A Whole lot of Satellites - TV for the World! (Part 1)

There are 100s of Satellites in the sky, sending down 1000000000s of channels to watch all across the world, from the tip of Africa to the top of mountains.

In later blogs I hope to start covering lots of them, what they do, what they have done & what they might do in the future.

What can I watch?

For this first blog about all the satellites in the world, lets start closer to home, what can you "pick up" in the UK, we are going to have a list of the top 10 most useful satellites you can currently tune in to within main land UK.

Astra 2 - 28.3 Degrees East

This is the broadcast satellite that SKY and FREESAT use for UK TV broadcasts, so if you have an oval Black Dish from BSKYB, that is where it is points 28Degs East of South

It Carries English language channels for UK homes, in the UK you can pick this up with a dish as small as 45cm (Zone 1) But if you want to watch these channels in Spain you might need a dish bigger than 1.5 Metres.

Astra 2 Is a network of satellites with different footprints to give stronger signals in certain areas, there are current 3 active systems up there E, F and G. (A,B,C,D have moved or been completely retired from service) SATBEAMS

There are Non-English Stations on this system but they are mainly serving a UK based audience.

Astra 1 - 19.2 Degrees East

This is one of the power houses of Europe TV, you can pick up a host of French, German and many other languages, TF1, ZDF, RTL all broadcast on this system, and in the UK you can pick up most of it with a 80cm dish. 1000s of free TV and radio stations. Great if you are missing Eurosport, which we lost in the UK this month (March 2025).

Astra 1 also carries SKY Deutschland & Canal+ For France (all encryped)

Hotbird - 13 Degrees East

This is the second largest network system with 2 signals across Europe and Africa, Italy and Poland are covered by this signal, along with a few others and International channels.

TO Be Updated Shortly...