TV use in continental Europe
We have a "Vision Plus" TV in our caravan and a standard aerial (similar to "Vision Plus Image 450"). Do any members have any experience with this type of setup in continental Europe?
We intend to tour France, Spain and Portugal this spring/early summer and assume that camp ground wifi will generally be insufficiently reliable or fast to allow streaming through a proxy server.
We basically just want to keep up with BBC news and current affairs.
Any advice will be gratefully received.
Roland Jaspers
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Not in Europe with a standard aerial (unless you are in the very north of france, and even then the gods of RF need to be with you). You will be able to tune to freeview or the local alternative but this is not in English. If you want tv you need to stream or have a sat dish.
I use a sat dish, simple setup but works in everything north of mid spain.
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Why not just use the internet to read your paper and use the TV to watch videos? If we all streamed, the internet for those of us who just want to surf gets seriously slowed down. Most internet isn’t that good, just like sites at home.
Nora
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Hi, you will need to consider other ways to keep up to date by way of the TV and there are plenty of options. As far as TV goes you would need a huge dish so that’s probably out. We chose to go the internet route and bought an iboost kit but even with that it’s been a very hit and miss solution and it seems that providers such as iPlayer can tell if you are not using a IP address in the UK and won’t work.
We are considering trying one of the services that works by providing a UK IP address as their charges are reasonable for holiday use.
We also use a paid service to download a newspaper to iPad-we tried reading online but again you need a reliable Wi-fi signal. I also have a phone on the 3 network so use my data allowance in most of Europe so keep BBC news alerts on.
If it was just me the money would go on red wine and books but I believe it’s called compromise!
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Hi Roland, as you say you just want to keep up to date with news and current affairs you can do that via BBC Radio 4 - live or catch up.
I pick up that programme via BBC I-player radio - on campsite wi fi (which is usually free where we go) straight to this I-pad. Unlike receiving television you can do that without subscriptions, or satellite dish, or any extra tackle. And it also lets my wife keep up to date with The Archers - but what a bore that is !
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If something really, really, really important happens, like KJU nuking Europe, you'll get to hear about it anyway. The rest of the stuff, in the great scheme of things, can wait till you get home.
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Since owning a Smart Phone, one of the larger 5 inch screen models, I must say I use that a lot now at both home and abroad as I can keep up with the BBC News, do my online banking, check maps where I am and even on 4G it does not use a lot of data unlike using it to tether Windows laptop. I suppose I could also use it for listening to BBC radio.
David
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Over recent years I have reduced the level of TV equipment I take to Europe, and weened myself off the habit of 'always on TV in the van'. This is primarily ever since sky reduced the UK beam so narrow its just not worth the effort in trying to get the signal via dish (unless you have a self seeking one and then only north Europe).
Like many others I use my phone on 4g or site wifi to listen to my chosen radio stations. It uses much less bandwidth compared to TV signals anyhow
I did find out by accident that the new smart digital TV I bought in 2014 for the van has a multi-country setting. And have used it in France, Spain, Switzerland and Germany with the caravan aerial and/or Dish (it has a Sat input as well). Just a case of resetting the home settings to the respective country and re-tuning. Whilst I don't speak all those languages, it is interesting to get the FTA digital and Sat programs in the native country. Sometimes you get an english film to pass some time away, but overall out time is spent more Sky news broadcasts on 19 deg East, and thats really easy to get if you want to keep up to date.
I take a 1TB external USB Hard Drive with films and downloads for those 'rainy days'.
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Slightly related question, but is there a need for a TV licence abroad, not something I have needed to know so far.
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For British TV in europe you will need a satellite dish, size of dish depends on where you are going to be. North of Bordeaux a 65cm will usually get you a picture South of there you will need an 85cm dish but this will only take you so far over the border to Spain, then you will loose the signal since the powers that be reduced the signal. If you subscribe to Sky then if you take your Sky + box with you this will allow you to get some not all british channels and the ones you pay for.
We have used a portable dish for 4 years all over France,Germany,Holland,Belgium and Luxembourg with success, takes a bit of practice but the benefit of a portable dish is that you can usually avoid trees by moving the dish around the pitch (or neighboring pitch)
A year ago we had a dish fitted to the roof of the MH. Its great self seeking takes but seconds to lock on, the only problem is its a lot more fiddle to avoid trees moving a MH around a pitch than a dish.
French sites in Autumn can be an issue as the trees are in full canopy so choose pitch carefully.
We go away for 8-12 weeks at that time of year and the nights are long so having the TV can be a blessing at times, especially if you are not near a main town.
We have been looking at the new portable square self seeking dish should we move back to a caravan in the future, I think that would be our choice then. They are not over expensive (compared to roof mounted) and they are not that big compared to the traditional dish.
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Many thanks to all for your replies.
Roland
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We regularly visit a Dutch site near Avignon, southern France, and watch the Dutch spending hours setting up their large dishes, sometimes at some distance from their outfit, trying to find gaps in the trees. Some of them then leave the TV on all day with a regular diet of soaps and minor league soccer.
Given that the temperature is usually in the thirties and it stays light until 10 pm in June you wonder why they bother.
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When abroad, we take a tv and Humax box with pre-recorded content for after dark. We tune the caravan aerial into local tv stations for weather and some news.
You sometimes get the odd channel with 'older' english speaking programmes - Wheeler dealers springs to mind, and some American program looking for classic cars and doing them up - wife loved it - not!!
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When I was in Holland I managed to get some UK channels, including BBC, through a website called easyview.eu and watched on my tablet, this year I will take my laptop so I have a decent screen size. It is not entirely reliable but it is free!
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Hi
I live in Spain and have just tried Shuttleworths recommendation of Easyview.eu and was surprised how well it worked, we live south of Alicante and the delay was about 30 seconds when watching ITN News at 10pm (11 here) between laptop and my TV. Although we have broad band I was using the signal upstairs from my router, now Filmon are charging this an excellent replacement. Thanks for that going away this weekend and so will try it on the campsite where I'm going.
Phil
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Not many campsite's wifi can cope with streaming, I would have thought.
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I tried Filmon when it was free but the French campsites never had a strong enough signal and high enough capacity to get uninterrupted reception.
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As traficlady pointed out, I dont think some people realise that once you start streaming on a campsite wi-fi you take up all of the available bandwidth, leaving everyone else pulling their hair out because they cant download email or do simple browsing. Streaming should be banned unless you pay for a private fibre link with a minimum of 38mb bandwidth.
Unless you have end to end fibre, and less than 5% in the UK have, the rest of us have a mix of fibre and copper. The copper bit is the phone line from your house, or site office, to the BT box at the end of the street. This is known in the trade as Fibre to the Cabinet or FTTC. The copper bit from the cabinet to your house/office is the bottleneck.
The copper is the old phone line which can handle multiple phone calls at once, but large downloads of data, such as streaming, grab all available bandwidth on the copper bit until the download is complete, leaving everybody else using that service high and dry. Email and simple surfing use very little bandwidth so dont have such a severe effect on the line.
This also applies overseas, on campsites throughout Europe, unless they have invested in end to end fibre, known in the UK as Infinity (BT).
Please stop streaming unless you know you have lots of fibre bandwith.
BillC
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I think you can successfully stream video on a 2mb download speed, and sometimes less. What normally happens is that the viewer automatically adjusts the quality to the speed of connection so you might not get full HD. I suspect the rule of thumb is that if you have problems downloading normal websites on a site WiFi connection you are going to have a problem with streaming. You always have the option to measure the speed.
David
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Hi David, you are not wrong in that assumption, but the problem is, that most common broadband connections, particularly where people or businesses will not/or cannot fund a substantial fibre connection, are no more than 3.85mbs. With just one person streaming most or all of that is used. If the settings of the user demand more, i.e. HD, then all of it wiil be used.
Rowntree Park CC site in the heart of York is a broadband bronze site (3rd and lowest CC rating) and it is common knowledge that if 10 members are surfing or looking at emails all of the bandwidth is in use and the next member connection fails, until someone else switches off.
BillC
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