Is Sky the only option available for English TV in Spain?

There are other options for your English TV

Free to Air Channels / Freesat

First of all, there are the ‘free to air’ channels and all you need to get these is Freesat receiver.

No special card or subscription is needed and they can be purchased in most domestic electric stores or even cheaper online. There are 2 types of Freesat satellite receivers: One gives you around 70 channels and the other, made by Sky, will give you over 240.

Both also come with limited HD options.

More info about Freesat can be found on the page Freesat or Freeview – what’s the difference?

Canal Plus (now Digital Plus)

Canal Plus, now rebranded as Digital Plus (a lot of companies seem to be rebranding / repositioning themselves at the moment), is currently offering TV packages from 13.90 per month (football package) which is not bad considering they also include a lot of the Premier and Champions League matches. It works exactly like Sky though and you can pick and choose the package that suits you.

You can now also contract the Digital Plus satellite service without signing up to a minimum contract period. It used to be that if you decided you wanted to get rid of the service before 18 months were up you had to pay a penalty of 90 Euros.

This has now been removed. However, there is a fee of 100 Euros which covers the cost of the Satellite dish and labour which is credited to your account should you stay with them for the 18 month period. Sounds like they’ve done a bit of re-positioning with the penalty fee also.

One of the really good things about the Canal Plus service though is the original language button for things like films or even documentaries. This means that if the original version was made in English you can press this button to hear it in English. This way they are winning over a lot more English speaking subscribers.

Digital Plus through your iPad or iPhone an additional fee of between 5 and 10 Euros per month (depends on the package) you can also receive the same channels on your iPad or iPhone via 3G.

For home Wifi this is great. Bear in mind though that with most of the mobile companies in Spain internet usage on your mobile will be limited to so many Megs per month and internet TV will surely eat through this at quite a rate.

There are over 150 channels through the Digital Plus service (not all have the original language option) with HD and 3D channel options also.

Spanish Free View TV

Television Digital TerrestrialSpain also has free view TV which is known as TDT or Television Digital Terrestrial. These boxes also have the option of watching the program/film in the original language it was made and are relatively cheap to buy and setup.

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