Freesat?

[Davidc]

I bought a sat dish and receiver from Lidl. 60 quid and about 3hrs work to fit dish, align (they have a wee buzzer thing that works.. plus had daughter on the cordless phone telling me how things were on the TV -receivers have a signal quality/strength bar ).

I'll agree - provided you have a signal meter they're a doddle to set up, and get the quad LNB option. The dish size you need is on the ses-astra map. (use the information on the map to check you have a clear path to the sky in the direction given). If you don't like ladders you can put the dish low down in a position where it can 'see' the satellite, but remember that people walking in front of it will kill the signal, and it can get vandalised more easily.

The last dish and LNB I bought came from here, they also do a meter cheaply.

My terrestrial TV from the right transmitter is garbaged by nearby trees - not as bad with digital as it was with analogue but still unwatchable in summer so I use satellite.

I did have the sky freesat option, using an old sky box, but have just bought 2 bush freesat SD boxes at under £30 each from Argos. We find them perfectly OK for everything we want. They can be left running (8 watts instead of 1 watt) and set to switch TV programmes if needed for recording on any recorder, though as MY says a PVR is better if you want to spend £hundreds.

CAREFUL though, to set up a dish you need to know the azimuth (horizontal direction) and elevation (vertical direction) at your house. Azimuth isn't 28 degrees east* - that's the satellite's orbital position over the equator. You also need to twist the LNB to one of its 4 preset positions for something called polarisation offset. There are maps showing these angles and the polarisation offset zones on the ses-astra website.

*Yes there are places where it is - the nearest to the UK is about halfway between the Shetlands and Norway