FTA in Auckland New Zealand

[frank.kiwi]

Have just moved to New Zealand, normal Terrestrial TV is useless. Want to install a satellite dish for some fta channels. Obviously interested in English and maybe any spanish language channels that may be available. Anyone know of any site that may give me channel information. Would prefer to keep the dish size to not more than 1.8m.

 

[rolfw]

Not sure how much is available free to air in that region, probably best to look at a couple of the Southern hemisphere forums, there are a couple listed in the Links section under satellite forums.

 

[spiney]

try www.freetv.co.nz .

 

[Rentakill]

Hi Frank-Kiwi..

As far as FTA Satellite goes, you have a few sats to choose from. The Optus Birds, Optus B1 and Optus B3 have a few FTA services running.
B1 offers TVNZ's TV1 and Tv2 , Maori Tv, Nasa Tv, DwTv , CCTV english, aswell as a mix of FTA Radio stations.
Optus B3 offers via the Globecast service a mix of Ethnic services ranging from Thai, Russian, Dutch to Turkish and a few religeous..

AMC 23 has just come online with a few FTA services, aswell as Pas2.. theres a few things happening there too..

For a more local outlook on whats on in our part of the world, id recomend taking a look at Craig Suttons site, www.apsattv.com.
Craig has a fairly up to date site of what is current and what isnt .
Also, take a look at www.lyngsat.com.. and check out the South East Asia line up for Satellite services..

Remember, we're out on a limb here downunder.. We wont have anything near what you are used to seeing up there in the Northern Hemisphere.

All the Best..


Cheers:

 

[Channel Hopper]

Nice post Rentakill, very informative.

Why would the terrestrial be so bad down there ?Is it lack of quantity, or quality (or both ?)

 

[Rentakill]

Hi Channel Hopper

Good question.
The answer to that would probably due to the population here in Nz.
There is a Digital Terrestrial service running in the Main centre of Auckland, but not officially.. Only as a Test for possible Future plans for when they have to switch off the current Analogue VHF/UHF services.
Actaully the terrestrial service in Auckland was origianally set up for when Auckland was the host for the last Americas cup, mainly for service to all the million dollar yauhts that were parked along the viaduct basin.

Terrestrial digital would be the way to go in Nz, as the current Transmission chain throughout the whole country has around 95% coverage, and is off very good plan and structure.

Another problem is the amount of services that can be put in front of the population here in Nz, after all there is only around 5 million in population.. 1.4Million in Auckland alone.

Getting european services to our end of the globe usually inviolves a dedicated or other separate sevice provider to get the feed here.. If we had a view of your Astra fleet, then things would be a hell of a lot cheaper to set up.

Up untill the last few years our local skies have been fairly empty with regard to Sats.. Although there is a few coming online now.
Most of our international services we receive would be mainly off the AsiaSat flleet which are located about 5 deg above our horizon. Those Asia sats have fairly good coverage of Europe and have a slight overspill into Nz, but are very hard to receive due to there geographical location.

The next providers would be off The Pas 2 and 8 sats, followed by a few off the Intelsat birds.. These are fairly easy to receive, but are usually temp feeds and are encrypted in PowerVu..


I hope this answers a few questions on our status downunder


Cheers

Ren

 

[Channel Hopper]

Thanks.

I hope there are enough other hobbies for people to get on with down there. HAs broadband been rolled out over the islands ?