Which satellite do you need? Orbital positions explained
Published
Every platform broadcasts from one spot in the sky and your dish sees one at a time. What an orbital position is, which matter in Europe, and how to tell yours.
Every satellite platform broadcasts from one spot in the sky, and a fixed dish points at one spot. That single fact decides what your receiver can see, before any account, line or softcam is involved. It is also the first thing to check when something does not work, and the thing most buying advice skips entirely.
What an orbital position actually is
Geostationary satellites sit in a ring above the equator, each one holding a fixed slot. The slot is written in degrees east or west, so Hotbird sits at 13.0 degrees East and Astra sits at 19.2 degrees East. That is roughly six degrees of sky apart, which is a long way when your dish is 80cm across and aimed with a spanner.
Your dish is aimed at one of those slots. Everything you can watch arrives from it. Nothing from any other slot reaches your receiver at all, no matter what you pay or who you pay it to.
The positions that matter in Europe
Read west to east, the way an installer reads the arc:
- 30.0W Hispasat. Spain and Portugal.
- 0.8W Thor and 1.0W Intelsat. The Nordic markets, taken together on one dish.
- 13.0E Hotbird. The busiest position on this list. Polish platforms are here, Italian platforms are here, and so is a very large amount of free-to-air broadcasting for expatriate households across the continent.
- 16.0E Eutelsat. Among other things, the position Antik has used for Slovakia.
- 19.2E Astra. Germany and Austria, and the default alignment for most dishes installed there. French platforms are here too.
- 23.5E Astra. Canal Digitaal for the Netherlands and Skylink for Slovakia. The two platforms belong to the same operator, which is why two unrelated markets share a slot.
- 28.2E Astra. The UK and Ireland.
- 42.0E Türksat. The Turkish market.
If your household watches channels from a country other than the one you live in, this list is usually where the confusion starts. A Polish family in the Netherlands has a dish installed for 23.5E and wants 13.0E. That is a bracket and an LNB, not a subscription.
Why no line can fix the wrong position
This is worth stating plainly because it gets mis-sold constantly. A CCcam or OScam line decrypts signal your dish has already received. If the transponders never reach your LNB, there is nothing for the line to work on. The receiver will sit there with a perfectly healthy connection to a perfectly healthy server and show you nothing, because the two things are unrelated.
The failure mode that fools people is the opposite one: the dish is aimed correctly at a position you do not want. The signal meter reads strong, the transponder list fills up, and none of it contains the channel you are looking for. That looks exactly like a broken line and is not.
How to tell which position you are on
The quickest route is to tune any free-to-air channel and see which platform it belongs to. A platform maps to a position, so a Polsat or Sky Italia channel means you are on 13.0E and a Canal Digitaal channel means 23.5E.
Failing that, open the tuner configuration on your receiver. It lists the positions the box is set up for, and the signal meter tells you which of them the dish can actually see. A position configured in software with no signal behind it is a common leftover from a previous install.
Then count the LNBs on the bracket. One means one position. Two or more, or a motor, means your dish reaches further than you might think.
Then the questions that actually vary
Once the position is settled, it stops being interesting and the real differences between services take over: whether you get two redundant servers rather than one, how fast the server answers, and whether you can prove it on your own box before paying. Our receiver compatibility checker covers the other half of the setup question.
Check your position, then test on your own dish
The per-market guides go into the platforms, the local quirks and the testing advice for each: Poland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia.
When the dish is settled, a free 3-day trial puts a real line on your real receiver for 72 hours, no card, so you can see how it behaves on the position you are actually on.
Frequently asked questions
What is an orbital position? +
It is the spot on the geostationary arc where a satellite sits, written as degrees east or west of the prime meridian. Hotbird at 13.0E and Astra at 19.2E are two different spots in the sky, roughly six degrees apart. A fixed dish points at one of them, which is why the position decides what your receiver can see before any account or line is involved.
Can a CCcam line give me channels from another satellite? +
No. A line decrypts what your dish already receives. If the transponders are not reaching your LNB, there is nothing to decrypt. Adding a second position means a second LNB on the bracket or a motorised mount, which is an installation job, not a subscription upgrade. Any service implying otherwise is telling you something about itself.
Which satellite do I need for my country? +
Poland and Italy are on Hotbird at 13.0E. Germany and Austria are on Astra at 19.2E. The Netherlands and Slovakia are largely on Astra at 23.5E, and Slovakia is also split with Eutelsat at 16.0E for Antik. Spain and Portugal use Hispasat at 30.0W. The UK and Ireland use Astra at 28.2E.
Can one dish see two positions? +
Yes, with a second LNB on the bracket feeding a DiSEqC switch, or with a motorised mount that swings the dish along the arc. A monoblock LNB covers two nearby positions such as 13.0E and 19.2E. Which of these suits you depends on how far apart the positions are, so it is worth asking an installer rather than guessing.