No worries.

Yes but if some can get it for free then it potentially devalues its sale value as the overseas company looks at if and says, well most of those who are interested can get it for free so its not worth us buying it because we won't see a significant increase in viewing figures through the purchase. Therein lies the problem, its not that everyone needs to be receiving it, just enough to make the overseas company think there's no advantage or no advantage at the offered price, thus making huge discount demands the only option and thus reducing the revenue of the UK companies.

There's nothing wrong with watching UK tv in other countries but you have to remember its a bonus not a right given that many of you are watching from outside of the official footprint by circumventing the beam shaping by using large high gain dishes.

So whilst there's nothing wrong in it, the thing is not to be surprised if the UK broadcasters try to minimise the overspill.

Im awaiting the howls of outrage when the 28E Middle East spotbeam is lit up on one of the new Astra 2's and the Cypriots lose the BBC & ITV

All Dutch cable companies have official licence agreements with the BBC for re-distributing their channels for which the BBC receives fees. Originally the programmes were received OTA but today these are relayed directly by fibre cable. ITV and other British commercial stations have never been relayed in Holland.

Overspill has always been a recognised phenomenon in broadcasting.The signals don't just stop at the borders of mainland European countries and the Dutch living along the borders are able to watch German and Belgian DTT broadcasts and vice versa and this occurs throughout mainland Europe. This leakage is generally excluded from population viewing figures when negotiating sales contracts. It's part of life.

I suspect there may be more licence-fee dodgers in the UK than non-licensed ex-pat (Freesat) satellite viewers in Europe - nearly 3,500 in North Lanarkshire and over 10,000 in Glasgow were caught in the first 6 months of this year alone!

Yep, can see a lot of disgruntled people there. Are all the transponders likely to be spotbeam on the new birds in the coming years or do you think pressure from the likes of Sky will keep some of them widebeam? I suppose if SES want maximum value and revenue, and why not, then they'll dictate to operators that the future is spotbeam and thus the African and Middle East spotbeams at 28.2E can't co-exist with single European widebeams. How many expats make up Sky's total subscriber base do you reckon?



I know a licence fee dodger myself, he insists against a licence because he doesn't believe it in, no matter how many times I try and get the point across. He'll get caught sooner or later as they keep calling round.

in europe we all pay license fees but to the country we live in so we don't dodge paying license fees

I think some will still be on wider beams for the medium term, (maybe not as wide as currently served by the older astra 1's & 2's) but the long term future is definitely for more areas served from each transmission slot. Astra 1N is interesting - one medium beam and a widebeam

Doubling up on areas served is a no-brainer - spectrum capacity is running out in the skies above Europe, and new slots to develop are in short supply..

Well it depends on the country.

In Spain there are no licence fees and we have loads of digital channels including 4 HD channels.

Maybe that's part of the reason why Spain is in such dire economic straits, not too far from a Greek-style meltdown?

I think you are being a bit silly, I don't think a tv license is the main proplem for spains proplems i think it is having a right wing dictator for so many years in the past

So did Germany and they're doing OK. .

Cheers for the info, so widebeams may remain, certainly for the short term.

On that Real Time Satellite tracker there's two fields, namely:

RA: 18h 17m 52s
DEC: -8° 20' 23"

What do these equate to?

Right Ascension & Declination. The exact location in the sky.

Have a look at wiki if you want to know the definitions!

let see people of cyprus after astra goes to live to can be receiver astra 1n on 4,2m

Top 10 excuses for not paying a licence fee (courtesy of TV Licensing)[LIST=1][*] “A pigeon fell down the chimney and broke the aerial so I have bad reception”[*] “My 11-year-old son must have bought the TV during the night. It wasn't there when I went to bed”[*]"My payment card's been stuck in the washing machine so I can't pay"[*] "The subtitles on my TV are set to French so I'm not paying a UK tax for something I can't read."[*]“I've not been making payments as a baby magpie flew into my house and I had to stay in and feed it until it was ok”[*]“I only use the TV to keep the horses company and one of them is blind so I should only pay half if I have to pay at all”[*] “I can’t get the TV out of the box – can you help me?”[*]“My dog that watches it when I'm at work to keep him company - not me”[*]“My mum told me to tell you she’s not in”[*]"My husband has just spent £3,000 on this massive flatscreen digital TV so we can't possibly afford a licence"[/LIST]
I like this one:
An Enforcement Officer knocked on the door of a suspected evader and asked if he had a TV, to which the owner said he did not.
The officer then asked, "Well then, why have you got a satellite dish on the outside of your house?"
The man looked down and said with a grin, "I have two pints of milk on my doorstep, son, but I don't have a cow in the garden!"

For expats, it's not a question of avoiding the licence fee. We would be delighted to be able to receive the BBC officially on a strong beam for the price of the fee. Many people have invested thousands of Euros in large dishes; many times more than they'd pay in the UK.

I know it won't happen; I understand about rights etc (I have to explain it all to clients often enough); I just want to scotch this idea that want something for nothing. We don't. We just want it - and are happy to pay.

Anyway, in this area, increasingly, UK TV is being offered by means of IPTV subscription services, and I have no doubt that this will be the normal way in the future.

British TV is entrenched and universal along the Spanish Costas; the demand is there and money to be made. Somebody will always find a way, legitimate or not, and they will find a ready market.

Do you mean British expats living in Cyprus? I doubt very much if Cypriots could give a damn about UK TV.

I have a holiday home in Spain and use a 1.9 Metre dish given to me by a neighbour when he upgraded to 2.4 Metres. When I installed the dish I made sure the base would take a 2.4 Metre dish as I do get some break up of the BBC in the evening. Although ITV, channel 4 and 5 are rock solid even in heavy rain.

Right now I fell like I’m in limbo as I would like to spend the 1000 euros and upgrade to 2.4 Metres but I don’t know if the new Satellites are going to stop these dishes from working.

I have a friend and ex-colleague who is an Engineer at Astrium in Portsmouth and he tells me that the footprints should be slightly wider than 2D although that seems to contradicts Astra’s web site http://www.ses-astra.com/business/en...East/index.php. So it is possible my 1.9 Metre dish will be good enough and I won’t need to upgrade.

So I’m looking forward to getting out of limbo and seeing how the new satellites perform. I will then be happy to spend 1000 euros on a new dish if I know I’m going to get 10+ years use out of it. That’s less than 100 euros a year and less than the TV licence.

If that doesn’t work then it will be a form of prohibition for something that has a high demand. And as always when something is prohibited the criminals or people on the edge of the law step in to provide a service.

So I will probable turn to a Spanish Internet Provider that includes UK TV channels in the package.

According to an Independent article http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...me-428132.html there are 5.5 million British expats. There are also 0.99 million expats and people with holiday homes in Spain. So it looks like there is a big market being missed by the UK broadcasters.

I would rather my money went to the UK broadcaster but if it goes to a satellite dish supplier or dodgy Internet provider than so be. I will not be howling with outrage.

Terry

And in anticipation to the standard response I expect to my post, yes I do watch and enjoy Spanish TV in the UK and Spain. And no there have not been any developments in satellite antennas since 2D. i.e. 2D use a parabolic dish and 1N uses a parabolic dish.

Footnote: I just noticed after posting Billnot posted something similar while I was composing my reply!

+1

I lived in Turkey (beyond Astra 2A/2B's footprint) for 6 years and it appeared to me that the BBC couldn't give a monkey's about the expats. We had BBC Prime (p*** poor) and they gave us the impression that even that was targetted at non-Brits who wanted to practice their English and find out about British culture.

BBC World News is great if you're addicted to world news but most Brit expats just want to know what's happening at home.
If BBC WN had a daily 30-minute UK news bulletin during the early evening local time, IMO most expats who live outside Western Europe would watch it.

Actually he was a left wing dictator - the Nazis came from the German Socialist party:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler

One of the biggest perversions of history by left wingers in this country ever!

The NSDAP was NOT a left wing party. It had nothing to do with socialism, except having the name which was only there to gain voters from the working class.

You can't become more right wing than the NSDAP has been.

Greets
Zodac

Completely unrelated, but it's not as simple as 'left and right wing'. The National Socialists were neither - in fact a lot of their economic policies were socialist while they obviously had policies elsewhere that were authoritarian as the state was hijacked and became a dictatorship.

well that past a bit of time, now what were we talking about

Could you please start another thread as this one is about Astra 1N.

Indeed!

She's currently at 1.68W and slowly cruising eastwards. Still not fully circularised but nearly there. I suspect once she reaches Apogee tomorrow morning once more they may do another quick blast to get her properly circularised. She's certainly much closer in terms of inclination now too:
http://www.n2yo.com/?s=37775

Please stay on topic (ASTRA 1N), talk about the TV licence and other unrelated topics elsewhere.
Please don't ruin this thread.