Satellite dish or dome

Pops

It depends on how far south you go in France. Whilst a Dome has many advantages in terms of usability in bad weather I doubt that it would be big enough to get a signal more than halfway down through France. A clam style dish of 85cms, especially with autoshew should work right down to the South of France. Most clam style dishes fold fairly flat against the roof of the motorhome so I don't think it would affect the aerodynamics any more than a Dome. 

As for TV's, as I have one, my starting point would be an Avtex with a built in Free to Air satellite receiver. Some people think they are too expensive but if you are going to spend £2000+ of a roof mounted dish that seems a bit of a hollow claim!!!

David

I have got the Oyster system with 65cm dish with Avtex TV.  Highly reccomend it, easy to set up (auto tunes) and brilliant picture. 

We tour a lot in France and Spain and so far have used an 85cm free standing dish which will give you UK programmes down to the borders of France/Spain.

We are now having an 85cm Oyster full autoskew dish fitted to the roof of the M/H. OH wants to cut down on the setting up  and carting it around, we can often just do an overnight stop so setting up can be a faff with free standing, although it is good if yu are on a site with a lot of trees.

As to which TV, purely a personal choice really. We have had a cheapo from Tesco (now in spare bedroom) which worked/works very well, but didn't have 12v capability. So we now have a Cello tv, same as the Avtex but much less price. The Cello has built in 12v/240v, freeview, freesat, Irish freeview, DVD player and a USB port with which you can record and play back programmes.

If you read the thread below about Avtex it might help, 

http://www.caravanclub.co.uk/community/discussions/information,-technical-tips-advice/parts-accessories/Recording-on-an-Avtex-TV/rt/1633659/

Sorry can't do links. just copy and past.

Oyster fold down IMO, I've had a Caro for many years, you end up with a bigger dish and lower profile, but to be fair you pay a premium for it.

Can't help you with the question about roof mounted systems, I'm a free standing advocate! But as far as TVs are concerned I'd go for the Avtex . We're had two over the years, only updated to latest model when it came in the package with the van. They are robust although had some issues with the DVD in the first but this format is all but redundant these days. Sticks or pegs seem to have superseded these.  Also , in the first one we had an issue with a faulty remote, never sorted that, was sent back to Avtex but they denied it ever arriving for repair, can you get the codes these days to program a universal replacement? The latest one, no issues at all!

Hi

Both my TV and Sat are Avtex, the TV was brought from John Lewis because they were the only one's giving three year warranty. The Avtex Snipe Sat was brought from Brownhhills when they were doing one of their 20% off weekends, perfomance wise both are excellent and have got TV at the aire in Gruissan on the south coast of France after that any further south forget it. The TV is quite expensive compared  to others but the Sat is one of the cheapest around compared to others.

Just FYI on recording with an Oyster system as soon as you turn the TV off or on standby the dish retracts ,  at least with the TV that comes with the dish, may be different with a tv of your own.  similarly as soon as you turn the TV on the dish pops up and tunes into the satellite . 

Michael, surely this wouldn't be the case if using (say) a Sky+HD box for recording with an Oyster...often i want the box to be recording but dont want the TV on till later.

if the dish were to drop when turning off the TV, the signal to the Sky box would be lost....

for those with Sky+HD or simlar twin-tuner recording boxes, i suggest they do some reading before diving in for an Oyster.

i thought i read somewhere that one of the feeds from the twin LNB was used to control the Oyster controller and this made recording two channels (or watching one and recording another) 'difficult'......not possible?

i dont have an Oyster so Im not 100% sure of this, but theres plenty of reading out there....

we have a Teleco Smart Flatsat 85cm Twin LNB and this works just like our home system with the Sky+HD box.

BB I am not sure if this can be changed in the set up as we are happy with it as it is as we use the inbuuilt Avtex decoder and do not have sky.

We are having an Oyster dish fitted in a few weeks time so this does concern me a little. We have a Cello tv with inbuilt freesat, we do record programmes at the moment using our free standing dish. If our system was to drop the dish everytime we switch the tv off or on standby that would be an issue for us. Will be talking to our dealer about this.