TJExcalibur said:
As I am a newbie when it comes to satellite TV etc I have to pick everyones brains or pay dearly for my mistakes. I would not say money is no object but I always believe you only get what you pay for, therefore I would go without something else to get what is best for my needs. Bearing in mind I may be moving to SW France within a couple of years and now live on the UK Souith coast to give you some clues. I want a good satellite system that receives as many satellites and TV/Radio channels as possible. My reason is because I like to twiddle and tinker and always get facisnated by modern technology. I have a large flat roof facing SSW and can see the IOW if I climb onto my main roof. There are a couple of large oak trees down the garden but I think the dish positioning will miss them. Now, what would you suggest and I really have very little idea aboiut it all, despite reading up a bit, so much information simply boggles the mind.
Many people will ask for more info: like what's you budget, what do you want to get in terms of channels - as many as possible is a bit vague, speak you the french lingo? Maybe german?
To get many channels you'll need - a bigger dish than a sky minidish! In view of your move to France probably 1.0M+, so when you get to France you can get the BBC from Astra 2d (Check reports
http://www.astra2d.co.uk/ fro France). Then you'll need a motor to spin it around the sky to get max number of channels. I would suggest a receiver with a couple of CI (Common Interfaces) that can do both Digital and Analogue (Analogue because the French national channels are still available fully free to Air from Atlantic Bird at 5Degrees West - and you may wish to learn some French before living there?) A couple of CI's will give you the option of putting a CAM or two in there to decode a whole heap of channels. I guess some will suggest you an all singing all dancing Dreambox 7000S as a fiddletastic receiver, your twiddles are endless and much fun (and frustration) can be had with such a unit.
Your options at this stage are infinite. Meanwhile you live on the south coast, you can pull in quite a few sats on a 60cm dish, I have Atlantic Bird 5W, Astra 19.2E, Astra 28.2E, and Hotbird 13E, that's probably nearly 1000 FTA channels.
CTS - ('close to soton', i.e. not far from you!)
