Mr Grumpy

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By Mr Grumpy - Mon 14th Jun 2010

 

If you scour the various on-line forums, or read the countless free expat newspapers over here in Spain - even listen in on the hundreds of conversations going on in the bars up and down the Costa's and inland, sooner or later one topic is sure to come up. Television. Not necesarily what's been on telly, but actually how and how not ot get it.

When I first arrived in Spain, I naturally wanted and needed my English TV as a comfort blanket and so we looked into how we could best recieve it.

The one that a lot of people (mainly property owners as opposed to renters) seemed to opt for was the Sky TV system. Namely registering the Sky subscription to a UK address and then getting the card posted over here to use in a Sky box exactly as you would in the UK, with the exception of requiring a 2.1/2 mt dish in order to recieve the signal. This is usually a reliable method if you are prepared to pay for the monthly subscription to Sky, have the space and inclination to have a dish the size of a child's paddling pool in your garden, and can afford the 1'000 euros plus to buy the dish and have the base prepared. It also needs to be said that although Sky turn a blind eye to this method, it is still essentially an illegal set up.

Blocking our IP address on our computer to download BBC or ITV's i-Player was ruled out due to the fact that hiding our IP address would obviously draw attention to what we were doing and sooner or later we would get caught, stopped and more than likely, heavily fined.

So like many unsuspecting expats we looked at the old 're-broadcasters'. In our experience these so-called service providers fell into 2 categories :

1.) Some of these re-broadcasters are actually legal companies, however what they are doing is essentially illegal - they are selling a product that they have no right to sell. They are essentially taking a satellite signal, scrambling it and then broadcasting it the the set top box where it is unscambled. All for a monthly fee. It has been rumoured that many of these such companies are backed by Mafia money and are easy targets as the Guardia are marching up and down the Costa's closing them down one by one.

2.) You will also find a few people here and then that have the technical nounce to be able to understand how to 'work around' the above system. Usually just freiends or neighbours who have worked out from experience how to scramble the system themselves and set a system up for you for the cost of the box and a few pints.

To be fair I have tried both systems in the past. I found that going through the re-broadcasters was not 100% reliable as the signal strength kept changing, or my box was often recalled for calibrating. It also stuck in my throat a little that I was essentially paying (quite a bit of) good money for an unreliable service that was illegal. It didn't feel wrong in any way in asking a mate to cobble something together for me - if anything it felt that the little man was getting one over on an organised crime syndicate.

However, this too is not a reliable set up - there are often long periods when the signal is scrambled and nothing is recieved, but obviously paying nothing for the service, there is nothing that I can do.

A relitavley new concept is streaming Free British TV through the Internet. I saw this at a friends house recently and was amazed at the quality - and equally amazed to find out that it was both Free and Legal (it seems that the legality issue is basically down to people not being able to profit from legally selling a service that they are not entitled to - no law against giving it away though !) - the only requirement was to have an ADSL contract with the provider of at least 3meg.

I only had a 1meg connection and was gutted that living in the campo, I would be unable to upgrade.

It is only recently that I looked into another option : Spanish Digital TV - Legal, Free to use, easy to install, no unsightly radar station in the back garden.

For 99 Euros the Engineer basically wires the set top box into the A4 sized mesh that is already in place from my previous system. Granted, the programs are in Spanish, which will be great for my daughter. At 3 I think it is important that she can be exposed to as much Spanish language and culture as possible (not to mention her parents!) - but here's the good part... The programs that are shown which were originally produced in the English Language ( Almost all films, 24, CSI Miami etc...) are dubbed from English Into Spanish, but the 'dubbing' can be nutralised with one flick of the remote.

For 99 quid I have decided to have a punt, just in time for the world cup - I will let you know how we get on (with the system I mean, it's a given that England will crash out on penalties in the quarter finals.)