Technology-Tv/radio Dongle

[davidmarsden]

my friend is returning home to the gambia .he is dutch but speaks english so has very few chances to watch or understand tv.he has just sent for a tv/radio dongle to connect to his computer and reputably will be able to pick up satellite signals. does anyone know if these things work?

[hc4361]

Well, they work in a sense.

What he has actually bought is a memory stick loaded with links to free online tv channels. Many of these will be foreign. Most will be obscure community channels with sport such as local amateur football matches.

I suspect it was very cheap?

[Buenchico]

>>>reputably will be able to pick up satellite signals

The only way to pick up satellite signals is with a satellite dish (and then feed them to a suitable receiving device). The power of a satellite's transmitter is often little more than that of a traditional tungsten light-bulb and, given that it has to be over 22,000 miles above the Earth's surface in order to maintain a geostationary orbit, the received signal strength is inevitably incredibly weak. Nothing but a satellite dish will do.

However many broadcasters put their output online, as well as sending it via satellite. It's that online content that your friend's dongle is designed to receive. But you can get exactly the same channels via any (web-connected) computer anyway. The dongle effectively provides a browser (and/or media player) with pre-loaded bookmarks to those channels, but nothing more.

Because broadcasters generally don't hold the international rights to most of their domestic content, the range of TV stations available online can be quite limited. There are plenty of news stations and loads of religious stations, plus (for example) channels showing the proceedings of state parliaments, but there aren't many film or general entertainment channels. Sports output is similarly limited by problems over broadcasting rights so you might find channels showing unknown football teams playing in the lower leagues in China but you won't find any (legal) channels showing Premier League matches.

The lists here indicate the type of channels which your friend might be able to view online:
http://www.freeetv.com/