No limit to too how far, you can clean up the dish and give it a lick of paint and then get it adjusted up. There is a “footprint” diagram for the astra satellites where it show the hot spot and then what size dish is required for optimal viewing and signal reception. Main thing is that ther is no objets in the way such as trees or houses etc.
I think that’s the old footprint although the differences are subtle.
This is the right one.
It was re-aligned to assure that all of the UK could pick up the signal on a 45cm Sky “mini dish”, the consequence of which was that signal in northern France got better and southern France & Spain got worse.
Do you think the Chateau owner next door would cut a six foot hole through one of the turrets for me so I have line of sight, if I asked him nicely 
Hmm those (new) circles don’t cover my house. The old ones did.
Does that mean sorting out a dish and getting hold of a Humax would be a waste of time?
We’re down in Lot et Garonne and have good reception.
Not necessarily, the “new” footprint map only shows the 60cm and 45cm reception areas - you can still get reception outside those areas with appropriate (i.e. larger) dishes - the old map went to 120cm dishes.
Which is what our dish is.
There is a newer Freesat box from Arris. I’m in the UK at the mo visiting family and bought one on Saturday. Also bought a compatible wideband LNB (a la SkyQ) from Amazon. Going to hand carry them back to France next week. My old Humax is showing it’s age and has been playing up for a while now.
We’re down in Aude with a 110cm dish. Apart from some signal fade on some HD channels (especially ITV HD) in the summer, and the inevitable torrential rain fade, reception is great.
Yes, in my experience, they tend to suffer from ROM corruption due to power surges/outages and reflashing the “protected” system image doesn’t seem to work when it gets too bad.
Thanks all. Definitely worth making a note to overpaint the rusted dish we’ve been left, and to sort out a Humax - or Arris if Colin reports it’s better Is it the same kit for Freeview as for Freesat?
No.
FreeVIEW is only broadcast from UK based terrestrial transmitters (received via an aerial) & does not reach to most of France.
FreeSAT is broadcast from the Astra satallite cluster at 28,2° east of south & requires a suitable receiver to do so.
No, Freeview is UK digital broadcast TV via a regular TV aerial, there is no way to get that in France.
Freesat is the satellite equivalent - obviously delivered by a different technology and the channel list is slightly different.
If you are considering buying a receiver remember that Humax lost the contract for freesat boxes a couple or more years age, so any Humax boxes you see on sale are not new in the sense of age. A cheaper alternative is a Manhattan receiver which command reasonable reviews. The Arris boxes are the new kid on the block, and very good they are too. They also are able to do more than the old Humax boxes.
The best way is; get internet - Orange is definitely the best and has an English speaking helpline, SFR are dreadful!
I then purchased a VPN router from skycards.eu (based in Preston UK), the package that I got was £140, which included the router and 12mths VPN subscription. Plug it into the back of your internet router and hey presto I have all BBC, ITV, Netflix, Amazon (not the reduced package that was only available before), NOW tv which is the SKY official app, if you want UK sport or SKY cinema etc is also available, but you pay a separate subscription for that.
Quite honestly, the best investment I’ve made recently.
It won’t be ROM corruption, as there isn’t any. They do have some flash memory to hold the program. On boot, that will be validated and copied to RAM for execution. If the flash was corrupted, then the box wouldn’t boot. My issue is the box slowing down and/or not responding to IR key presses for several seconds. This happens over a period of time that has gradually got shorter and shorter over the last few years. I have to reboot every other day now.
Thing is, this is a known problem with the Broadcom drivers that come with the Broadcom chips, and I’ve come across it myself where I used to work for a rival STB designer/manufacturer. Trouble is, Humax, understandably in my opinion, isn’t interested in fixing this properly. Why should they be if they’re not making any money out of it now.
One argument for open source - once you need to move on as a manufacturer if you have enough units “out there” the user community will gladly take up maintenance.
Of course the manufacturers don’t because they think it will hit sales of new kit and they hope that you will buy whatever new and shiny version they have on offer.
Which is a pity because insisting on full open source for any device which has updatable firmware would prevent so much e-waste.
In the very long term I can see this happening for cars.
For quite a lot on my popular Peugeot I still get told by independent garages here that the part is only permitted by Peugeot to be provided by Peugeot or if it’s ECU / reprogramming ECU, can only be obtained via same.
Time cars became generic, with regular software updates as Tesla has begun, then in the long term with enough out there “Indy” software will be available for cars especially if manufacturer fails to maintain older models.
The flip side to that is Tesla deciding you can’t have something you paid for for some reason - it seems that Tesla routinely remove software options when the original owner sells, or returns, the car to a dealer, but in at least one case got it wrong and wound up removing the feature after the new owner took delivery - much to his surprise and annoyance as the car had been advertised as having that feature (advanced autopilot).
You can get generic 3rd party ECU’s that work with most engines - though doubtless your insurer would consider it a “mod”.
Sounds très authoritarian - but likely to be the case that original Peugeot ECU can only be sourced new from Peugeot (and don’t forget independent dealers have the right to get spare parts and workshop manuals in the EU).
