Network Encoders Over the Internet

[nielm]

You are probably better off setting up a satellite system... You ISP will probably cut you off as soon as they see how much bandwidth you are using.

BBC/ITV Freesat should come online soon (with BBC and ITV HD channels), and you should get it in Spain with a big enough dish... There are already lots of expats in Spain with Sky subscriptions, and specialist suppliers that can set everything up

A lot of the French channels are Free to Air on satellite, and for the spanish channels, as you are already in Spain, analogue or digital terrestrial, analogue or digital cable should get enough, or there may even be a sat package too.

http://www.lyngsat.com is the source for sat channel info, but the site is so packed with ads it is sometimes difficult to see whats info and whats an advert.

You could set this all up in Sage with sat decoder boxes and S-Video capture, or directly via DVB-S/S2 cards... I plan to get freesat reception on my Sage system when it comes out. I really want BBCHD

[MGMutley]

All,

Thank you so much for your input on this subject and it has all been useful.

As for the Satellite idea there are two drawbacks: One the dish! Dishes are not the most attractive things and would rather not have NASAA on my mum’s roof. Two, trying to teach my mum how to use a satellite system might not be the easiest thing. What I love about sage is it can be completely stripped out and customised so that even my mum can use it (and yes I do know I can piggyback Sage on top of the Sat system)

Oh and there is one other thing I like it as it is a fun toy to play with In principle it is hugely powerful and the geek part of me wants to get it to work

Anyway I think I have enough input to give this a go now, so will let you know in a few months how it goes.

Once again thank you all for your input and I might be back for some technical issues if I run into them