Would like to know about Satellite DBS services outside of United States.

[ussexplroer]

I would like like to know about DBS services over seas. I read things through out the years that one is not limited one or two services and using only there equipment. That if you wanted to as long as you own a receiver that takes card type. You can go to the local drug store and purchase a card to have tv for the month and recharge it if you want. Just want to know the in and outs of what is i like to have satellite tv is another country. Always gets me going when I see people having hand built dishes on there back with a simple receiver to point it at the satellite in the sky to get the government or neighboring counties programming. I know in the U.S. we seen to once again take back seat to companies that want to control everything from the equipment we use to the service we get.

Thanks for shedding any light on this and how a typical service works for any other countries.

Thank You,

Josh

 

[danristheman]

In England they have tv licensing fee they charge you for how many tvs you have. Plus they charge you for color tv than black and white.

 

[DJdish]

In Canada there are 2 satellite companies, Bell and Shaw, they work pretty much the same as Directv and Dish in the US.
In Mexico there are 2 companies, Sky Mexico and Dish Mexico, they also work pretty much as those in the US.
But Sky Mexico has a program with prepayment or pay as you go, it doesn´t work like the conventional monthly fee. It has some peculiar system.

.

 

[ussexplroer]

Thanks for the info so far. Yes I already know about the tv tax in Europe and how to my surprise people don't mind paying it since it covers the BBC channels and contents. Then As for Canada I known about the Bell Vu express. When I aimed my first dish network dish I picked up bell vu. I was like what is that. Then I looked it up on the internet and found out about it. Since I was able to look through the channels list many years ago. It would have been interesting to subscribe to some of those channels. Keep learning more and more.

 

[Titanium]

The Phillipines (and parts of SE Asia) has 3 subscription services with prepaid rechargeable card options. All use linear KU band for distribution.

Cingal uses proprietary STBs and NDS encryption.

GSat uses Conax encryption compatible with CA enabled receivers.

Dream uses Conax encryption compatible with CA enabled receivers.

 

[DJdish]

The other program to customers offered by Sky Mexico, works a little like you mentioned above. The client can go to get a recharge, (not sure if it´s on a card or how), the recharge can be made at 7 Eleven, WalMart, etc, the recharges do not necessarily have to be for consecutive months.

Sky Mexico is linear and Dish Mexico circular.

 

[T134]

In Europe there are a ton of different services. Many have prepaid options/cards available as has been mentioned. Most, but not all allow you to choose your own STB's. Unlike here you can buy STB's at many storefronts and even from some of the providers/installers.

For the STB you need one with an ISO7816 cardslot and either embedded CAS or software called MCAS that allows various legal subscription cards to be used. You can also get a CAM/CI module which is a dedicated PCMCIA CAS interface that takes the subscription card. Not all STB's have this and it increases the cost.

Another big difference is that in most EU countries in home mirroring (cardshare) is legal. Unlike in NA where we'd just pay +$5 for the second TV some of those services require a separate card which amounts to a whole new service for each STB. It is not really meant to rip people off or anything, just how some work especially with prepaid cards. It is perfectly legal to take your first card and mirror it to other STB's in your home. Like here in NA it is illegal to actually "share" outside the home. Some of the provider TOS/agreements actually specify that you have to use certain share methods in-home to not violate their TOS.

There is a ton of FTA over in Europe. Many countries and providers offer a great selection of free programming on terrestrial (OTA), satellite or both. It puts what we get True FTA to shame.

Something else that is common in EU is DVB-T/T2 (OTA) tuners combined with DVB-S2 in one box. IPTV is also much bigger in Europe than in North America with many full service systems running in various countries. It is increasingly common to see receivers such as our AMIKO models that do all 3 in one box.

From what I saw in Europe many or most are running 76cm or a little bigger dishes. Astra/Hotbird 13E/19E is a common combo as those two birds have many different paid systems and FTA on them. This can be setup in minutes on a 76cm with a monoblock and is as easy to aim as a high power Dish500 or DirecTV multi-sat setup.