Hi everyone. We heard about South Africans that are catching DSTV (South African Digital satellite TV) in Munich and Prague, so we brought a DSTV decoder with us and have an account, but we need to find someone who can help us set up the satellite and the connection correctly to catch the signal... We tried sky4expats but they aren't that keen to help. Has anyone on this forum perhaps done it or know someone who has DSTV in switzerland?

We have posted this question on other forums and got the reply "you are now in Europe, get a life and adapt" - but quite frankly we miss the excellent sports channels.

Does anybody know anybody who is a guru with these things?

Thanks!

DSTV is the South African nomenclature for what we simply call Satellite TV.

Read here:

Dummies Guide: Satellite install for free to air channels. No monthly fees - cheap

and

http://www.englishforum.ch/tv-intern...tart-here.html

All you need is your box, dish and a South facing balcony

Note: You will not pick up the stations you had on South African DSTV (supersport etc) because you will be pointing to hotbird and astra from here.

DStv
and not really good news....
http://www.satellites.co.uk/satellit...sat-68-5e.html

If you learned more from those sources, that would be the best solution. I believe big dish (3m+) will be needed as you're stretching the footprint a little.

Here is a good place for listings of channels available here:

http://en.kingofsat.net/satellites.php

For African channels:

http://en.kingofsat.net/find.php?question=Africa

Thanks for all the tips and advice. I will check it out! We did apply for permission for the satellite dish from the commune as well as from the landlady, luckily neither of them asked how big it would be :-)

hi there
i realise this is not dish info but do you know about kudu? i usually see the add when i read news on news24.com. they have most of the mnet channels but you watch it on your pc and of course it is not free...
hope this helps a bit - am too dying to see some cricket and get very miffed when even the highlight video clips on mnet etc are locked to non .za surfers - damn!!!
have a great weekend...
sd

Thanks Sandaleen - yes, we have kuduclub and it is great. The only problem is the delay because you can't watch games real-time, only the next day. But better than nothing I agree! If we can't get DSTV sorted, we will go for the Sky option. Have a great week! C

CCLuins ... excellent topic.

I will be moving to CH in the next 2 months and am really not looking forward to being without my DSTV. We in Kenya also get DSTV through MultiChoice. In fact my family has the dual decoder for tellys in different rooms as well as the PVR where you can pause live TV and record up to 80 hours.

DSTV has an excellent range of channels on their network and watching a few of my favourite shows after a 15 hour work day is an important part of my life and helps me relax.

CCLuins, can you tell me if you managed to connect?

Can anyone who has used DSTV before, advise which cable or satellite will offer the same or better than DSTV in CH?

I know that the SuperSport channels will not be matched, which is ok as important sport events can be bought on PayTV, but what about Movie Magic, MNet, Entertainment, Reality, new BBC channels like lifestyle, knowledge ..., Discovery, Nat Geo Wild, Series, etc...

Importantly, which one will offer the most channels in ENGLISH.

Thanks guys !

I know what you exactely mean. I just came to visit in South Africa for one month and recently relaxed watching DSTV with full multi choice channels selection. It will be quite difficult to match quality of sports channels with available CABELCOM and SWISSCOM especially when it comes to cricket and rugby. The best would be to install the satellite TV as adviced above but still you might not get full DSTV galore.

Major advantage between MNET movies and those available from CABELCOM is lack of adverts which makes it much more pleasant to watch.

DSTV's SuperSport has an outstanding selection of channels. I've lived in the US, Europe, Asia & Africa but never have I seen such a fasntastic selection of channels. I will surely miss all of them ...

Unfortunately the only real alternative here for Sports is SKY.

http://www.sky.com/

Hello. We have not yet managed to get connected - mostly because I don't want a 1.8m satellite dish on the roof. What will the neighbours think??? What we found out is that it is theoretically possible, but you need a big dish and you have to buy it to try it, with no guarantees. If we ever get it sorted out I will let you know how! Good luck!

Right this is what I've found out so far. In theory we should be able to get DSTV here in Switzerland. Well DSTV Africa at least. The Satellite you need to worry about is the PAS7/10 which is at 68,5 East (Not Astra or Hotbird). This satelitte has two beams that Multichoice uses. One beam covers Southern Africa and then the larger beam covering Africa, the Middle East and most of Europe.

What I am not sure of is if a smart card and decoder that is registered in SA, for the southern African beam will pick up anything on the African/European beam. I don't have the kit to chek it out either. Yet! I've also looked at http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/mcafricaintel10.html and you can see that not all the channels are available but a lot of them are not encrypted. So if anybody out there with the know-how and the kit could check this for us it would be awesome.

If you have any questions that I might be able to help with please PM me. Any help with this would be REALLY awesome.

Thank you - very helpful. We definitely don't have the teccie know-how, but will see how far we can get with this extra info. Will let you know if anything works!

By the way, did you ever get connected to DSTV or did you end up with sky We have sky and it is really a waste of money compared to what we got on DSTV. If not, does anyone know if you can get American satelit here? I am sure it will be better than sky?

good luck getting planning permission for a 3m dish :-)

unfortunately, only dishes up to a size of 120cm can be set up using a simple planning permission from the commune. Anything bigger will have to be state-approved. also, you can't just hang a 3m dish off your balcony - you'll need a massive mast for that, lightning protection etc.

If the dish in inside the Balcony and of a reasonable size (upto 90cm does not need planning permission) then no permssion from the landlord or planning permission is needed.

A 3m dish inside the balcony hmm that just like a large round table stood up isn't it . you'd need a pretty big balcony to try and conceal that though...

now i am feeling homesick! i miss good tv!! we bought quickline box for Chf 99-00 and get 10 english channels no monthly payments but they are uk channels except reality channel. man i miss my dstv!!!

hi guys - i have no idea if this would make a difference, but dstv has launched an on demand service, and it looks like all the content will be available - have a look - http://ondemand.dstv.com/ - at the moment it is just through mweb adsl, but maybe if you know someone with that you can 'share' accounts (haha)
let me know if this works?!
sd