I am occasionally recognised on campsites. It sometimes takes the form of the rather enigmatic question "Aren't you the guy off that website?". And in 2008 on a campsite in France, someone arrived at Reception brandishing a printout from this website and told the owner he'd got their site from it. Did she know me? Yes, she said, he's next door in the laundry room!

Anyway, to business. Some people use their caravan to get away from the television; others can't live without it. Love it or loathe it however, one fact remains - cross the English Channel and it's useless. No more Eastenders, no more Coronation Street, not even any news or weather reports. Even in the UK there are plenty of caravan sites in areas where it is difficult to get a decent signal through an aerial, so what can one do about it? Get satellite, that's what! You can get all 5 UK terrestrial channels (including your own local BBC and ITV1 variations) with a crystal-sharp picture and CD-quality sound. Unfortunately many people are put off because they think it will be too expensive or too difficult to set up. (I also suspect there are people who think a satellite dish is too tasteless to have on a caravan roof but I'll bet most of them have one of those flying saucer aerial things on theirs!)

This website sets out to dispel some of the mystique surrounding satellite broadcasting (including the widely-held but mistaken belief that Sky runs the whole system - more of that a few paragraphs down) and will, I hope, show that it isn't difficult to make use of it on the move.

There is much confusion about the cost of satellite TV. A lot of people are discouraged because they think they'll be tied to a monthly subscription. Not so - there are many free channels for which no subscription is required, and which only need a dish and receiver to get them. You simply have to buy the equipment, just as you had to buy a television and an aerial in the first place. Once you have the equipment there are no further ongoing costs (unless you want the extra pay channels provided by Sky). In addition to various free commercial channels, you'll also get all of the BBC's and ITV's television channels including BBC3 and 4, and ITV2, 3 and 4, (and not forgetting CBeebies for the little ones!) which are included in your licence fee. You'll also get the BBC's national radio stations. And for an extra one-off £20 for a viewing card you'll also get Five's digital offshoots, Five USA and Fiver (the name of which some cynics claim is a reference to its programming budget ).

There are several options to choose from when it comes to buying satellite equipment. For something like 10 years, your choice was effectively limited to just Sky, although it's always been the case that you didn't have to take out a Sky subscription - something that Sky has kept fairly quiet about!

With effect from spring 2008, all that changed. An alternative service, Freesat, is now available using a series of branded receivers available off the shelf at major high street retailers such as John Lewis, Argos, Comet and Currys. Confusingly, Sky has for the last few years had a free option called Freesat using Sky receivers. It should strictly be called Freesatfromsky because Freesat is a BBC trade name, but confusion continues to reign in the minds of the public. It's worth noting for caravan use that many Freesat receivers are much smaller than any Sky box, the basic ones for example measuring roughly 10" wide by 7" from front to back.

I should also mention that it is and always has been possible to buy generic non-Sky free-to-air receivers. They're becoming more widely available as well, with even the likes of B&Q stocking them. However I personally have no experience of using any of them and therefore can't offer any advice on them. I have included a brief page on the free-to-air options available but apart from that, this website will continue for the moment to concentrate on Sky and Freesat. If anyone is interested in pursuing the alternatives, www.digitalsat.co.uk is a good place to start. Having said that, if anyone wants to fill in that gap in this website's knowledge base, I'd be delighted to hear from you.

Please note that I can't help you with advice about fully-automatic dishes such as Kathrein or Oyster - I've never used them. If you need advice about them, please contact the relevant companies' websites.

But now let me hark back to the comment I mentioned above about Sky running the whole system. It emphatically does not. The satellites serving the UK are owned and operated by a Luxembourg-based company called SES-Astra. Broadcasters wishing to transmit via satellite (and they include Sky, the BBC, ITV and a host of other companies) merely rent space on the satellites. This point is crucial to understanding the various choices available to viewers.