My Scottish girlfriend wants to view British TV in Germany. As far as
I know the satellite Astra2 has all the UK TV. Can I receive these
programs with a normal ditital satellite TV receiver without card? Or
do I need a "Sky box" as most Scots have? Are all programs scrambeld
or only some?

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Request for Question Clarification by politicalguru-ga on 15 Mar 2006 12:17 PST

As probonopublico said, anything worthwhile is encrypted. I know that
Kabel Deutschland has a "British" programme. Does this answer your
question?

http://www.kabeldeutschland.de/kabeldigital/pakete/digitalinternational_en.php 

For the erst of them, you'd need a British box (most pub owners here
buy it in the UK so they'll have rugby, football and such).

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Clarification of Question by cyrus12-ga on 16 Mar 2006 08:33 PST

Most German TV channels are availiabe from Atsra1 (19.2 E) with my
digital satellite receiver for free and not scrambeld. Only very few
need a card, I have to pay for. So my question is: is there at least a
few British TV programs available at Atra2 (28.2 E) for free and not
encrypted taht i can program my satellite receiver to receive them. Or
will I need a British "Sky-Box" and a "Sky" card additionally to
receive any seriuos channnel?

You can bet that all the channels either of you will want to watch
will be encrypted.

I meant of course, "for the rest", and yes, I think that what they
have there is pretty sorry.

These sites might help:
http://www.tg-satellit.de/frequenz.php
http://alt.digitv.de/programme/frequenzen.shtml
http://www.pirmasoft.de/astra/e_astra.htm

This link 
http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html

will show you all the unscrambled transmissions via Eurobird 1 & Astra
2A/2B/2D at 28.2°E.

Watching some of these programmes is possible - if you are living
within the area covered by the footprint (clicking on the links
provided in the column "Beam" will show you the footprints of these 4
satellites).

BBC and ITV are using the Astra 2D satellite at 28.2°E:
http://www.lyngsat.com/astra2d.html
http://www.ses-astra.com/corpSite/siteSections/ASTRAFleet/astra2d/

There is a growing movement to providing the UK free-to-view
terrestrial channels  on satellite, called 'freesat'

http://www.astra2d.com/freesat.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4223086.stm

The above are different to the 'freesat' from Sky, which involves a
£150 payment for the box.