Hi there and welcome to my Blog on how to watch UK TV (specifically the BBC) when you are not actually in the UK. This applies to anyone on holiday outside the UK or indeed living abroad for a time.
There are many ways to achieve this, and keep up to date with UK News and UK Centric items, as well as catching some of the best TV in the world (IMHO) as it happens.
I just finished watching season 5 of the UK Apprentice with Sir Alan (soon to be Lord Sugar) and his able helpers. Grand television.
First option is of course to set up a satellite dish and pull in the images from the Astra Satellite, as the Astra 2 position. This used to work really well, and is pretty good in the Northern countries of Europe still (North France, Netherlands, Belgium etc). But the BBC, for good economic reasons, took their encrypted signals from the main transponders and moved them to the UK centric spot beams. This means that the further south you go, the bigger the dish you need. In Middle and Southern Spain that now means a huge dish (expensive and big wind loading!) . Further, because the Astra satellite system is not exactly stationary (it describes a figure of eight in the sky), it moves off centre of the dish daily and the weaker channels, like BBC2 stop working after about 16:00- just before the good programs!
Outside of Europe this is not even an option anyway, the Earth is round so there are many places you just cant see the satellites.
Second option is a dedicated Internet system. I set one up using a Sling Box (tm). These are wonderful systems. You need a cooperative person in the UK, and two Internet connections, one in the UK and one where ever you happen to be.
I have one set up with my Mother. We set up a Freeview PVR in the living room, which she uses to watch and record the Terrestrial Freeview signal. This has a regular video/ audio out that goes to the Video/ Audio in on the Sling Box. This does the encoding and conversion to IP traffic. Then we run some Cat 5 over to the ADSL modem in the other corner by the telephone socket. I needed to do a bit of set up with the ADSL settings to get it to forward the signal and make it discoverable from outside. A nice man from Sling Box in Holland walked me through the set up. Now from anywhere in the world, armed with my username and password I can connect to the Box in Mums house and watch the same TV as her. The Slingbox has Infra Red output, so I can use a virtual remote control on the PC to control the box.
Initially there is a client software to run on the Computer, but today there is also a web option, so from any browser on any PC I can connect to my home box.
This is great, but it is a point to point system. It has to be as it varies the video compression based on the quality of the point to point internet link. It is highly dependent on your bandwidth, but works well. It is great for the news, not so hot for feature films. (Get the DVD is my honest advice for films!). The PVR Set Top Box I got is a Topfield 5800, which does have the advantage that having recorded a program you can then export it in the original MPEG2 format via the USB link. So I have logged in to the box from abroad, set it to record, and then on visiting the UK copied the program onto my PC to watch later. But these files are large, and you need a lot of Hard drive to hold them.
The only weakness is that the remote control codes database in the Sling Box does not have all the Topfield commands, so it requires a telephone call to Mum to get old stuff deleted. Not such a big hardship.
When Mum was with us abroad we did also need to ring her neighbours to do a reset as the software had lockedup. (Just go in to the house, turn the main circuit breaker off, count to 10 and then turn it back on) – the long distance equivalent of the Windows Control, Alt, Delete!
More to come, as the best solution is coming. ...
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