Watching German TV in the UK

[BoffinMum]

Following on from the other thread about watching UK TV in Oz, I am wondering what the cheapest way might be to watch German TV over here, given that I have tried doing it online and failed.

Do I need a particular kind of satellite dish and set top box or something?

[NetworkGuy]

In the past, many of the German satellite stations were unencrypted. Maplins sells complete setups that work for FTA (Free to Air) stations (excludes UK FreeSat).

It might be worth asking at a Maplin shop, or at Lidl or Aldi (Lidl has sold satellite kit in the past, and is a German company, so there may be some contacts to ask).

Alternatively, you could make a call to Medion's technical bods (Medion is a German PC maker) and ask how you could watch German stations on one of their PCs - whether their stations are encrypted on satellite etc (they spoke excellent English last time I called on their freephnoe number... yes, a bit cheeky but speaking direct to someone in Germany will get accurate info... or search for someone living in Germany in the 'moving abroad' type sections of MN).

[MmeLindt]

You just need to point a satellite in the right direction.

We have done it the other way around, so watching UK TV in Europe.

Check out this website

We had a sat dish that was able to pick up both German and UK TV.

Or check out BT Vision, if they offer German channels. Here in Switzerland we get the UK channels over the Swisscom network.

[NetworkGuy]

Are the signals DVB or analogue ? Pointing the dish may be easy, having a compatible signal is another matter...

(Remember there are a few different versions of PAL, so one might get image but no sound without a suitable sat box / TV.)

[MmeLindt]

No idea, NG. We bought the multytenne from Technisat.

We had to get someone to come in and do the fine-tuning but DH installed it himself. And he is not a techy person.

[NetworkGuy]

What I am getting at is that there may be different sets of channels using DVB to analogue (which might be explained in that German site - I was working all night so did not have a really good chance to get it translated and digested), so just pointing a dish in the right direction may work, but it might be worth more research than jumping in too quickly depending on what the OP is after (general conversation? particular entertainment shows? unclear to me which channels would be most suited, which may influence suitable sat receiver for viewing).

[MmeLindt]

Assuming that BoffinMum is looking for the normal German channels - ARD, ZDF, RTL, PRO7, SAT1, RTL2 etc - then they are definitely available over the Astra 19,2° Ost satellite. Not sure about pay tv such as the sports programs.

The forum that is linked to on that website is a good place to start, Boffin. That is where I got advice on which system to go for.

[NetworkGuy]

I wonder whether they have gone to digital on those stations... Only wonder because Sat1 and Pro7 ring bells from around 18 years ago when I first got satellite (when the BBC was testing it with radio 4 [mono] and 5, World Radio Network started up a bit later, and there were a number of German stations one could watch.

I think the most interesting for me was the CeBIT technology show which had coverage over a number of days. I could not understand what was said but the items being shown made up for that!

[MmeLindt]

No idea, NG, but we can still get them on our sat dish. We haven't taken it down for the times that our internet is down and we need back up Cbeebies and Nick.

[orienteerer]

I'm interested in this for DS as we used to live in Austria and he's loosing his German fast. I've been too lazy to pursue it but Digital Spy often has good info including this

[orienteerer]

Opps.....just realised that info I linked to was years old

[Hayley13]

I Know very cool site where you can watch German Tv channels Online www.choose.tv/tv-online-from-germany. Many interesting programs and totally Free.

[LauraKeller]

Try germantvcompany.com. They offer German TV online in high quality.

[cdtaylornats]

streema.com/tv/country/Germany

Try some of the channels on the above site