This is true however the original question was about UK TV and Astra 2E/F.
I also watch French TV but through a different system. Some people are like amature radio buffs but with TV and have motorised dishes picking up all sorts of stuff from different places. For them it is a hobby. If you are in to languages you may also want to watch TV (or listen to the radio) from other countries via different systems. I understand this but as I said the original question was specifically about UK TV.
if Alan Sugar is involved then the duck bit is true and dont expect much from it, It will probably be sold as soon as it is worth anything
True generally, but we have paid for Zattoo as a present from the family along with streaming equipment. At 65Chf (€53) a year it is not much anyway, unlike other subscription services. We use several language services which Freesat does not do, plus Eutelsat which increasingly has only trashy stations and lots of tele-evangelists so less and less interesting. Online services can offer a really wide range, so now my wife gets her Italian language, I get German as well as English and we can also glean what is good on Spanish TV. Bear in mind SFN also has non-English first speakers as well, so this discussion is about/for them too irrespective of what surprises Astra may now put upon us.
I notice now that Piers Morgan has 'Twittered' the same. Looking at the website and the 'Twitter' comments I think that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's normally a duck i.e. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
Personally why pay for a subscription service when you can watch it on satellite for free. Also for those in rural areas as Internet usage goes up the bandwidth goes down. It is the same at Christmas and the summer holidays when French school kids are at home and visitors come on holiday. No problem if you are in a big city with tens of mbs but out in the sticks where your lucky to get 1mbs on a good day you could find at certain times of the year your picture freezes and all sorts. Certainly a lot of Brits who were in our area at Christmas were having problems with Filmon as did those with Sky etc on their laptops and tablets. Me, big dish, no problems (well apart from the cr*p programming that is).
We have a Zattoo subscription (paid for) to the Swiss service. When we tried out Zattoo before sis-in-law subscribed us, on the French free service there were only two or three English language services. So, go for Zattoo home (Orange Switzerland own them) and not any other country's service then the range is pretty big. We get all the languages we want easily - pity about the phone line...
I can't help at all. We have a streaming box my bro-in-law bought for us in the USA (made by Netgear) and a wi-fi adaptor so we can watch it on all PCs, laptops and smart phones in the house. We do not, however, have any Apple equipment so there I am stumped. Perhaps somebody else will see this and come to your rescue.
Lord Sugar tends to back his own horses, so I still suspect a vested interest. He would have found the other services such as FilmOn and Zattoo (among several others) offering better very easily with his techno background. Nonetheless, it is not very impressive. Just took a dekko at their US site and they really are assuming high speed broadband is universal.
I asked an Orange guy here why the service the company offers is crap compared with Orange in other countries and he went off on a spiel about French modernisation of telephone services being the most advanced in the world. I told him that he clearly considered France the world and the other 99% not there. Then he proceeded to not be able to sort out our dish (we have two, one for French services plus other countries) and whilst he somehow killed our Hotbird reception too, which we recovered later ourselves, he could not explain why and how we cannot get the French services at present. When I suggested using streaming, he laughed and said that until all the rural phone cables are replaced... We gave up listening at that point.
Brian,
I’ve been trying to look at Zatoo. I’ve joined etc, it then leads me to an App download which never comes up on the Apple page. Any thoughts gratefully received.
Alan Sugar is a long standing twit(ter). What he is offering is less than competing services and more expensive to boot. His equipment also requires a high speed phone line which many of us lack. We have Zattoo up and running, have our streaming box, wi-fi working and all but regular freezes which mean we have to switch off and then back on to get running again. Has Amstrad taken account of that or assuming we all live in city centres?
Thanks Michael much appreciated have a good xmas
no john I didnt and the fact that you went on a proper installation course is fantastic I did the original CAI systems course many years ago just to get the piece of paper and my son took it a few years later. Its always an interesting job and at nearly 65 i still am active although I let the younger ones do the big dishes. If you ever need help or advice then please give us a call and if we can help we will, or if you need special items my fellow director is also director of a company in France supplying all sizes of dishes, fibre optic links or anything out of the ordinary you might need. our advice is freely given should you need it and yes we are a French registered company but as Telecomms engineers. 03 66 88 0629 will put you through to me either in the uk or france
I'm already on the referral list for my knees but they keep putting the date back so at least i will be able to get the bulk out of the way and i'm only 37
I asked my questions earlier as part of my learning of this trade. Unfortunately i don't have a shop or 30 years experience (everybody has to start somewhere) but i have a large garage to store my equipment enabling me to keep my costs down, people i can rely on for advice, a certificate, a siret number for installation of satellite systems and i give guarantees with all of my work (just to be sure you don't get the wrong idea about me :)
have a nice christmas and yes the ladder bit has got to me as well, maybe santa will bring me new pain free joints
totally agree there are too many training courses on the ferries at the moment
it may not make sense to you but any satellite installer who reads this and there are some ,will understand. The installers talking on here are knowledgeable but sadly that is not the case with many of the installers we come across in France, satellite is not a dark art, those of us who have been the business for a long time already have a very good idea of what reception will be like. I know Keith has been in the uk sat business for a long time but so have we We did our first one in the mid 80s. There is a lot of miss information out there at the moment. yes lets wait and see but What Keith and I have said is pretty much the same. I dont see many problems for well installed correctly sized systems
Seeing as Astra 2E and Astra 2F are identical and made by the same company the only speculation is will the engine fire to move it to its final home without any damage.
The reason, I believe, that English installers (and in some cases I use the word lightly) are reluctant to say anything is because they don't know. Many I have seen advertised where I live are not legally registered in France (no SIRET or TVA number) and know that if they get it wrong people will come after them and it could cost them a lot of money not to mention they may get reported to the tax authority.
I have always used a properly registered French company who employ properly trained engineers, have a proper shop and service centre and have been around for some 30 years operating from the same address. Any problem I phone them up and an engineer is here within 48 hours. Plus the owners home address and phone number is in the White Pages so I know exactly where he lives. I suggest others do the same, might be a bit more expensive initially but a much safer bet should something go wrong. At least you get a legally binding guarantee.
I like that one Keith, having just sent 30 pages of risk assessment to bolt a scaffold pole to a container and fit two transmit aerials to it. but as they say BS baffles brains
The other major cause if interference to satellite can be microwave links. Cell phone can also break into the coax and is in the correct part of the spectrum. over here BT infinity routers can wipe out certain transponder frequencies Orange use the same system in France to create hotspots all over the country using the box in the house.
OK about the CAI course we are long standing members and also system designers and installers of very large dishes. You really need a spectrum display to see some of these effects I dont know what type of meter you have but they are invaluable for serious fault finding, Dont rely on signal strength but look at C/n and error rates.
I did a large C band installation near Pau in september and I could not get the c/n quite up to spec. there was some sort of wide band radiation in the area and the noise floor was higher. never did find out what it was but the system worked. From Discussions over here there have been reception problems with astra limited to one side of the road. again it was microwave sources causing it.
I am not surprised about variations in signal strength at the fringe of a footprint it all comes down to dish size and gain at the end. good luck with the reception problems. after 30 years of dish installations i am still surprised at the things which happen.
Hi thanks for the replies. You haven't seen my previous posts so bit of history. After helping a few friends end of last year with issues decided to go to uk and do cai basic install course which obviously covers installation and fault finding. I only use good quality dishes and lnb's and have newly cabled my house and have a good quality meter. I am just south of the black mountains and the issues earlier in the year had nothing to do with the dishes as there where several different installers having the same issues in different areas of the south. I was getting 12db on the uk spot beam at this time which was dropping to around 7db at night and signal meter showing below 50% on my f5 box 10%. The smaller the dish the earlier in the evening it was dropping. The reason i asked if anybody had any idea what it was that caused is because it was sporadic not all the time. I have an email for somebody in ses and they haven't done anything with signal power. I thought we had sorted the problem when the 88cm triax was working all the time then that went at night after a while as well (check fitting etc.) Except for the bad weather episode the 1m has worked perfectly.
And i also fit tooway which (being biased) is better and can also get a vpn box that sit between your internet box and equipment allowing an english ip to the whole house while not disturbing your French ip. This would mean you wouldn't need a dish if your freesat box has all the on demand channels as they are internet based. I have one and use it with my xbox so get all the on demand in the kitchen without having to put a line and box in there.