Third Language Blog » satellite

TVE, TV Canarias, TV Madrid – Spanish TV

Bill Ferguson — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:42:58 +0000

It’s been a month since the new satellite dish was installed and I am still very happy with it. The station I watch most is TVE but when they revert to old movies I go first to TV Canarias then TV Madrid. Canarias has programmes about cooking, local politics, games shows and quite a lot of wrestling. The wrestling might be a seasonal sport I’m not sure yet, it happens outdoors inside a sandpit arena, the audience are in tiered seating around the arena and there are groups of musicians who play during the bouts. It reminds me of Thai boxing where the musicians encourage the fighters by playing uplifting music.

TV Madrid has a lot of talking heads and a few game shows, one of them involves the contestants answering questions then we see them singing (usually very self-consciously) on a recording. The quizmaster is a professional extrovert who keeps breaking into song, joined by the audience (well primed), sometimes he even sings the questions. Good tacky fun.

I still use the TVE website, radio nacional and classical are good background and I am wading through Aguila Roja, I am up to capitulo 12, it’s like Robin Hood with more angst and more cleavage – and lots of sword fighting.

Update on Open University – I’ve just sent in my second TMA, two weeks ahead of the deadline which is a relief. The coursework is getting harder now, we are meeting lots of new vocabulary and moving from imperativo to preterito tense ready for the next assignment.

Maintaining French – this is becoming more of a worry, I have almost stopped watching french TV and reading french newspapers, mainly due to lack of time but I have started translating some of my internal dialogues into both spanish and french. If I didn’t have to work full time I am sure this wouldn’t be such a problem.

Spanish TV via Satellite in the UK

Bill Ferguson — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:58:26 +0000

My new satellite system was installed on Friday and it’s wonderful. I thought I might get half a dozen or so Spanish stations but I can actually get 14 and there may be more that I haven’t found yet.

The installation went smoothly, the guys from Challenge TV in Tenterden, Kent, did a great job – have a look at the photo sequence to see what was involved.

Challenge TV, Tenterden, arrive to install a new satellite system to pick up Hispasat at 30 °W and Astra at 19.2°E with a motorised dish.

The old satellite Sky dish used to pick up Hotbird and Intelsat but since they went mainly digital it hasn’t been much use

They inspect the old satellite dish, it was about 15 years old and rusty and needed replacing

The old satellite dish comes down

The old satellite dish and the new dish – the old dish was 80cm the new one is 78cm

New satellite dish with its motorised unit

Fixing the mount for the new satellite dish. This was the skilful part – the mount had to be vertical so that the presets on the motor line up with the right parts of the sky

The new satellite dish installed and now ready to test. We all watched the satellite dish move when a different satellite was selected from the TV

The new satellite decoder (SatCatcher Voyager). This is the clever bit that converts the signal into TV language. It can cope with 3000 channels according to the box

For those of you who are technical minded the satellites I can recieve are:
HOTBIRD
TURK1C
ASTRA 1
HISPASAT
INTELSAT 10
THOR 2,3
ASTRA 2A, 2B, 2D
EUROBIRD 1

There may be more to come but so far I have found these Spanish channels:
TVEi
Canarias
Galicia
Extremadura
Madrid
Andalucia
Telesur
Popular
CNC
Vit
TBN
RTPA int
Aragon
EHS

Overall I am delighted with the choice of stations, I feel like a kid in a toyshop, I don’t know what to play with first.

¡Hispasat viene!

Bill Ferguson — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:05:45 +0000

At last all my heavy hints for the ideal birthday present have paid off, the installation is planned for Friday. After suffering Eurosat as my only Spanish TV channel for the last six months we are upgrading to a motorised dish that should be able to pick up at least a couple of European satellites including Hispasat 30°W and Astra 19.2°E and maybe half a dozen or so Spanish channels. I am looking forward to the breakfast show on TVE to accompany my bacon and egg in the mornings. More details to follow…