Freesat on the Costa Blanca

Expat 1

Hi everyone,
Be gental with me. I live in the Torrevieja area on the costa blanca our urb has just had a 1.9m community dish fitted and a friend of mine is going to bring over a Bush HD Freesat box 4 me will i recieve most of the free channels or all of them and will it be easy to tune in.

Many Thanx,

Expat 1

Analoguesat

The Costa Blanca is in a very poor signal strength area for Astra 2D which carries the BBC ITV & C4 programmes.

According to info here in the Astra 2 fringe reception sub forum a 1.9m dish will not give 24/7 reception in several areas around the Costa Blanca zone..

Analoguesat's message to the world Analogue forever!

Tivù

The Bush HD Freesat Box should, apart from the Astra 2D reception problem, be straightforward to install.

The EPG and other stuff key to the box operability are transmitted from Eurobird 1 which, I believe, should not be a particular problem of itself.

Just for clarity, the actual Channels you get are substantially the same ones as Sky boxes get - just by a slightly different means - so whatever people tell you about the availability or otherwise of Channels from Astra 2D on Sky Boxes applies equally well.

davemurgtroyd

Not quite true Gordon - Sky and freesat can use different versions of Five and I believe channel 4 which are from different satellites which can lead to either box not receiving a channel that the other can.

Analoguesat

Freesat uses the Astra 2D fta version of C5.

All uk versions of C4 also come off 2D - its the Irish versions that are ftv on 2A.

Analoguesat's message to the world Analogue forever!

Tivù

Ay - hence "substantially"

But you are, of course, correct

Expat 1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanx Peeps for reply,
At the moment i'm using a Smart Enigma X5 box supplied by Torresat a local company who rebroadcast the signal to us but when i auto search for Astra 2 Sat i don't pick up some of the freesat chanls i see advertised on the freesat website could this be the box is not very good,satalite dish and eqp not good or just where we are.
Do the guys over here really know what they are doing or are they just here to earn a quick buck ?

Topper

You will not get anything from Astra 2 from the re-broadcast equipment as the dish is not pointing at Astra 2, if it is a re-broadcast company then you will only get what they rebroadcast. They are regularly being taken down so I would not spend too much money with them as you could have your fingers burnt

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Formerly toppervte33h
whose six pack has turned into a keg

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irart

Expat 1, can I refer you to this site _http://www.satandpcguy.com/ which is run by a member of this forum who is based on the Costa Blanca. You may find it very helpful.

Huevos

On that you will get 24 hour reception of 2D verticals. Normally around there you get around 9.6dB C/N on verticals with that setup. You will probably get no horizontals at all, or if you are very lucky maybe a couple of hours starting at 6pm. That means no BBC2, Channel 4, or Five on a Freesat box.

Huevos

Reception is very different where he is. He's 200 kilometres further north. What's his screen name by the way?

woborny

And the receiver you are using may not have all the 90plus frequencies used for UK TV stored in its memory so it may not be able to scan for all the channels.

And you will only be able to pick up some of the channels at certain times of the day, mainly as you will not be able to receive them until a certain time of the day...like BBC2,3,4 which may only be available on your 1.8m dish mid to late evening...if you are lucky! so choose your time for scanning carefully.

But the CB is a strange area...where I am in Gandia I have 2Dh's from about 4am til 6pm. Yet further south (like Torre) you start to gain these 2Dh's from that time (6pm). Yet I have also managed to get BBC2 on an 110cm dish at 4pm 10kms south of Valencia (El Saler), yet move a few kms inland (Montroi) and its back to big dish land!

Re Freesat installation: plug it it, connect it up, perform the wizard, input a postcode (Channel ISlands BBC and ITV1 regions are known to be the best "performers" on the CB so pop in a Jersey post code, JE1 works well, and your 101 and 103 will be set for these stronger BBC1 and ITV1 regions. Then you can pop your Freesat box into nonfreesat mode and scan 12480 and get TTon4, the freetoair signal for C4...for who ever long that stays aorund for....

Sadly there are a few that appeared in the wake of the rebroadcast issues last summer that popped up to earn a quick buck, and are no longer around. There are a few good guys around, like the chap in irarts link.

PaulR

With regards to the 1.9m dish (a strange size that) what make is it? There is a wide difference in performance on these medium/large dishes and a poor make like Fortecstar will only perform about as well as decent one a couple of sizes smaller.

I strongly suspect that a lot of the problem in the CB is down to poor quality dishes, badly installed and shoddily aligned.

PaulR As I get older I find myself thinking about the hereafter - I go into a room and then wonder what I'm here after.

Huevos

It going to be a Famaval 1.8m. Round here they measure them to the rim, rather than just the dish face, to try to make them sound more impressive.

ralphmagno

hello,
a rebroadcasting service doesn't come from a satellite at all but from a montain,hill or tall building.
there is one that does come from a satellite but we are not allowed to talk about this here.
they take 10 or 12 of the best free channels and multiplex them on a digital packet and send them out.
it is a mmds system and requires a 30 to 60 cm dish pointing to the repeter.
if one has no room to install a 2 meter dish then they have installed a 30 cm dish and pay some one a monthly sub.
usualy 1 watt fm from a hill or montain is good for 15 km using a 30 cm dish and 60 for about 30 km if you have good line of sight.
ralph