Integrated TV with Freesat and German
 

Hi there

Does anyone have any experience of buying a TV with built in Freesat and German TN channels.

We've got a dish and currently are using a Freesat box for English TV and another box for German free channels (we rent out the house and have some German guests so need both languages). It's a bit of a mess with the two boxes. We are thinking of upgrading the TV and were told that we can get a TV with both English and German freesat receiver built in.

Any ideas? Is this something we can just get in any shop or do we need to go to a specialist satellite TV place? I don't want to spend too much but am worried about going into Carrefour and buying the wrong thing.

Thanks,

I have done allot of research into the availability of different TV channels here in preparation for the loss of UK TV in September but I have never come across a TV with a built in Satellite receiver. Almost all of the new flatscreen TVs now have one/two Freeview receivers. For satellite you need a separate decoder/receiver. If you use a decoder that is not branded for Sky or Freesat or any other platform then you can receive all of the channels transmitted from the Astra cluster at 28.2 degrees east on one box. I must admit you have got me puzzled with the German channels as I don´t think there are any on this setting and you would therefore need a feed from two separate dishes.

We have two discreet dishes and two boxes for bbc,itv etc and one for rtl ,zdf etc - the alternative was a MEGA sized dish with two lnbs sticking out on a long prong - one to get the astra signal for uk and the other for the german/french as they are on different frequencies and then a twin receiver Humax box which was available from amazon.

Is this total loss of UK TV from September really true then?? I hope not. I thought someone said it would be lost if you only had a smallish satellite dish??

Both Samsung and Panasonic do a range of televisions with freesat decoders inside meaning you don't need a separate set top box. I've never used one, so no idea whether they have the ability to receive German channels or not. It might be worth getting in contact with them to find out.

nickpaulnoah, no-one knows for sure until it happens. We will all just have to wait and see.

I also understand that in order to protect it's copyright, the BBC is restricting it's footprint on the Freesat service so that it only covers the UK. I read in the UK that this will be effective in 2014. This is outside whatever happens to the Astra satellites.

By smallish satellite dish read anything less than 1.8m dia. Most dishes here at the moment are about 1.25m dia.