I have been ploughing the forums and am looking for the best supplier for a Satellite Broadband and combined UK TV solution.
In looks like a Tooway option with bolt on LNB fits the bill. I will probably look to install this myself with the purchased Satellite dish option. Any other recommendations? Any guidance on reseller preference?
The question is what package to go for - 25GB seems to be a good bet - but I cant gauge whether this will be too much or too little. I would like to stream the odd Netflix type movie. Have work emails and play / download iplayer / ITVplayer content?
We have Orange live box and we are lucky to get 2mb......
Hi Neil...I would say that 90cm is definitely too small for your location and if you are planning to upgrade then I wouldn't consider anything less than 1.2m wide.
I would take a look at these 2 which are very well priced:
I find Nordnet excellent, and very responsive. My main reason for taking up Nordnet over Tooway, was financial. I live in the Yonne, and our prefecture offers an 80% subvention on the purchase cost of the Kit, but it has to come from Nordnet. They try to get you to buy Wimax first, but my experience with them was so horrible, that I chose Nordnet, and have never regretted it. As for a UK IP address, I use Tunnelbear, which gives me a free service.
Thanks, the wonders of science eh? Am 20kms north of the city of Pau and the Pyrenees - dept.64- and 120kms from the Atlantic coast, in Aquitaine. 90cm dish with a LNB that gives 3 paired feeds out to 3 locations in our house and barn. Definatly teetering on the edge. Best reasonably priced dish to purchase, may I enquire?
Tooway works pretty well, and while I have no recommendations about the package - this is down to your usage patterns - I would strongly recommend NOT going to Sat2Way as a supplier. They were horrendously unresponsive, offered no ability to add a bolt on via the web, and were next to impossible to speak to. As an example, if I wanted to add some bandwidth I only had an 0800 number to call, which was not possible while I was in the UK. Catch 22. And no desire to help fix this at all.
There are other French suppliers, of which I have no knowledge, but I now use a UK supplier, EuropaSat (as I am in the UK a lot), and they are fine supporting France, and offer all the online support you need).
Towers uses KaSat, as is pointed out below, which does not do TV (except via internet). Astra I believe offers both, but may not be as good for internet, as KaSat is dedicated to it. Anyone on Astra? I have a separate dish for TV therefore.
Here is an article on the subject - about a year old though, and things move fast here.
Neil... It's normal for signal levels to change hour by hour day by day,season by season etc... and digital signals suffer from the "cliff effect" whereby a signal can be adequate one minute but not the next. An "adequate" system needs to have enough headroom so that you stay away from the cliff edge under all but the most extreme of weather conditions typically heavy rain..The way to achieve that is to have a high gain ( ie large) dish and a good LNB.Without knowing your location and current dish size Its difficult to comment further but I would certainly suggest that you need a larger dish and would definitely recommend using a "PLL" LNB ,either the Octagon Optima PLL or the "BEST" "quartz controlled" LNB, which are significantly better than virtually all other LNBs,in adding less noise to the signal.Both are of German manufacture.
As mentioned your UK TV has returned because your system is probably operating on the "cliff edge" such that the lower temperatures have probably made the difference between dropping off the cliff and teetering on the edge!
Sir, how dare you suggest that my equipment is inadequate! Waterpistols at dawn! The receiving system has been quite adequate on some days but not on others so I assume that the strength of the signal I am receiving is inadequate. Reception was much better earlier on and now seems to be not quite as good. Is there any technical reason that UK tv has suddenly returned? Would a larger dish help?
Hi Mike, I have the Nordnet Jetpack, which uses Astra 2 Satellite. My abbonement is for 10 Gb per month, with an extra 10 Gb, supplement, all for around 34 euros/month. I installed the Dish and unit myself, it was relatively easy, although the dish is quite a Clunker, and needed a very firm Bracket. The unit works very well, and I get between 5 and 20 Meg download, depending on time of day.
After 11;00 pm until 7:00 am my download volume is free, so , guess when I do most of my Apps updates.
I use it at home for all my internet requirements, and for Telephone also.
I am pleased with the set up, and it works so much better than my old Livebox did.
I don't see the particular connection between signal strength and ability to receive 2 different channels...The signal never went away ...it's just appears that way to those whose receiving systems are inadequate.. Reception seems better during the winter months than the summer months, and one contributary factor is that LNBs generate less noise the lower the temperature, and the same applies for external noise sources..and more noise added to the signal equates to lower signal quality..
I can advise that you are unlikely to be able to receive UK TV from Astra at 28.2 E with an LNB and the tooway bracket option because the tooway dish is too small, unless you are in the very North of France. BBC World & Sky News from Astra at 19.2E is about all you will get.
I'm going to purchase a larger dish for Christmas. Using a Manhattan box but can't record one channel whilst watching another due to signal strength. But why has the signal returned and will it disappear again one wonders?
Thanks James. Would you recommend that I use Europasat as the service provider? In terms of TV do they also supply the LNB? Also what size dish do they supply - I have been reading that you may need a larger dish for UK TV reception in France?
I use Hola for player/iplayer/catchup; its free and has loads of overseas channels available - but don't be tempted to even have a tiny peak at the "naughty channel" as you will later get some revolting adverts popping up on your screen. I have my Sky+ box, UK registered at my mum's, so am able to watch all the Sky channels with my 80cm dish in Cantal (central France). I particularly enjoyed watching England XV stuff Australia XV on Saturday; and well done Wales.
We live near Agen, Tarn et Garonne and have a Neuf box which gives us broadband and all phone charges including free calls to almost anywhere, for 36 euros a month. Not sure what downloads speed but it is unlimited. For TV we use a standard sky box on an old 60cm sky dish, and a 80cm Humax box on a dish bought from Castorama. No problems except in heavy rain. I did buy a 1m dish in Uk and brought it back but so far not needed to fit it.
We only have .5mb speed and we get reasonable TV on FilmOn so long as not all the neighbours are in when we can get considerable buffering! We have Orange (with the new up to date box) and a VPN and the best way to view a TV programme is to download overnight. We have looked at Tooway and others such as www.broadbandeverywhere.co.uk - have calculated to watch around 5 hours TV a day we would need 30gb a month costing £65 a month.
The good news is that partial UK TV returned at the end of October and in HD - we are 20kms north of Pau and the Pyrenees. Rain does loose the signal however.
Getting ready to move to a new home, I looked into the satellite offer and also did a search on the French forums. Here I see nothing but complaints about the Tooway offer (as well as the SkyBnet or something like that) so I decided to stick with cable. Especially now that I learn that it is 25Gb per month (I was thinking it was per day).
Mostly it is yes, the service is fast and reliable until I hit my download limit at which point the service is throttled and becomes practically unusable!