Receivers for Northern Spain

IanMCG

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Nowadays I travel regularly from the UK to León, northern Spain. I decided to get a 135cm dish installed and the techno with his Echostar box and 48% quality and 50% strength got a great reception and picture with the free to view channels. However, on a recent 4-day trip I took my Panasonic box and SKY card over and even though we spent an hour readjusting the dish and getting approx 60% quality and strength there were real problems in viewing FTV and channels on transborder 2D. The techno reckons that with a much better box it would be alright. However, he also thinks new good quality receivers with a SKY videocrypt decoder capability are not generally available in Spain. As the receiver is to stay in Spain (I just want to travel with my SKY card in my top pocket as it were) I would have preferred to have bought it there for warranty purposes. But beggars can´t be choosers and I am going to purchase a receiver here in the UK, so I would like to ask you all out there for your opinions on receivers of sufficient quality that would work out well given my situation.

I thank you all in advance for your comments,

Best wishes,

Ian
 

rolfw

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Welcome to the forum Ian, it is not quite as straightfoward as it would seem. The Sky Digital subscription card requires a receiver with an NDS CAM, you can use the card in a Dragon CAM, but it is not guaranteed to update, hence why most people use an official Sky digibox.

There are certain digiboxes which deal with weak reception better than others, there is a thread at the top of the section which I am moving this post to. :)
 

Topper

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Welcome to the forum IanMCG
I think you will find that 2D is a tight spot beam for UK and that is why you are having problems, if you read the forums there are plenty of threads pertaining to this. I would have thought 1.35 was a tad small for northern Spain but I am no expert I think you will get much more reliable info here at astra2d.com.

The techno is correct you will have purchasing difficulty in Spain as I think they are not supposed to be sold outside of the UK.

You can only pair your card to one box I believe
 

dxsat

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Your dish will be a 120 cm- in Spain they measure them vertically. It's a bit small for Leon, so Astra 2D results will be patchy.
You could upgrade to a 150 cm Gibertini, an excellent dish available in Spain from Engel (www.engel.es).
They sell the Gibertini under their own name and describe it as a 160cm master series disco aluminio.
You can buy a current Pace receiver from Antnet Digital in Madrid - ask for Amanda ( English spoken) They are also Invacom main agent for Spain.
 

Mike4t

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Looks like you are right on the edge for a 1.3 and a 1.5m would probably improve situ,,,The Pace DS430N reciever I use is accepted as about the best easily obtainable box around at the mo,, with the right size dish gives me 24/7 of BBC, and 95% covereage of the ITV Channels,,, I got mine off ebay for about 65£, can remember the exact price,, but there are new with guarantee here for 129£,, (There is an offer on at the mo for a D430N plus card for £89, that will be pretty unbeatable price!!)

http://www.simplydigital.co.uk/

Dish sizes @

http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/dishes.htm
 

IanMCG

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First of all , thanks to everyone whose has taken the trouble to help me out. I really appreciate it. Hope things are well with my ex-pat colleagues down in Madrid and the Costa Blanca.

The possibility of the Pace digibox sounds good, however I am a little concerned with topper´s comment that each SKY card is paired up with its own specific box, thus rendering my idea of just travelling with my card as impossible.

Confirmation (or not!) and/or a bit more info would be gratefully received.

Regards,

Ian
 

rolfw

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You can use any card in any box, but forget watching sport or movies on a non-paired box, you will only receive the family pack channels.
 

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Rolfw, Sorry for this but I'm a little confused (again). When I got my SKY subscription they (SKY) had to pair the card with the digibox. I had the box from before so maybe this is why they needed to know what box I was using? I didn't have any premium channels at the time either. Does this really mean that if I take out a full subscription, I'll be able to watch all the non premium channels on any sky digibox but not the premium ones? Returning the card to the paired box, the premium channels would appear as well?
 

dxsat

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Snap's setup: (In Spain) Humax HDR, Prodelin 1.8m dish + Invacom QDF-031 + CM feed, (In UK) CallFlow VDSL + EE 4G, Sky Q, YouView HD, Mac OSX, iOS
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Cupart said:
Does this really mean that if I take out a full subscription, I'll be able to watch all the non premium channels on any sky digibox but not the premium ones?
The above is correct, a viewing card will work in any box apart from the premium channels, which only work in the box the card is paired to. This is to stop people watching Sky Sport and Movies on their friends' boxes.
 

IanMCG

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Well, reckon I am going to try and get my hands on a Pace 2600 or DS430N, having read through people´s opinions preferably the former if possible, plus get an old SKY card. A new DS430N on internet sales sites, an old 2600 through eBay etc, but an old SKY card? Any suggestions? Maybe this is possible on eBay too but having looked recently I didn´t see any available.
Thanks guys.
 

IanMCG

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Just a short additional bit of info.Those ex-pats in Spain who are looking to buy a Sky box which are normally not purchasable there should have a look at ciberland.com run by a company based in Gandia, (Valencia). They have the Pace DS430N for sale at 180 Euros. OK, folks?!
 
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