This website sets out to dispel some of the mystique surrounding satellite broadcasting (including the widely-held but mistaken belief that Sky runs the whole system - more of that a few paragraphs down) and will, I hope, show that it isn't difficult to make use of it on the move.

There is much confusion about the cost of satellite TV. A lot of people are discouraged because they think they'll be tied to a monthly subscription. Not so - there are many free channels for which no subscription is required, and which only need a dish and receiver to get them. You simply have to buy the equipment, just as you had to buy a television and an aerial in the first place. Once you have the equipment there need be no further ongoing costs (unless you want the extra pay channels provided by Sky). In addition to various free commercial channels, you'll also get all of the BBC's and ITV's television channels including BBC3 and 4, and ITV2, 3 and 4, (and not forgetting CBeebies for the little ones!) which are included in your licence fee. You'll also get the BBC's national radio stations. And for an extra one-off £20 for a viewing card, you'll also get Five (together with its digital offshoots, Five US and Five Life, now renamed Fiver which some cynics claim is a reference to its programming budget ).

There are several options to choose from when it comes to buying satellite equipment. For something like 10 years, your choice was effectively limited to just Sky, although it's always been the case that you didn't have to take out a Sky subscription - something that Sky has kept fairly quiet about!

With effect from spring 2008, all that has changed. A new service, Freesat, is now available using a series of branded receivers available off the shelf at major high street retailers such as John Lewis, Argos, Comet and Currys. Confusingly, Sky has for the last few years had a free option called Freesat using Sky receivers. It should strictly be called Freesatfromsky but the company has been allowed to use the shorter name which is actually a BBC trade name. It's worth noting for caravan use that Freesat receivers are much smaller than Sky boxes, measuring roughly 10" wide by 7" from front to back.

I should also mention that it is and always has been possible to buy generic non-Sky free-to-air receivers. They're becoming more widely available as well, with even the likes of B&Q stocking them. However I personally have no experience of using any of them and therefore can't offer any advice on them. I have included a brief page on the free-to-air options available but apart from that, this website will continue for the moment to concentrate on Sky and Freesat. If anyone is interested in pursuing the alternatives, www.digitalsat.co.uk is a good place to start. Having said that, if anyone wants to fill in that gap in this website's knowledge base, I'd be delighted to hear from you.

Please note that I can't help you if you've bought a secondhand vehicle fitted with a fully-automatic dish such as a Kathrein or Oyster. If you need advice about them, please contact the relevant websites.

But now let me hark back to the comment I mentioned above about Sky running the whole system. It emphatically does not. The satellites serving the UK are owned and operated by a Luxembourg-based company called SES-Astra. Broadcasters wishing to transmit via satellite (and they include Sky, the BBC, ITV and a host of lesser companies) merely rent space on the satellites. This point is crucial to understanding the various choices available to viewers.