Do you still use a satellite dish.

Hi, with the rise of systems like Amazon fire sticks, Now TV and smart TV's etc, is the dish dead?

I travel to France a couple of times a year and see the continentals love of a good dish! I find it expensive to justify one of those expensive data roaming sims with enough data to allow me to stream TV on my Firestick. With Smarty, currently 12 GB.

I was thinking of a good old fashioned free standing dish, hooked up through whatever external connector the Autosleeper technician has decided to connect the satellite connector to.

An Avtex tv should be able to  then provide me with Freesat. It may also help with some of those locations in GB where the signal is poor.

So do you still think a free standing satellite dish has merits? I have seen them for as little as £40, which seems pretty cost effective.

Phil

I had a 60cm freestanding dish for a few years but for several reasons it was impractical on Aires, Stellplatz s and Tarmac surfaces in UK so I replaced it with a roof mounted manual dish.  Overall the roof dish was better but if your pitch didn't have line of site with the satellite there was no way round it also with the time difference in Europe a lot of the stuff we would have watched was on too late.

The German RTL station stopped broadcasting F1 live free to air via Astra 1 so one of my main reasons for using satellite (including at home on the drive) disappeared then the operating mechanism of the dish failed so it wouldn't stay aligned.  I would have replaced the dish like for like but it was no longer available and I didnt want a mess on the roof so I just left it here and in 2020 started using a firestick - I wouldn't dream of going back to satellite now as we prefer the ability to time shift with streaming services and mobile network coverage is much more reliable.  We both hardly use any of the data that comes with our phone packages (25GB European Fair Uses each in Europe) so use those up first and very rarely use the van wifi system.

The European A-classers still seem to love their dishes... I can recall only a couple of years ago, on the road west out of Braemar (the tiny road to the Linn of Dee) - the German A-class motorhomes parked up for the night in the laybys, already with their roof dishes deployed, mid-afternoon!

I would like a proper motorised dish, but they seem so expensive. The TV aerial is fairly useless in most European countries. More people receive TV in Germany via satellite than any other way, so I don't think it's going to disappear anytime soon. Few channels are broadcast on terrestrial frequencies, and in Austria they are all encrypted anyway. In Switzerland, they switched off the terrestrial service in 2019. Clearly the future is IPTV, but not yet it seems.

I don't think a free-standing dish would work all that well. Firstly it's low to the ground, making obstructions more likely. And secondly, I'm not sure how well it would work when it's windy. But I'd be interested to hear that I'm wrong!

I think the Amazon Fire Stick is the best way to go if you must watch TV when out in the van, it works very well with EE as my ISP for the rare times I actually use it. IMO, it's nice to get away from the goggle box, especially when out in the van, let's face it, 99.9% of the news is miserable and depressing, a lot of the new series are too woke to watch and enjoy. I think my life is far better not watching the WEF funded brain washer.

We had a motorized dish a few vans ago but haven't bothered since then, when we had one we kept having to have software updated due to the satellites being re adjusted.

These days I rely on the Ariel fitted by AS but as you know, it's not great, we bought a £12.00 stubby Ariel from Amazon and have better results with that, I don't have a fire stick but sometimes stream to my laptop if there is something that I really want to see.

I am thinking of replacing my tv with a cello 24 inch tv with Wi fi built in and a DVD player for around £240.00, already bought a 14 inch (normal tv ) for in the kitchen at home and are pleased with it.

I think that Smarty do a unlimited sim for about £20.00 a month and this can be paused so as we don't really use the van from November to April this would save us £120 a year.

My thoughts are you can buy a lot of data for the cost of a dish, Might be limited in the EU but you could buy a local sim for that.

And if that don't work I find a 50p book from a charity shop rarely lets me down. lol
Pete

Monty-Plym wrote:I think the Amazon Fire Stick is the best way to go if you must watch TV when out in the van, it works very well with EE as my ISP for the rare times I actually use it. IMO, it's nice to get away from the goggle box, especially when out in the van, let's face it, 99.9% of the news is miserable and depressing, a lot of the new series are too woke to watch and enjoy. I think my life is far better not watching the WEF funded brain washer.

This I agree with completely.
We abandoned carrying a TV in the van years ago. 
When touring abroad it's refreshing to get away from all the dire news and, lets be honest, absolutely rubbish soaps, game shows and endless programmes showing how good the police are at harassing motorists..
As said earlier, it's fascinating watching all the continental vans with their swivelling dishes desperately trying to pick up a signal almost before the wheels have stopped turning... And from what I've seen their TV is more dire than ours... 
Al.

Id say, generally yes! Several other options are now available that are more practical when considering space, weight, setup and use.
Although, If you are in the sticks, I suppose a Satellite dish will always have an advantage over Mobile Data.

One of the joys of travelling in France is watching our froggy cousins twirling their satellite dishes with the typical "Hon he hon", when failing to get a signal then moving 3 pitches, failing again and scratching their heads seeing our TV pumping out entertainment.
Satellite, nah not for me I am afraid, totally yesterday

By the way we use EE and I got free EU data roaming as I told them I would go elsewhere if I didn't, 40gb for £10 a month. I always speak to the retention department when renewing anything, best way to get a decent deal.

I expect my requirements are different just because I don’t watch much UK TV, so the catchup apps aren’t useful. When home, apart from Discovery+, I mostly watch German TV, via satellite. Ironic that when actually travelling in Germany, I can’t watch it, because no dish.

Vorsprung Dirk technique