useful. My 85cm Autosat system dumped all it's information and now cannot find any sats. I was thinking of getting a new control unit but won't bother now. I fitted a terrestrial Teleco Tele x2 unit which works fine in Spain and has picked up over 60 channels at any one time ( most are not that good like ours) but some are broadcast with dual language.