Information overload

[JanB]

We have lost all our English tv, as the satellite was deemed defunk or whatever.

Cue a huge demand for firesticks, vpn's and heaven knows what else. Oh yes, starlink.

We have been bombarded with friends telling us what we should do/have

We don't actually watch a lot of tv, especially in the summer and meo, our Portuguese provider, are a pain in the bottom to try and get out of the contract, which is normally a rolling two year one.

And then I have the situation with my laptop - according to Steve and Darren, it's a sack of shxx

So we have the main men, coming up later this week, with all their gismos, firesticks, tablets and heaven knows what else, to try and bring us into the future. Oh yes, ipads.

[TheOstrich]

Best of luck!

[JanB]

To be quite honest, what they were talking about earlier went right over my head

Didn't even touch Grumpy's

As I told them, when I was working, I knew what was going on, but I've been retired and out of the work place for 19 years, so not a hope of me
understanding what on earth they were on about

[Suff]

Jan, did you have Sky or Freesat do you know?

Here is as simple a breakdown as I can make it for you.

Satellite. I use Freesat and just put a new box in last year. However down where you are you will need a MUCH larger dish. No reason why you shouldn't be able to watch UK TV on one of those. Although the box is not cheap and you'd need to get it from the UK.

FireTV is nothing more than a sick you put in the back of your TV And it allows you to access TV, Movies and other stuff (normally for a cost), just like a mobile phone, but from your TV with a separate remote control. Think of it like a 56" mobile phone with a remote control.

The catch with the FireTV is that it will display only local content unless you get a VPN.


A VPN is nothing more than grabbing a bit of the UK internet and putting your home into it. Think of the UK internet like a big bubble and the VPN being a long sausage like tube extending the bubble out to your house. Once you are inside the bubble you are in the UK.

The problem is that Amazon and Netflix and the BBC and ITV and, yes you get the picture, everyone and their dog who gives you your "mobile" services on the TV, try very hard to see where you are. This also means that they know who the VPN providers are and will block them. I went through years of paying up to £17 a month for VPN services which worked 3 months out of 4.


So I have satellite TV
I have a very special VPN which costs me $4 a month and provides all my services and is never blocked
I have a FireTV stick plugged into the TV



Starlink is your own internet. Just like the TV, it is satellite based, it has a dish and it gives you a connection to the internet via SpaceX satellites. No cable off your property, works when your local service is down and it's pretty fast. I use it for when I'm travelling for work. This place is a classic example. Advertised as a "holiday cottage with wifi". In this wonderful nook of England there is virtually Zero mobile phone service and the first thing it said in the book was "our wifi is very poor and often goes off, it is BT who do this and we just have to live with it".

My starlink dish is currently on the roof just outside the Velux.

Key thing with Starlink is that it tells everyone where you are in the world. So you need a VPN.....


They say a picture speaks a thousand words.

FireTV



VPN.



Starlink

[JanB]

Suff my love, you lost me in the first sentence. Sorry, I'm useless at thisstuff.

We're on wifi and that's all I know.

But thank you xx

[JanB]

So having read it again, starlink seems to be the forward.

250€ as a first cost and then whatever afterwards.

It was, apparently, double that.

I just need to know how to go about it.

Fancy a holiday in the deepest Alentejo?

[Kaz]

So we have Sky, but also a load of Apps that give us the different players like iPlayer, itvx, Paramount, PBS, All4, UKTVPlay, Disney, Amazon Prime, Netflix et al. Just don't ask me how we get them .......

Good luck

[JanB]

Kaz, I had Darren, Steve and Mitchell all telling me different stuff and I just got so fed up.

In the summer, we rarely watch tv, but it would be nice to watch something in the winter, when it's cold and wet.

[Kaz]

I hope you get it sorted then!

[Suff]

Hi Jan, Starlink only solves your internet.

You still need a VPN and something like a FireTV stick for streaming.

I would have thought replacing the Satellite would be the cheapest option?? Then I looked at the problem. First the box. That's not too bad.

Box

But then you need a dish. Portugal needs more than 1m. Looking at a 1.8m dish tells a nasty price tale of €1,300

Dish

Which is pretty outrageous...

Sadly all holidays are taken by Mrs S. For either home renovation (last lap), or actual holiday.