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 [...]]]>

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.

It is a half hour news and human interest show aimed at the hard of hearing, all the dialogue is at normal [...]]]> This is one of my “must watch” weekly programmes. I used to watch it on television but now that TVE has gone from Sky I watch it on my PC.

It is a half hour news and human interest show aimed at the hard of hearing, all the dialogue is at normal speed, texted simultaneously and presented with signing. I find the combination of speech and text very helpful, after a year of learning Spanish I find I can understand three times as much written as spoken and this is a great way to break into what my OU course calls “the wall of sound”.

Being online and recorded means you can use the pause and rewind buttons while you look up unfamiliar words and write down useful phrases. I’ve included a couple of screen shots to show what I mean.

Sreen Shots of En Lengua de Signos

The [...]]]> TVEi has definitely left Sky, they blame Sky for withdrawing from the agreement to retransmit their programs and they suggest any complaints go to Sky. They are still transmitting for free from Eutelsat Hotbird 8 but for most people in the UK with Sky systems this is not much help.

The cheapest way of getting the programs is from the TVEi website, the next alternative is to invest in a second dish/LNB set up that will work separately from Sky.

Some good news is that the TVE website [...]]]> It looks like TVE has gone from the Sky listings. It disappeared from channel 795 about a week ago, for a couple of days it was possible to select it manually through “Other Channels” in the menu, but even that doesn’t work any longer.

Some good news is that the TVE website carries a lot of the same video clips and short programs that were shown daily on the satellite channel. Go to http://www.rtve.es/television/ and click on “Videos y audios” to get up to date news, weather and topical items.

The two satellite channels that I view regularly are TVE channel 795 on Sky [see here for update on this channel] and Euronews channel 508 on Sky. Euronews is normally set up in English. If you want Spanish (or French) you need to go into the menu section of [...]]]> TVE and Euronews

The two satellite channels that I view regularly are TVE channel 795 on Sky [see here for update on this channel] and Euronews channel 508 on Sky. Euronews is normally set up in English. If you want Spanish (or French) you need to go into the menu section of your digibox and select it from the languages offered. I think this is possible for the Eurosport channel as well but I haven’t tried yet. My normal routine is to watch the weather and news on TVE for 10 minutes or so at breakfast time. On Saturday mornings there is a news program for the deaf and this is great for language learning. You get to hear everyday Spanish spoken at normal speed with simultaneous text on the bottom of the screen. Sometimes the quality of the signal drops on TVE and that is when I switch to Euronews as a back-up (although it does tend to be a bit dry and political). Some politicians are good to practice on, when they deliver speeches they tend to talk slowly, repeat things several times and be rather predictable. I particularly recommend Sr Zapatero for those qualities.

BBC

It is possible at certain times of the year to get repeats of old Language courses on BBC. They tend to be shown around midnight in blocks of one or two hours, often on consecutive nights. I managed to record the Sueños series a few months ago and it is very good for learning about different places where Spanish is spoken. A lot of the material has subtitles with the speech and I find that very helpful.