Astra 1N – new satellite for UK TV – a few question and answers

Astra 1N is a satellite on a temporary deployment providing “additional capacity” for UK TV. It joins the existing 4 satellites, Astra 2a, Astra 2b, Astra 2d and Eurobird 1, in providing more frequencies for more channels. With more and more HD channels coming on line, and the amount of bandwidth these channels use, and with less capacity on the existing satellite, a solution was required, and so Astra 1N has been deployed for the next few years, and will move to its proper location, 19 east, when no longer needed at 28 east.

You should not have to realign your dish. Astra 1N will be in the same “box” in space used by the 4 UK TV satellites. It will be close enough to those existing satellites so your dish should be able to receive it without any realignment.

Any new frequencies and channels that move or appear on Astra 1n, then Sky boxes and Freesat boxes will / should automatically update themselves to those new frequencies. Non Sky and Non freesat boxes will, as usual, have to be manually updated for any new frequencies.

And, on those Non Sky and Non freesat boxes Astra 1N will probably not be on the satellite list. This is not an issue. Just scan the existing satellites, using your “network search” option and when channels start to appear on that new satellite, then your receiver should automatically update and include any new channels.

This new satellite will not provide any issues with UK TV reception in the UK, however, reception of UK TV channels in some “fringe” areas, like south east Europe may experience some loss of channels, as it appears that Astra 1Ns signal reception in those areas is not as good.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2011 at 9:28 am and is filed under Freesat, Sky TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.