Wifi booster antenna

[sgbentley]

Hi, this is my first post!

We've purchased a wifi antenna in the hope of boosting any signal we can latch onto whilst wintering in Portugal. Leaving in a couple of weeks.

We're hoping to be able to watch English tv via one of the web sites like FilmOn. Getting a bit confused now as to whether we'll be able to do this without obtaining a VPN.

Does anyone have a tried and tested method of streaming English tv in Portugal/Spain? I know we won't get bbc I player etc. But was hoping to get it on one of the live websites via a laptop.

We've already spent £200 on the booster with a router so don't really want to purchase any more equipment.

Hope this makes sense!

 

[david lloyd]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

 

We have an earlier version of the motorhomewifi aerial and wifi booster which we have used in the uk to pick up BT hotspots and also used it to boost wifi signals on site in Spain and Portugal. It will do as you hope but our experience is that most on site wifi systems simply do not have the capacity to handle the amount of users on the system and this leads to poor quality reception anyway. As an example, I managed to watch live Six Nations rugby using FilmOn as they happened to be during the afternoon most of the time and many campers were out enjoying the sunshine. However, once the evening came and everyone went indoors to watch their favourite German, Dutch, French etc TV the signal just fell away and I couldn't get to watch an uninterrupted match without the signal buffering interminably or dropping out altogether. Obviously, your location in relation to the site relay aerials is something that would also determine the quality of signal. But usually there just isn't enough capacity. There are exceptions to this with some sites investing heavily in their internet and wifi systems to give a better service to winter campers.

 

David

[sgbentley]

Many thanks David. We'll see how it goes. May just have to rely on box sets of an evening I suppose!

Sylvia

[Bojitoes]

Hi

We have successfully used the wifi antenna to see English TV programmes in Germany, Ireland and, very occasionally in Spain. I think it is all about the quality of the wifi signal. Also to get the VPN- which makes the BBC think you are in the UK go through " My Expat net" - it costs a fiver per month and you cancel at any time. Easy to install, once you have a wifi signal you can watch UK TV in 5 minutes- if that is what yopu really want!

Bob

[mildi]

I have a free VPN using Mozilla Firefox browser.

[veletron]

In some cases it might work (I have streamed iPlayer via a MiFi in the UK at locations where the trees obscured the satellite), but overall I think you will be disappointed with the 'watchability' you are going to get via your average site WiFi.

 

If you are going to use this alot, it may be better to buy a VPN-capable router for your home (fibre/virgin connections, wont work on ADSL due to low upstream speeds). You then just connect to your own VPN and run iPlayer over that. You can also setup a home VPN using a raspberry Pi and an off-the-shelf image, but that's only if you are techy.

 

For a solution that does not require a VPN, consider the likes of DVBLink Server £50 + a cheap USB TV stick - this runs on either a PC or a NAS device at your home, and lets you stream from your home to a phone/tablet/pc. Good thing about this is that you can fix the bandwidth/quality to match what you have on the site wifi == less buffering. The other nicety with this is that there is a FireTV Stick app for it. Plug it into your van's normal telle and control it from a remote. --> This the solution I use, but I suspect this is another one for the geeks! It has some other advantages too in that you can schedule recordings (including series) they are recorded at home, and can be streamed to whereever you happen to be.

 

Nigel