Arcadia Satellite TV

Facts About Dishes Television Technology Costa Blanca & Costa Calida – British & Spanish TV

Our satellite dishes and signal acquisition technology are fully legal within Spain. This is in contrast with the tenuous position held by some of the current providers who are using re-broadcasting techniques to supply British TV to ex-patriots.

Re-broadcasting via Microwave

For many years, in popular ex-patriot locations, companies supplied UK terrestrial television through the method of re-broadcasting. This was targeted at areas of high density ex-patriot populations, including Costa Blanca, Costa Calida and Costa de Sol.

This works by the companies receiving the TV signals from the Astra Satellite, 28.2 degrees East via a very large satellite dish. Once the channel signals have been received they are then compiled, decoded, compressed and then re-broadcast to the end-user through local microwave antennas, or in some areas via a local cable system. Channel selections are very limited and screen resolutions unsatisfactory.

This system has operated for around 10 years, since 2001, in many locations. In recent years there have been a number of issues surrounding this type of service. One in particular is that of reception (reliability, quality & stability); however, the most noted issue is that of these companies re-broadcasting services by BBC, ITV and Sky without any permissions or contracts in place. This is an ongoing case being argued within Europe and involving, UK, European and Spanish legal systems.

Also several “pay-per-view” channels, including Gol, History, Bio, Natura, and Discovery, are being re-distributed without the consent or licencing from the original broadcaster – these services may be withdrawn without prior notice.

Licencing and fiscal issues have already led to the closure of 3 re-broadcasting companies during the past 18 months. Other cases are under review for corruption, and tax evasion – as testified by many newspaper reports.

Direct Signals legally received from the Astra satellite

Satellite receivers have no issues with bandwidth and are currently capable of picking up thousands of channels and new “free-to-air” channels are being added all the time. These new channels are picked up by simply re-scanning your satellite receiver periodically. For UK programming alone on the Astra 28.2 satellites you can receive over 250 channels of “free-to-air” content. Comparison

A satellite system such as provided by Arcadia TV draws program content directly, and legally, from the Astra satellite.

Re-broadcasting or Internet streaming systems rely upon a third party supplier providing illegal services by acting as a go-between between the satellite and the end user and then charging them a fee for providing the “free-to -air” content.

With your own satellite dish you cannot be switched off from your services. This is the only method of receiving legal English language television content within Spain, or anywhere outside the UK.

Main Benefits

Legal television service
Quality reception (no decoding / recompression)
True High Definition or Standard definition as broadcast
Digital audio reception (where broadcast for Dolby digital films) can use muti-speaker systems
No limitations, as with streaming TV, from low-speed internet connections.