Best SAT TV in UK

Mullinsky

I am in Canada but moving to England in a few months for a few years. I have been fiddling with satellite dishes and receivers and all the other needed hardware to get free-TV for about 3 years now. However, I have no idea what is going on in Europe or the UK encryptionwise or Satellite companywise. What is the best company to go with? I am looking for sports and pretty much whatever free english TV i can find. What is the best receiver to buy, the best card to by etc etc. I have been reading the forums and I understand the topics cause they are the same that we have over here in Canada, but the equiment is all new to me, I need to get pointed in the right direction. Any help is much apprciated. Thanks.

rolfw

Welcome to the forum Mullinsky.

Unfortunately, due to the transient nature of the European hobby, you need to build some flexibility into your system, what is available today, may not be tomorrow.

I would say that a motorised dish is pretty much a prerequisite, you then need to do a bit of reading as to which style of receiver suits your abilities and needs.

Many members swear by their Linux based receivers, some swear at them, but what is agreed, is that when brought to heel, they are superb tools. Many other members use CI receivers and CAMs, some with cards also, whilst others use receivers with embedded UCAS modules which can be flashed to update on a regular basis.

The choice is yours.

Rolf If you enjoy our site, you can help support it by wearing our unique branded merchandise, you can do this by clicking on my baseball cap, making a direct donation with Paypal by clicking on the Donation button below, or using our site supporting advertisers, to do this, click on the central image below. Follow us on Twitter, click on the twitter image.

Mullinsky

I have tested bell Expressvu, Dish network and DirecTV. In all 3 cases you need a receiver, with an open card. You need an ISO programmer for Dish and Bell and an Atmel chip programmer for DTV (directTV). You need to extract the Box keys from the Dish and Bell receivers, these keys are the magical numbers that open up the channels for you, you must have a good patch placed on your Dish or Bell image and then program it to your card with the box keys and receiver info edited in manually with computer software. I have bought a lot fo Rom 10 cards from europe because they they can be used just the same as the ones over here. I have used PVR's for all of these sat providers too. I have also used free-to-air receivers and do not require cards, you just program the actual receiver directly from the computer with an image, I believe you mentioned something like that. How big of a dish do you need, the biggest I have used is 140 cm's. How hard is it to install the motorized dishes? i just want a receiver that is easy to maintain and is popular, the more popular the receiver is the faster the fixes come out for them. What would you suggest. How often does the TV options change in the UK? Currently in Canada we are going through a card swap to nagra 2, the uS too for Dish network. So the options have changed maybe 2 times in the last 3 years. DirecTV came out with a card that has not been hacked yet, so everyone went over to Bell and Dish because there card swap is slow. Now Bell is halfway there and Dish is starting. What are these linux based receivers? What is the differences between them and just a regular receiver. How hard is it to come by the needed equipment in the Uk, like the cards and programmers and how risky is this hacking over there. It is not so bad here. Thanks for all your help.

rolfw

If you want things easy, then don't opt for a Linix based receiver, there is a section dedicated to them here, the Dreambox being the most popular.

Dish wise, if you go for a larger dish than 90cm, then you may need to obtain planning consent, a DiseqC motorised dish is relatively easy to install, see several threads in the Dish Installation section.

We are mainly talking about European providers here, the one broadcasting from the UK is not available, apart from with a subscription card, access to several others changes pretty regularly, there are loads of threads chatting about these, search for Multivision/TPS, Polsat, TV Cabo, ABSat.

Rolf If you enjoy our site, you can help support it by wearing our unique branded merchandise, you can do this by clicking on my baseball cap, making a direct donation with Paypal by clicking on the Donation button below, or using our site supporting advertisers, to do this, click on the central image below. Follow us on Twitter, click on the twitter image.