Modifying a German satellite TV setup for BBC

I have german satellite tv which was aleady installed in my house on the Astra 1b satellite. We made decision not to bring our sky with us this time in the hope that we'd learn the language better/faster etc. However, some uk tv wouldn't go amiss. We have a dish and digibox but don't pay any subscription at the moment.

Does anyone know how/if I can access the Beebs international channels via my current set up- or do I need to subscribe/access a different satellite?

Any advice welcomed
thanks
Redlawrey

well, for the most channels, you can use your sky digibox with your old card to get free to air channels with no subscription. To do this you'd have modify your dish set up slightly by adding another LNB.

when we moved in I tried plugging in my sky stuff but nada. Presumed dish was in worng place. Howver, I DO want german tv - some sadistic reason I know - can I get both?

My house is fully wired - all the rooms have the sat connector but I presume I can't have diff feeds into each system?

Not sure what your acronym means...???

yeah cos Astra 1 for German and Astra 2 for English are only 9 degrees apart so you need to get an LNB bridge that holds the second LNB at a slight angle. you need to know what you are doing to get both lined up right, though.

prob need to get someone in - fairly straightforward to do for a professional though I assume

fairly, yes.

having googled lnb - I'm just trying to get this straight in my mind.

Basically, I can set up another 'arm'(lnb) on my current dish but at a different angle so I've got 2 arms pointing at 2 satellites. Is this right?

Can I then recieve transmissions from both sats at the same time? - I can already view diff channels in diff rooms on diff boxes.

Thanks for any further clarification

Yes, provided the orientation of the dish can get signal from both satellites, you have the correct setup, etc. But yes, that's the idea, 2 satellites with only 1 dish.

You will have two separate feeds going to two separate boxes (German box and Sky Digibox) that run in parallel. Since Sky boxes don't support Disecq (sp?) you have to use two separate boxes and switch between the two boxes when changing from German to British tv, just like switching from your DVD player to your satellite box.. If you don't care about the free to view channels only available with a Sky digibox or freesat box you could run both feeds into one "German" box provided it supports switching.

so in the same way I needed two cables for sky plus, I would need the current cabling for the german sat and then a new set of cabling for the english one. Or could I run one in one room and the other in another via the same cable set up?

Our house had a dish pointing at the "German" satelite when we moved in. I'm about 90 miles from Essen and I was able to turn the dish to receive BBC 1,2,3,4, ITV1,2,3,4 Channel 4 etc on a bog standard German sat box. Having pointed the dish and single LNB at the "UK" satelite I obviously can't get German Sat TV but reception of the German equivalent of freeview (DVB-T) is excellent here so instead of a second LNB set up and additional cabling I'm just using a DVB-T box and internal set-top aerial for German TV. The two boxes are on different inputs to the TV so I can switch between the sat and DVB-T boxes whenever I want.

You might find these links interesting:
http://www.dishpointer.com/ will show you a map of the direction your dish needs to point for specific satelites
http://www.ueberallfernsehen.de/empfangsprognose.html will give you a prediction of DVB-T coverage based on your postcode.
http://dvb-t.the-media-channel.com/nrw/dvb-t-essen.html shows you the TV channels available on DVB-T

we don't get the terrestrial stuff here which is why the dish was installed. No aeriel recesption!! Also can't get the d telekom tv either. Would have been a much easier solution!

not really the same. For Sky+ you have a quad-LNB, ie one LNB with four connections, two of which are necessary to provide two feeds to your Sky+ dish. For German and British TV you will need two LNBs, one per satellite that you trying to receive. Each LNB can be a single LNB if only one feed for German and one feed for English is required but you could also have two quads to provide multilple feeds.

errr yes you do! You might just need to buy a room antenna if your house antenna wasn't upgraded (some needed to be).

edit: unless you don't actually live in Essen but somewhere east of there in the sticks.

yup, in the sticks!

Ok - will chat to my local sat man and see what he can do. Thanks for your help guys,
Emma