Satellite TV

Back in September the Lidl supermarket in Kalamata had amongst their special offers complete satellite systems. All the components for the system, the dish, receiver, LNB, an arm for the dish, a cable set and a tool to help locate satellites only came to €117, that’s about £82. It seemed like a bargain not to miss!

We happened to be going into Kalamata on the day that this system was due in the store and knowing that anything like this sells out very quickly, we made Lidl our first stop and bought a system. Once home, we then worked out the best place for the dish. It’s only 80cm, and it’s a buff colour that almost blends in with the stonework of the house so it’s not too obtrusive. Then it was a few minutes of fiddling to track down our first satellite. Yes, we found one, but what was it and what channels could we get? Next stop was the internet to get a list of satellites and the channels we could get.

Most satellites have many ‘free to air’ channels, but we quickly found that these are mostly shopping channels. Having seen the latest exercise machine or a piece of jewellery that looks just like something I had from a Christmas cracker for the tenth time in an hour just made me read the satellite receiver manual to find how to exclude these channels. With a larger dish than our 80cm purchase it should be just about possible to get the satellite that provides most of the ‘free to air’ channels to the UK. Larger? Well yes, at least 3 metres!

Not being that bothered about being able to get UK programs we settled for a satellite that gives us Sky News, CNN and a couple of channels that have a few interesting programs. We can also get BBC Radio 2 and Radio 4, but we almost never listen to these.

The satellite receiver has a couple of ‘CAM slots’ that seem to offer the ability to get more content than the ‘free to air’ channels. Being quite new to the use of satellite receivers I’m not sure what capability these will offer, so if you’re knowledgeable about these, please let me know.

At least now we can catch up on world news without having to try to translate stories on Greek TV news.