TV and Satellite Reception Fuerteventura

The first thing you'll realize when setting up home in Fuerteventura is what good value the BBC licence is in the UK!

There are two options to receive English TV in Fuerteventura. The first and most popular is by satellite. For this you will need a suitable size dish and a satellite receiver.

For Sky Digital, you will need a 1.35 metre dish. Some installers will tell you that Sky can be received with a smaller dish, say of 1.2 metre diameter but in practice the picture will break up as some times of the year, particularly when the weather is bad, unless you go for a larger dish.

A further note here about dishes, size does matter! The difference between having the best quality dish, the best LNB and a top of the range receiver compared to all the cheapest stuff is about the equivalent of having a dish one inch bigger in diameter. Don't be fooled by salesmen's talk, they make more money on smaller dishes and will try to talk you into buying one.

A 1.35m dish fully installed and set up will cost about 320 euros from one of the advertisers listed on this site, don't be put off if the first one you call says there is no such thing, just hang up and call the next one!

Having said that, you will still not get BBC or ITV with a 1.35 metre dish. The BBC and ITV channels are transmitted by Sky on it's '2D' beam which can be likened to a narrow spot light beam pointing at the UK. To receive channels on the 2D beam, you will need a dish of at least 3 metres and preferably larger.

There are installers who offer these very large dishes but the price (approx 3000 euros for a 3.1 metre) and the space required will put most people off. Also, even with such a large dish, your viewing may not be trouble free. Before ordering one, find someone who already has one and ask him/her if they can recommend their supplier, several of the British bars in Corralejo have large dishes and will be happy to demonstrate their system for the price of a pint!

With a 1.35m dish and no Sky subscription (a Sky FreeSat or expired subscription card is still needed), you will receive amongst others- Channel 4, Sky 3, Five, Five US, Five Life, Sky News, CNN, Zone Horror, Zone Thriller, Movies for Men, most BBC & Virgin radio channels, a few music channels and loads of shopping channels. Please see our Sky Digital channels page for the full list.

With a Sky subscription you will get all the above plus whatever other Sky channels you subscribe to, but still no BBC or ITV. Note that Sky will not sell you a FreeSat card or subscription if they think you are going to use it outside the UK. You will need to get your card or subscription whilst in the UK or get someone at home to obtain one for you. Some of the installers listed on this site may be able to organize a card for you.

As an alternative to Sky, there are other satellites that you can point a dish at but the number of English channels on them is very limited. Some foreign satellites show box office movies and offer the ability to change the movie language to English but of course all their other output will be foreign.

Worth mentioning is BBC Prime, a station not promoted in the UK which shows (what it thinks) is the best of the BBC's output. This requires a relatively small dish pointed at the Eutelsat Hotbird 6 satellite at 13ΊEast. You will also need a satellite receiver with a Viaccess card slot and a subscription card from the BBC. Study the programme listings carefully before going for this option as there are very few (if any) other channels you'd watch on Hotbird 6.

The other option for receiving British TV in Fuerteventura was by subscribing to a company that had a large dish connected to four Sky Digital boxes and retransmitted BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 as a single digital signal by microwave to reprogrammed digital satellite boxes. However, at the time of writing, (March 2007) it has been turned off for about five months without reasonable explanation or compensation for subscribers.

In March 2007, a new company started advertising this system but are yet to start transmissions in Corralejo. They claim to have no connection to the old company and say that any equipment bought from the previous company is now useless and will need to be replaced.

The cost of doing so is a staggering €720 installation and €22.50 a month or €200 installation and €50 month. I have yet to see the equipment they're offering but it'll probably be an off-the-shelf digital satellite box (about £70 on eBay) and a £10 TV aerial. A fair price for this system would be €200 installation including the first years subscription and €100 a year subscription after that.

Even if you're a Lotto winner and can afford it, it has several potential problems, (1) If they can't get enough subscribers they'll just abandon it and you'll lose your money. (2) It's unlikely they'll be able to keep it going 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. (3) The BBC/ITV/Sky could force them off the air at any time for re-transmitting copyrighted material. (4) The Spanish authorities could force them off the air at any time.

Personally, I can not recommend this system, people who have lived in the Canaries for a long time will tell you these companies come and go and none of them have a sustainable business model. At the prices they're asking, they'll never get enough subscribers to make it worthwhile continuing.

Now that you can receive 5, 5 US and 5 Life on Sky, there is a lot more watchable material on satellite, coupled with the fact that once you live here you will be able to swap DVD's with other residents (some of which have hundreds of English films), you'll probably manage okay for entertainment and in any case, there are loads of British bars with 3m dishes who show all the soaps from the UK.

And you can always watch Spanish TV!

Please see our TV & Satellite installers page for a list of local installers.

Please mention Fuerteventura Pages when responding to adverts!

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