A PC satellite receiver is a card that you can put in one of the PCI slots in your computer. (Almost all computers have several additional slots where you can insert additional items such as a network card, modem, etc. One of these slots can be used for receiving satellite TV directly on your computer.)

All you have to have is a computer with at least 700 MHz processor and a Video card with at least 8Mb memory.  Almost all computers purchased in the last couple of years fulfill these demands. You also need a satellite dish and a LNB, but they can be purchased for a around 200 Euro from specialty stores in almost any town in Europe or from the Internet. However we recommend that you get an installer to set up the dish as this can be rather complex for beginners.

The difference between buying a PCI satellite receiver and a set top box is mainly in the price since the PCI satellite receiver uses your computer to do many of the tasks that a set top would otherwise have to do such as record shows onto a hard dish, decode the signal but in addition to do all the same things as set top boxes you can also use it to browse the Internet. For this you need to purchase an Internet account from one of the companies delivering such services around Europe. As a first step we recommend that you begin by using this only as a receiver and then a couple of weeks later when you are getting familiar to the new "toy" you can add the Internet function.

Press here to read a review of the Visionplus satellite receiver.

Press here to read another review PDF format - part 1.
Press here to read another review PDF format - part 2.