TV away from home
Until last month we got by using one of the £49.99 (now £59.99) Portable Satellite Kits sold by Lidl - once a year (I think Aldi or Lidl had stock last week). The whole system including Dish, LNB, Cable, multi-satellite Receiver and Sucker and Clamp Mounts all come in a neat plastic case together with a rudimentary Compass (which I don't use) and a really useful Tuning Meter (with LEDs) and an audible tone. The Receiver also has a selectable audio tone fed through your TV which makes "tuning-in" the particular Astra (or HotBird) satellite much easier and when you are used to it can be done sometimes in minutes.
However, it can also take a long time and when raining and you are getting wet outside it can be very frustrating. Then when it is windy the dish can be blown out of alignment and may even have to be removed in high winds.
We used our Lidl unit all over England & Ireland (in places for which the dish size should not have been adequate) with both the 12v Receiver supplied - and also when tuned-in to Astra 2 (for UK & Irish TV) I would then swap our home 230v Sky Box using an
Inverter for power (when away from Mains). I even managed to view some of the UK channels right down to south west France (north of Perpignan) last Christmas - but since not all channels have the same power and "footprint" many could not be tuned that far south. Sometimes I had to tune BBC 1 Scotland when BBC 1 Wales (or London) was blank.
In a bid to avoid arguments with the wife and so as to ensure quick set-up and turn-on using our Sky+ Box from home I lashed-out about £1,700 on a KvH Dome Sat system last month from which Rowlands Marine, Pwllheli which they installed very professionally for me and which I used all over Ireland an parts of UK without any problems. As "wild campers" we like to enjoy films, news etc. especially on those long dark winter evenings. This unit was about £300 more expensive than the standard unit as I wanted a "twin-LNB" so that my Sky+ Box would work fully with all functions. They are KvH agents and know what they are doing.
I also had a separate 2x120Ah
Battery array installed with a 50A
Battery to
Battery Charger fitted - all to supply the entertainment devices in our Auto-Trail Apache 634 leaving the two existing Leisure Batteries to run the Lights, Pumps etc. Remember venting Batteries must be mounted outside the habitation area with adequate ventilation to disperse charging gases.
Incidentally the load drawn by my Sky+ Box is 4 Amps and that of my LCD TV is 3A which adds up to 7A drain (+ a bit for the losses of the
Inverter) - which means that an evenings TV/Sky will consume over 42Ah. It is usually recommended that Leisure Batteries should not be discharged below 50% hence a 120Ah
Battery would just be enough for one evening's viewing. Remember a typical 12v Halogen Lamp is 20W (some dimmer ones are 10W) which if you have 4 burning for 6 hours will also use almost 42Ah on their own.
However, if you only want News and Weather then the Lidl system will suffice once you "learn" how to locate the right satellite. It can also offer much superior World News on BBC World which is available on the HotBird satellite (13deg East of South) and which can be tuned over the whole of Europe - unlike Astra2 which is aimed at UK & Ireland with overspill into France.
Another and much cheaper alternative would be to abandon Satellite and go for Freeview which is already standard here in Wales and the Borders I think and is being rolled-out across the rest of England. As long as you are in a TV area then you would get most UK TV channels (exc Sky's subscription channles) for free and eventually over most of the UK (subject to mountains etc.).
