There are hundreds of satellite receivers available which are capable of receiving both sky and freesat signals on the Costa Blanca.   If you have a  sky subscription or are thinking of getting one, you will either have to purchase a sky box or a receiver which is capable of updating your sky card.  At the moment there are only a handful of receivers other than the digibox which are capable of doing this.  The three I know of are the dreambox, the triple dragon and the darksat.  All have card slots which will work with the sky cards.  Another option is to buy a satellite receiver which has a C.I or cam slot plus a suitable cam.  The dragon cam (conditional access module) slots into the front of the receiver and you can use your sky card in it.  The only problem with this method is that you will have to update the card in a sky digibox once every three or four weeks because the dragon cam won't update the card so this may not be the best solution for you. 

Where To Buy

If you want a bargain, the best place to buy a satellite receiver is ebay.  You can find almost every make of receiver on ebay, including sky digiboxes and HD receivers sometimes at ridiculously low prices. Always try to buy a new receiver, there are loads of excellent second hand receivers available but you're taking a risk being in Spain.  Most sellers will ship to Spain but always check before you buy.   You can check what's available on ebay at the moment below.  If you aren't already a member of ebay, register or you won't be able to buy.  Registration only takes a couple of minutes.  Ebay has two methods of buying one is called "buy now" where you buy at a fixed price and the other is bidding on an item where you place a bid and hope you're lucky and win the auction.  If you want to win the auction, decide what the highest price is you're prepared to pay and put a bid in at that price.  Nobody will know how much you've bid because it will only show at a couple of pounds higher than the previous bid.  This may sound complicated but it isn't.  Just place a bid for how much you think its worth and you'll probably end up winning the auction and paying a lot less than your maximum price.  Ebay don't show your maximum bid, just an amount higher than the previous bid.  If you're considering buying something but aren't sure if its going to be suitable over here send me an email and I'll try and help you. 

High Definition

If you've never seen a true high definition picture you don't know what you've been missing.  Most of today's new flat screen TV's are capable of displaying true HD (always go for true HD and not HD ready).  Apart from the HD channels in the sky package there are three other HD channels you can receive from the Astra satellite at 28.2 degrees east. These are BBC1 HD, ITV1 HD and Luxe Tv.  There will probably more soon.  The sky HD digiboxes won't receive ITV1 HD.  If you want to receive all the free HD channels on Astra, you need a good HD digital satellite receiver which you can find on Ebay.  Good ones to look out for are the Kathreine 910, the technomate 9200 ,the dreambox 800 and the Hivion Ultima. 

PVR

Pvr receivers have built in hard drives which means you can record one channel while watching another and in some case record two channels at once.  Satellite receivers are now available with a built in PVR.  To be able to use the recording facility, you need two cables from your dish.  You can do this by installing a dual output lnb.

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