Receiving Freesat in spain

[knowabit]

My dad has a small place in Spain that has a satellite dish and he received Freesat channels thru Sky because he took a sky box over there and had a freesat card from Sky. The box is quite old though and he needs to change it. He was told that to receive the Freesat channels, he longer needed a Freesat card from Sky to put in the box. Does anyone know if this is correct? He is assuming he can just buy a Freesat box and plug it in and it will work and pick up the sky free channels??
Any help appreciated. Thanks.

[rojash]

Dunno about Spain, but here in Greece we are reduced to two free channels (for which we still need the Sky card). I'm told it's because Sky have changed the footprint of their coverage. We've basically dumped the Sky box and switched to using the Internet for TV.

[knowabit]

Yeah, I'm not sure how it all works. My dad says that you are not supposed to receive the free Sky channels in Spain, so I don't know how he does?

[rojash]

"so I don't know how he does?"
You use a Sky card registered to a UK address.

[allgram]

Yes is the answer, you may need a bigger dish, but when we first came to Spain I had a £30 Grundig box from Argos (because we were not sure if it would work or of picture quality) ,all we did was unplug our sky box plug in the Grundig enter our postcode (for regional TV) and it works fine.
allgram.

[jomifl]

The size of dish you need depends on how well you are covered by the satellite 'footprint'. You can find out from the web. Here in France near Montauban we need a 80cm dish which works fine. You don't need a sky box to get the free to air channels but you do need a box that has the channels already installed. Some boxes available in France just have French speaking channels installed. You may be able to add channels but it is dificult to find out from the shops that sell them. We have a motorised dish which enables us to pick up astra 19 and hispasat for occasional use. Astra 28 covers most of our needs as we can get all the terrestrial UK channels plus the red button channels. When Wimbledon was on we had a choice of 4 matches. We could watch F1 on French channels when it wasn't free in UK and cycling on German Eurosport (astra 19) when it wasn't available elswhere. There are thousands of free channels available and hundreds of them are in English. You don't need a sky box, we got ours at our local DIY store.

[satty]

You cannot receive Freesat on Sky boxes.
You can only receive Freesat on Freesat boxes.
The Freesat software is not available to run on Sky boxes.

However "free to air" channels, that require no viewing card, can be received on both Sky boxes and Freesat boxes.

Simply taking your sky card out of your sky box and you will get the same channels as you would on a Freesat box.

You have not and never needed a viewing card for free to air channels.
You have not needed a viewing card for BBC channels for over 8 years.

The only free Sky channels are Sky News, Pick TV and Challenge TV (the latter two recently move free to air. All other "free to air" channels are nothing to do with Sky at all.

There are some "free to view" channels that require a Sky card but no subscription: Five HD, Motors TV, Sony TV and a few others.

There is nothing wrong or illegal with the reception or watching of free to air tv channels from other countries in any country.

The use of a Sky viewing card outside the UK and ROI is against the T&Cs of the sky contract.

[ChuckFickens]

"You cannot receive Freesat on Sky boxes. "

http://www.sky.com/shop/freesat/home/

you can receive all the free to air channels on a sky box without a viewing card and all the free to view channels with either an expired viewing card or a sky freesat viewing card.

[satty]

Like i said you cannot get Freesat on a Sky box.
You get Freesat on a Freesat box.

You can get, as the link says, get "Freesat from Sky" on a Sky box - with a Sky "free to view / Freesat from Sky " card, but you cannot get Freesat on a Sky box...they are two seperate systems with two seperate softwares.

[jomifl]

Satty, I think most people don't distinguish between 'Freesat' and'Free to air'.