Writing this in mid-March for the April publication we are actually in Ushuaia, Argentina which is the southernmost city on the planet. We are on the fourth attempt to sail this cruise with Covid postponing the other three. Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Stanley amongst others have been ports of call with west coast Chilean ports coming up and Santiago being the last before flying to Machu Picchu and home. Fabulous experience which we could not have done without David and sister Bobbie dog and house sitting.
All is good at the Rainbow household. You may remember we have talked about electricity prices in the past – well our provider has just cut our – reasonable – unit rates by over a third without us requesting it.
TV NEWS
The big news has to be continued from last month with the changes that BBC are making to the satellite signals. The main purpose of these changes is to make all the BBC TV output in the HD (high definition) format – whilst most programmes were available in HD, the local regional programmes were not, but this has generally now all been implemented although some minor changes are still going on but should be complete by the time you read this. This has had two effects – any viewers with SD (standard definition) boxes have lost all the BBC. They said they would keep an SD version of BBC1 (non-regional) on for a few months to give clients the time to get an HD box, but we have not found this yet – so only HD satellite boxes for BBC reception. Secondly they have moved most of these new HD channel versions to frequencies we cannot get here in Southern Spain. This means you may no longer be able to get your local version of BBC1, so no more local news from the UK for many. We think there will be at least one BBC1 version available down here, but until the changes are completed at the end of the month we cannot be sure.
To summarise, those with SD boxes, no more BBC and those with HD boxes will probably need to retune/rescan the box to get some form of BBC1. These changes apply to all the BBC channels – they are all going HD only – 2, 3, 4, News and Children’s.
Any regular readers will know we have been predicting the demise of UK satellite TV in Spain for some 5 years now and we believe there is only about 2 years left. Remember, west of Almeria have no satellite TV now, so is there any point in spending any money on your satellite system now? Perhaps just getting us to rescan an HD box can be justified, but buying a new box – we don’t see it. That leaves you having to go the internet route which everyone will need to do on the demise of satellite. You will need a good stable internet supply of 10MBS plus and ideally the router adjacent to the TV. IPTV (TV by internet) is hugely demanding in the internet service – there is just no comparison to emails, booking tickets and shopping. Even Netflix and the like require far less internet – there are technical reasons to do with security for this (ask us if you want more information) but the comment “My Netflix works, but my IPTV will not” is just not a valid technical argument. Most internet providers can now cope with IPTV, but there are some that cannot and many of the slower cheaper packs struggle.
Have you had a bad experience with this form of TV transmission which is really still in its infancy? There were many such experiences to be had in the early days, (and still are!), but things have improved along with internet quality. Have you never tried internet TV – scared of not being a techy? You do not need to be a computer expert or even own a computer or smart TV. It is as easy to use as your existing satellite box.
Rainbow Satellites (maybe we will have to rethink that name soon!) are, to our knowledge, the only provider to offer a free no-obligation in home demonstration with full instruction session and the loan of a box for a week so that you can really fully assess the system before you make a decision to buy. If at the end of the week you don’t want the system, we will just take it away – but give it a try if you have had a previous bad experience or never tried it before. You have nothing to lose. Contact us for an appointment. For internet TV we offer a 7 day support service open from 9am-9pm. Contact us for any TV/Radio problems you may have – advice is free! We can help most nationalities on most transmission platforms.
A small offer for May – if you take up IPTV from Rainbow during the month and subscribe for a year we will offer 13 months for the 12 month price. Ask for “Offer May23”.
Rainbow Satellites – the TV company covering the whole of the Murcia Region in Southern Spain.
Email rainbowsats@gmail.com
Tel or WhatsApp – (0034) 686 358 475
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