I have now assisted several people here in Almeria, Southern Spain to connect up and test their UK sourced freesat PVR boxes, which have normally fired up faultlessly; until last week. The box would not find a signal, so I manually added some Astra 2 south beam transponders and got it going that way, and eventually got everything. I then noticed that the dish appeared smaller than usual, and the Eurobird peaks were less than I usually see on the spectrum. A measurement showed that the dish was 1.16 metres horizontally, rather than the 1.22 metres of the common Tecatel item. It had the appearance of those dishes sold cheaply by a well-known european supermarket as '1.2meters', and was under engineered. The guy inherited it with the property. Can you technos out there confirm or rubbish my theory of the boxes reliance on a good signal from Eurobird to function correctly? I know the guide uses Eurobird, and the synopsis always works, where the 'Sky' synopsis hardly ever does.

The epg comes from the same transponder on Eurobird1 that also carries Brit Shorts and ITV HD (11428 H). Without epg reception it's really only a fta box (non freesat mode). Good check is manual scan for Brit Shorts.

Yes, the EPG comes from Eurobird, and a major problem in Southern Spain is the large dishes used, often too large to receive 28.5E decently when it's aligned on 28.2E.

Interestingly fitting a slightly smaller dish can improve things, as it's beamwidth is greater.

Agree, a lot is pinned on accessing Eurobird for a Freesat unit.

How is the signal for Eurobird in southern Spain, easier or harder to obtain than Astra2D

Thanks for that.** I have only noticed on the spectrum the different focal point issue on dishes 1.5 metre and above. I usually focus my alignment on 11,773H which is often the weakest 2D beam, and everyone wants the beeb [and now 'Five']!** For a 'Sky sports' customer I go for 2A/B north beams, as 'Extra' and 'News' are tricky and also depend on the box used. ** As you know Eurobird has different beams and below around 11,450, that band is markedly weaker, indeed* the weakest being the 'Brit Shorts'* and its adjacent one.* The very high frequency ones can also be a problem for some.** One good point though, is that the beams do not seem to vary through the day.** However, with a true 1.2 metre, all the Freesat receivers so far have fired up and give no problems, even the cheap 'Bush' one.* Astra 2D is good for us, but the Costa Blanca gets very little signal from it.** I think we enjoy the spill-over from that little 'eye' of 2D's signal over Gibraltar, [has somebody had some influence when these footprints were established, or has a bolt fallen out of the casing?]; I'm told that they get a good 2D signal in Tangier.** We could never get those old 'steerable beam' Eurobird signals for Eastern Europe though. It is fortunate for us that years ago the 'beeb' only looked at the initial issue footprint of 2D and not the expanded one, which shows it all in its true glory!