Can you pick up English channels without a dish

Help! Can anyone tell me if a dish is imperative to pick up English channels?  I am on the middle floor of a 3 floor apartment block near Puerto de Mazarron.  Because of the location of my apartment i am finding it difficult as to where to site a satellite dish.  Is it possible to pick up any English channels by obtaining a digi-box like i would do at home and maybe get some free channels?  I am not very clued up on this sort of thing, so if anyone can give me some advice i would really appreciate it.

Thanks

P.S i have already tried asking my upstairs neighbour who has a solarium, but it wasnt very forthcoming, and he has already done his own thing!!!

Does your neighbour have his own dish? Why not ask if you can connect to it for a small fee? We pay €70 on our urb for connection to someone else's dish. If he doesn't have room on his lnb, ask if you can buy a quad lnb for it to make the connection.

Mark

In SPain, the UK TV channels are only available via satellite - either with your own dish or via a third party - like the rebroadcasters.

The digibox in the UK - called freeview - will work in spain, but it is designed only for use witha TV aerial system - not satellite. Therefore in spain it will only pick up the spanish TV signals...on the spanish version of freeview called TDT.

see here for more information

http://www.eyeonspain.com/forums/posts-long-5572.aspx

Thanks satandpc guy.  How many channels can i expected on the TDT? I see from your thread that you can change Disney etc but i wondered whether there would be many more that i could change the language and would it be worth it.  Could i expect to receive many English channels through a 80cm dish in the Murcia region.  From what i understand (and it isn't much-believe me!) is that i wont get BBC and ITV but what i don't want is only shopping channels.

on TDT you can get around 30 digital channels.it does depend on which tdt transmitter you are using...try www.tdt.es and input your postcode and you can see if you can get tdt and which channels.

you can change to the alternate language on most of the main channels (TVE1,2, Ant3, Neox N, La Sexta, Cinquo, Quatro, SET, Disney, K3,300, (some of these may be local channels and you may not get these!), but note that this may not always be english..and the service may not always be available - one channel has the second audio soundtrack as the music soundtrack!

an 80cm dish will not get you bbc or itvs but you can get around 150 uk / english tv channels...many of which are of shopping channels. you can get true movies (and the other variaions) sky news, bbc news, bbc radio, a few music video channels...

this is a cut and paste from my site

What channels can i get on what size dish?

(I am using links as these will be more accurate and complete than posting all the 100's of channels here..)

using this link for free tv channels
http://www.flysat.com/tv-uk.php

on an 80 cm dish you should be able to pick up most of the channels on eurobird 1
on an 80 cm dish you should be able to pick up most of the channels on astra 2,a,b south beam
on an 80 cm dish you may not be able to pick up the channels on astra 2,a,b north beam
on an 80 cm dish you should be able to pick up most of the channels on astra 2c
on an 80 cm dish you will not be able to pick up of the channels on astra 2d

Just a thought, have you got a communial TV system, why not ask your president when TDT ariel will be installed.  All you need to do then is buy a receiver box.

Another solution would be to go for Digital +, last thime I was over they were advertising this system in the press and also saying that they had english speaking operators.

The system uses a small dish which would easily fit on your apartments patio, balcony etc.  You need to add the Series package to the basic system these programmes contain various american  shows similar to those shown on Living and Hallmark.

I was thinking about having this installed and spoke to ClaireT, hopefully she will see this thread and come on to tell us exactly what shows are on the various channels.