Watching Irish TV abroad

30kmph

Can anyone tell me how to sort out getting the tv stations I want in Italy?

I will want to watch the gaa championship and sky sports etc. Does anyone know what service provider over there caters for that sort of stuff?

Thanks

Newtown90

You need one big ass dish to get Astra 2 in Italy i think!

You'd need an official sky Ireland sub mate to get the likes of RTE and Sky Sports UK out there..

Sky Italia show a lot of the Prem if thats what your after but its in Italian lately only..

You could also set up a slingbox here in Ireland and get access to it over in Italy, i know a mate who has it set up for a friend in Canada at the min!..

Minstrel27

An Irish proxy will get you the GAA on the RTÉ and TV3 websites.

rob the satman

where exactly in Italy are you?

rlogue

The Astra 2d website www.astra2d.com is the best resource to advise you as to what size of dish you need to get reliable Astra 2D reception.

KeRbDoG

rlogue wrote: »

The Astra 2d website www.astra2d.com is the best resource to advise you as to what size of dish you need to get reliable Astra 2D reception.

Wow, a 180/240cm dish for Astra 2D in Italy

dxhound2005

As well as 1 West RTE and TG4 have been using 37.5 West and Setanta 7 and 10 East for GAA feeds. You would need a motorised dish and as has been said a 4:2:2 capable receiver (AzBox is one) for feeds.

This is a selection of GAA feeds, Satelliweb is a good site.

http://www.satelliweb.com/index.php?section=search&q=gaa

budgi3

dxhound2005 wrote: »

As well as 1 West RTE and TG4 have been using 37.5 West and Setanta 7 and 10 East for GAA feeds.

What size dish would you need to get these feeds in Ireland?

dxhound2005

My dish is 1.1m and those feeds on 1 West are never very strong. Much stronger on 37.5 West and from memory 7 and 10 East are good signals.

Bigger dish is always better.

tapfit2004

I set up an 80cm dish a few years ago about 30 miles north of milan in a place called arona for a mate of mine.

With a bit of tweaking i was able to get 2d signals for bbc and itv. It worked ok but would go off in the evenings as the signal was very low. I'd say i would have got it steady enough with a 1.1m or there about.

The signal quality can vary a lot over short distances at the edge of the footprint so i probably just got lucky. My mate used it for about 2 years with no problems for the other sats at 28e.

30kmph

Thanks for the replies. I've just read through them all, unfortunately I don't really understand most of the replies. Not a techie.
Would it not be possible to watch premiership on the internet? What about the rte player? Can I watch live championship matches with that?

Also, one post says I can watch Irish tv with an Irish proxy. Can you explain what this is please, and how do I go about getting one?

rob the satman

30kmph wrote: »

Also, one post says I can watch Irish tv with an Irish proxy. Can you explain what this is please, and how do I go about getting one?

A proxy basically is if you know someone in Ireland (family or friend0 who can take out a sky subscription for you, you pay them , they pay sky from their account, they send you the card , or receiver and card if that's what you want, sky will think the box and subscription is in Ireland, provided you don't do anything silly like connect your sky box to the phone line in Italy or phone sky up from Italy, there will be no problems .

I asked you in an earlier post, where exactly in Italy are you? so we can tell you what size dish e.t.c.you need

tapfit2004

rob the satman wrote: »

A proxy basically is if you know someone in Ireland (family or friend0 who can take out a sky subscription for you, you pay them , they pay sky from their account, they send you the card , or receiver and card if that's what you want, sky will think the box and subscription is in Ireland, provided you don't do anything silly like connect your sky box to the phone line in Italy or phone sky up from Italy, there will be no problems .

I asked you in an earlier post, where exactly in Italy are you? so we can tell you what size dish e.t.c.you need

in the post that mentions the irish proxy the poster (Minstrel27) is talking about watching irish tv over the internet thru rte player and the like.

the proxy he is talking about is connecting to the rte player site form abroad thru an irish ip address as some programs (if not all) will be blocked to ip addresses outside ireland.

you would do well to find a good free irish proxy, i've never got a free one and eventually gave up looking.

rob the satman

tapfit2004 wrote: »

in the post that mentions the irish proxy the poster (Minstrel27) is talking about watching irish tv over the internet thru rte player and the like.

the proxy he is talking about is connecting to the rte player site form abroad thru an irish ip address as some programs (if not all) will be blocked to ip addresses outside ireland.

you would do well to find a good free irish proxy, i've never got a free one and eventually gave up looking.

And the same rule applies for satellite (some form of proxy required unless you want to pay the middle man)

rob the satman

tapfit2004 wrote: »

I set up an 80cm dish a few years ago about 30 miles north of milan in a place called arona for a mate of mine.

With a bit of tweaking i was able to get 2d signals for bbc and itv. It worked ok but would go off in the evenings as the signal was very low. I'd say i would have got it steady enough with a 1.1m or there about.

The signal quality can vary a lot over short distances at the edge of the footprint so i probably just got lucky. My mate used it for about 2 years with no problems for the other sats at 28e.

I know someone in the Milan area who is now having problems with a 1 metre dish so I would advise a 1.2 metre dish now, there have been lots of reception reports saying the 28 deg Astra's are either slightly different beams or signal levels towards the mediterranean area now, whereas before a certain size dish was ok , now they need the next bigger, it's common knowledge

StiophanM

Hello, I am new to boards so if this has been mentioned before, sorry. Just to expand on what you are saying Rob, I go to southern Spain on regular basis and have noticed a deterioration of quality of Sky channels on dishes of about a metre over the last year or so. Especially with certain lower\Freesat frequencies And I also notice newer installations using bigger dishes up to 1.5m.

tapfit2004

i found a site giving reception reports for most of europe, might be worth a look.

astra2d.proboards.com

championc

tapfit2004 wrote: »

in the post that mentions the irish proxy the poster (Minstrel27) is talking about watching irish tv over the internet thru rte player and the like.

the proxy he is talking about is connecting to the rte player site form abroad thru an irish ip address as some programs (if not all) will be blocked to ip addresses outside ireland.

you would do well to find a good free irish proxy, i've never got a free one and eventually gave up looking.

Seach Google for Tor Network, download and install

Once installed, run the Tor Browser, and then click on View the Network, sort by country by clicking above the flags. I currently only see one for Ireland - MgeniUser. Simply edit the "torrc" file located in the Tor Browser/Data/Tor directory of your install and add the following lines to the bottom of the file and re-start Tor

StrictExitNodes 1
ExitNodes MgeniUser

If specifying multiple nodes, separate each with a comma. And so for any wanting to use BBC iPlayer, obviously use UK nodes instead.

Then the final bit is to setup your browser proxy settings. Set the IP to 127.0.0.1 and then the port to 8118. Personally, I use FoxyProxy. A search of Google for Tor and FoxyProxy should give you any info you need


Either this or get a Slingbox and stick it in an Irish Friends house. Mind you, not sure if you could get one which will do DVB-T MPEG-4

Stinicker

If you have the money and space get yourself a Big dish, and it will be just like having Irish Sky, if you live in apartment block that has a few Irish or British resident expats then talk around and you may find a few willing to chip into the cost in return for a feed from the dish etc. It will be the most reliable way you will find of getting Irish TV abroad, Internet streams etc. are unreliable (with slow Irish upload speeds) and the picture quality is just about ok on a 10" netbook but forget about it on a 50" plasma screen.

rlogue

Yes with all the talk of Saorview and Saorsat on the other forums there remains the Elephant in the room of Irish people wanting access to their TV abroad. RTE could start the FTA international channel tomorrow - after all they have the money to fund an expensive terrestrial network and have spent considerable time and effort developing a satellite tv system that cannot be received outside Ireland.

As is always the case Official Ireland tries to stop demand and someone goes ahead and provides it anyway.

We would not have had commercial radio without the pirates, TG4 without Bob Quinns pirate tv broadcasts in Connamara or Irish TV abroad without the ingenuity of our ex pats.

Capt'n Midnight

rlogue wrote: »

Yes with all the talk of Saorview and Saorsat on the other forums there remains the Elephant in the room of Irish people wanting access to their TV abroad. RTE could start the FTA international channel tomorrow - after all they have the money to fund an expensive terrestrial network and have spent considerable time and effort developing a satellite tv system that cannot be received outside Ireland.

This is the beam FreeSat uses - it means the vast majoity of people outside the British Isles can't pick up English language programs with a standard dish. For the UK channels there is maybe a 10% population overspill into us and part of France




They are not developing a satellite system for Ireland. They are using ONE of the 82 spot beams on a satellite that covers Europe and North Africa.

Our spot beam's frequencies are reused in France



http://www.saortv.info/satellite-saorsat/

Why Ka-Sat @9E and not on Freesat @28E?
Some members of the committee will be familiar with the equivalent UK service, Freesat. The BBC, ITV and a number of other companies have put their services on one of the wideband Astra satellites. The services are broadcast unencrypted, or “in the clear” as we call it. The trouble with those wideband satellites is that they have a very big footprint. If RTE were to be put up on a wideband satellite, its services would be in the clear to the UK, France, Holland and many other countries. One might ask why that should not be done, to which I would respond that we do not have the resources to purchase the rights to enable us to broadcast into those countries. We buy programming that allows us to broadcast to 4.5 million people. We do not have the money to broadcast to 100 million people. Therefore, the option taken by the BBC when Freesat was launched is not available to us.
…
It [Saorsat] will cost us approximately €1.5 million per year. We can manage it. As other channels come on board, part of the cost will be defrayed. In light of the security this option provides and the ability to supply to the 2% of the population who do not currently receive public service television, the cost can be adequately justified. We might have a different take on the situation were the cost €20 million or €25 million, but the actual amount is appropriate and reasonable.

Yes it's technically possible for RTE to show only programs they have rights to, but it would have to be a channel for emigrants. It would cost them money, not sure how they could sell advertising on it to support it. The BBC don't do it. Yes the BBC do have a FTA news channel on Astra 1 for all of Europe, but it has lots of viewers and ads.

rlogue

There's no reason why there shouldn't be advertising on the channel.

In any case the Astra 2D footprint goes much further than the officially published footprint. There is no specific need for the Irish channels to be on Astra 2D as the channels are encrypted.

The International channel needs to be a range of satellites in any case, not just the 28.2 position as it should be aimed at Irish communities worldwide and not just the UK.

hairy sailor

Italy

Reception of Sky digital TV in Northern Italy should be possible on a 1.2m - 1.5m dish, but further south very large dish sizes are required. For Sky TV reception in Rome, satellite dish requirements may be 3m or larger. Reception in central and southern Italy may be poor or non existent in extreme cases. Dish size recommendations vary wildly depending on location, so some trial and error may be needed to get reliable Sky TV reception, especially in poor weather. We have read that an 1m dish works in Milan.