Metropol

From TVF:

BigJimLarkin wrote:In 1989 Sky News was ground-breaking, the UKs first 24 hour news channel on the television - provided you were able to stick a wok to the side of your house or had cable.

When walking the dog this evening I noticed that one of the new neighbours on my road had installed a massive "wok" on the front of their house. Everyone else on the road has the quite small SkyDigital oval dishes which are quite unobstrusive and darkly coloured. This wok looks like something that wouldn't be amiss on the side of ITV Westcountry's building 4 miles away.

It's clearly not motorised, and only has one LNB, so it must be aimed at a single group of satellites (ie Astra - 28 degrees East - seeing as it's pointing the same way as everyone elses).

Surely there is a restriction on the size of dishes now given the availability of smaller and less visable ones?

There's a massive sat. dish just appeared at the end of our street too. It looks really out of place among all the minidishes. It's also really unsubtle, with POLSAT emblazoned across it in huge yellow letters.

Seems the Polish are very 'in-your-face' when it comes to advertising...

I was in Maplins the other week and there were some Polish people trying to buy what looked like a medium sized satellite dish, rather than as you say a wok, it looked slightly bigger than the average old Sky Analogue dish.

Someone who lived two houses down from me had a massive dish in his garden, and it was massive, but he took it down for whatever reason.

But there's a house almost opposite from where I'm sitting that still proudly has a Squarial attached to it.

StuartPlymouth wrote:Surely there is a restriction on the size of dishes now given the availability of smaller and less visable ones?

I think it varies from one council to the next. Generally I think you need planning permission for anything over 90-100cm wide.

My parental home still has a BSB Squarial on the side of the house, because I persuaded my dad that it would probably be reused at some point and wasn't worth the modest rebate when he switched to BSkyB.

It seems I was wrong - but it looks cool.

I see one of those BSB diamond dishes everyday on the way home on a block of council flats in Manor Park, it still in quite a good condtion seeing as they date back to 1989/1990.

Someone down my street built a tower in the back of his 12ft garden & it had a massive "wok" that moved and three smaller "woks". He moved out in 2002 & they're are still there but covered in climing ivy now so I doubt they're in use anymore

I believe you can have 2 dishes on your house- one a maximum of 1m, and the second a maximum of 60cm. Anything more requires planning permission (plenty of people get away with breaking these restrictions though).

I have a 90cm motorised dish, I considered getting a 1m, and I wish I did now as there's some borderline signals a 1m would probabally improve, especially at 16, 23 & 26E. Still, it's the best thing I ever bought- and I didn't have to give greedy murdoch a penny of my money.

There's a BSB minidish (not a squarial) on a house on my street, and there's also one on a pub near my aunt's house. It's amazing how many are still around considering it's nearly 15 years since it was switched off.

james2001 wrote:I believe you can have 2 dishes on your house

The rule is more normally two dishes per "structure" before you need to apply for specific planning permission.

The logic behind that is so people living in semi-detached houses can have one each without taking up planning committee time.

That does mean, however, that if you're detached you can have two.

The downside is that the third, and subsequent, people in a block of flats each need to formally apply. They're at a disadvantage because the first two occupants just bung their dishes up, all the subsequent people have to pay the application fee to the council as well.

There's a BSB minidish (not a squarial) on a house on my street, and there's also one on a pub near my aunt's house. It's amazing how many are still around considering it's nearly 15 years since it was switched off.

If we're into squarial spotting - there's one in Plymouth on the Costcutter on Mutley Plain. That shop was originally a Granada Rentals store so presumably it was installed there for demonstration purposes and just never taken down.

Nick Harvey wrote:

james2001 wrote:I believe you can have 2 dishes on your house

The rule is more normally two dishes per "structure" before you need to apply for specific planning permission.

The logic behind that is so people living in semi-detached houses can have one each without taking up planning committee time.

That does mean, however, that if you're detached you can have two.

The downside is that the third, and subsequent, people in a block of flats each need to formally apply. They're at a disadvantage because the first two occupants just bung their dishes up, all the subsequent people have to pay the application fee to the council as well.

So does the same technically apply to a row of terraced houses?

Spencer For Hire wrote:

Nick Harvey wrote:The rule is more normally two dishes per "structure" before you need to apply for specific planning permission.

The logic behind that is so people living in semi-detached houses can have one each without taking up planning committee time.

So does the same technically apply to a row of terraced houses?

If it does then it's certainly not enforced. My road is made up of town houses, some in groups of 3, some as a row of about 8. They all have dishes on the front.

I have 2 dishes, the old Sky Analogue at the back and the digital minidish at the front.