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sky vs. french satellite - help!!


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hi

we are rather new to all this and could do with some advise. we have never had sky in the UK but would like to have it here in France. my Q is whether it is better to have the french canalsatellite or  uk one. we do have an address in the uk we could use but i am confused as to how it all works. the more i look at the forum the worse it gets

i am sure this has all been covered before so if someone could give me an idea where to look i would be eternally grateful!

thanks

jorja

bergonne

63500

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It depends what you want to watch, Canal + and Sky are very different, Canal + is all French for a start.  If you want to subscribe to Sky you will need to do so in the UK.

 (officially you cannot do so in France, so do so via your UK address and have the actual installation in France, but be aware that this is breaking your contract with Sky and they may zap your card if they were to find out, for example you cannot use Sky Box office or any other interactive service as that identifies you as in being in France through your phone however you will still need to have your dish installed, forget anything about a mini-dish unless you are moving to Calais.)

If you only want to watch the terrestial UK channels get hold of an out of contract UK digi-box and card ( or a freeview card), try Ebay, and you will then be able to watch, quite legally, with the right sized dish, all the usual UK channels including  ITV, CH's 4 & 5

If you get a French digi-box, they do not have a card slot AND you will not be able to get  ITV, or Channels 4 & 5  as you need a card to do so.

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[quote]My sky minidish works perfectly here, too. (50k east of Toulouse)regardsDavid[/quote]

David 

The 43cm sky min-dish is not recommended for use outside of the UK because it does not work very well.  You must be very lucky if you are using one near Toulouse, you are talking about the 43cm zone 1 mini dish and not the 53cm x 75cm dish aren't you? 

Quote from Satcure.com

"Each satellite has a number of transmitters or "transponders" which give slightly different "beams", resulting in different "footprints" on Earth. In England, a strong signal is received from all of these transponders but, outside England, the signal becomes progressively weaker as you get further away. In some fringe areas, it's not possible to receive signals from EVERY transponder without using a larger dish"

The current Sky "minidish" is made by several manufacturers and is roughly 53cm wide. ( The old mini-dish was 43cm wide), The wider a dish is, the less interference it will receive from adjacent satellites. A larger dish (about 55 x 75cm) should be used in northern England, Scotland and France where the signal (from the Astra satellites at 28.2 degrees East of true south) is weaker than in southern England.

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