In the Alicante area you will ideally need a 2.4m dish, the larger the dish is alays better, especially in winter months when heavy cloud and rain can reduce signals being received (I am not saying you will always the signal but it will help!). I certianly would not use anything less than a 1.8m dish for Alicante, using a 1.45m is pretty pointless as is will be operating on the very very limit of its reception there…
Even then, on Freesat you will not get channel 5, or most other Astra 2D horizontal frequencies like BBC2 England, or BBC3 or BBC4, or C4.
YOu will have to use BBC2 Wales or BBC2 Northern Ireland or BBC HD channels. And ideally C4HD. As these are all on more easily available satellite signals.
As mentioned, if you have a sky HD box and a freesatfromsky card (?25 in the UK, a lot more in Spain!) which is a non subscription card, you can get Five, Five HD, Five* Five USA, and at the moemnt ITV1 on a smaller 85cm-100cm dish…if you want to forgo BBC channels.
For PVRs like the Humax Freesat HD+, it can work with one or two cables. Ideally twoi cables, as this allow you to watch one channel and record another at the same time. YOu can use one cable, and watch one channel and record another at the same time, as long as those channels are on the same frequency group and polarisation…there are four groups of frequency.
If you want to see what channels you will get with your existing dish using a Freesat box, then simply remove your sky card, as a Sky box with no sky card gets the same channels as a Freesat box. If you use a Freesat HD box, you gain recording, you gain C4HD, but lose ITV1, and the Fives.
Not sure what channels we might loose, but hoping Larry will send me a reply!
Your white sky card unlocks ITV1, Irish C4s, the Fives, Pick TV, Sony TV, Motors Tv LFCTV, Viva TV. So you would lose all of those if you moved from Sky with a freesatfromsky card, to a Freesat box.