On the homesick theme , I was wondering about having a little American TV to help,but not sure how to do that.We are still looking into slingbox ( never heard of it til Jane mentioned it on ST) but some have said its easy to just down load American shows.We are bringing a small supply of dvd's and a portable dvd player ( mainly for our child ...family & educational ones) and will have 2 laptops and 24/7 satellite connection for internet.We will also have a shortwave radio so we can hear classical music and news in English from the BBC as we roam.We chose a rental that did not have TV on purpose as we are less interested in UK or European TV ( even if its better than American).This is funny because we tend to hate TV & have purposely had 3 fuzzy channels for years and have liked it that way.We do enjoy movies together tho while cuddling in bed.

So does anyone know how to download American shows or movies? Can we rent dvds there and play them on our stuff?

We don't really watch much TV here at all as we would rather be online or reading,but I was thinking having a bit available would help with the homesick/cultural shock stuff a bit.We would love to watch a little PBS ( both kids and adult shows) and tend to like shows like 20/20 or 60 minutes now and then.Heck we like to watch the boring oscar show & new years eve from time square...maybe a giants or 49er game for husbunny.

Any ideas? Thanks again!

I don't and I don't know anybody who does. During 9-11 I watched ABC news quite a bit, though.
We have a few shows here that are like PBS, but in Italian of course.
I do listen to NPR on my computer sometimes. As to the awards and football, the times screw you up. SF will be playing when you are asleep.

There was a woman on the board who is using a Slingbox and I think she really liked hers. Not sure she's active anymore.

As far as the laptops, you should be able to play both DVDs if you download a software to help - there are several on the net for "region-free" playing.

Also, you may be able to buy a DVD player to hook to the TV that is also region-free.

You should read this previous thread:
DVD Players

or this one:
Playing Italian DVDs in my laptop

Or this thread on the Slingbox:

Sling box question

This has been talked about several times - use the "Find" function at the top of the forum and you'll get a lot of good information.

WT...I pay around 38 euro a month to have SKY TV - with so many American programs that it could keep you "non-homesick" for ever. FOX, David Letterman, Conan, 60 Minutes, National Geographic, Travel and Leisure, CNN, BBC, movies, etc. etc.

So much easier than dealing with Slingboxes, changes in your laptop, downloading for hours, etc. (in my opinion, of course)...

And American movies are available for rent at the local videio store. DVD's will always have the original langualge available as an option.

Depends what you are after. Although we don't watch a lot of TV, when we first moved here we wanted to watch a few dramas to keep us sane. The things we tend to like are not available on Sky (correct me if I'm wrong) as they are HBO - Sopranoes, Six Feet Under (finished now, sadly), Cold Feet (UK). We illiegally downloaded Sopranoes and Six Feet Under and didn't feel guilty because there was no legal way of obtaining them (unless we waited ages until after the series was finished and bought the DVD - very expensive and we didn't want to wait). But for popular American shows like these, illegal downloading is becoming more and more risky, and there is no legal way of doing it as far as I can tell. We bought box DVD sets of Cold Feet and also an Australian drama, but region encoding can be a problem.

What is your Italian like? Programs like 'Lost' are on RAI. It has Italian subtitles, so if your Italian is halfway decent, you can certainly follow a program like that as the dialog is fairly basic.

This should get you started:

http://www.squidoo.com/bittorrent_P2P_downloading/

WT,

Have you consider viewing internet TV? Here is a link to one of my blog entries titled, "Info on On-Line (Internet) Radio and TV in Italy".

I know listening or viewing is best over a cable modem or ADSL link. I have not tried a satellite connection.

I hope this information helps you. Ciao, Ben

Kerry...I can watch Sopranos, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias, Six Feet Under, Dead Like Me,that prison one (can't remember the name), Sex and the City and other HBO shows on SKY.

They are sometimes one season behind...but then so am I.

Fox crime station has begun playing the Poirot movies, Alfred Hitchcock movies which I really enjoy.

BBC PRIME and Hallmark are also available in my SKY package - providing quite good programming.

Wow ,thanks ,this is a big help!I am really clueless about most of this ,especially the down load stuff,so those links are very helpful.

Can you use sky TV from a computer? We won't have a TV.We just bought a new Macpro and sony vaio laptop,so must use them for TV.Apple has some great shows for really cheap,but alas it does not work out of country.I am looking into the possibility of my sis maybe downloading them burning them on to a DVD and sending them to us.Just trying to brainstorm ways of having access if we want it.

My Italian and Spanish are both at the barely "me tarzan,you jane" level ( despite getting all A's in Spanish in school and living a year in Milano ,Italy ..since I was a model in Italy so most everyone spoke English that I dealt with including my Italian boyfriend at the time).So watching in another language will not do it for me.We are watching spanish TV here daily ( tho it does my child more good than me because she is fluent).

I did try to use the "find" link before posting,but did not come up with much.Could be my search skills on this site.I really appreciated those links to other similar discussions.

I only have a short time to decide to get the slingbox or not.There do not seem to be many people out there with the kind of experience I am looking for with that.Most of the rentals that we looked at in Spain had the sky TV ,tho I think they were the UK version ( which again did not interest us as much as I enjoy the quality of the BBC).

I am sure I will get there and find things that I wish I knew before going,but I am hoping to find out as much before hand as we probably will not be coming back here for quite some time.Thanks so much for the input and links!!

Have you tried I-Tunes? The itunes store carries a lot of shows and you can download them episode by episode or buy a whole season. They go onto the store the same day they are on television. For things like LOST, 24 and lots of other shows, I just download them on my computer and watch them on the computer. They take up a lot of space, so I usually delete them afterwards, but you would be surprised how easy it is and how much they have available.

quote:

I just download them on my computer and watch them on the computer.

Do you do this in Italy? We just bought a Macpro so I saw those and looooved them and the idea as its perfect for us,but husbunny went to the apple store on Friday and they said it would not work outside of the USA.

BUT after reading your post , I called apple and now they are telling me it works everywhere around the world.I am on hold as we speak ,trying to get a third opinion.

I would loove this to work.Let me know if you are using it in Italy.

Like Alaska, we subscribe to Sky (mainly for the football) and we get all the channels. I like Jimmy the best - shows all the latest American imports. I got to Desperate Housewives and Lost before they aired on UK channels! They are showing Miss Marple on Rai now, and of course Poirot on Fox Crime - the newer ones which ITV (UK channel) haven't shown yet. PLUS you have the option of changing the language from Italian to English. Particularly useful for UK shows like the Office and Peep Show, where's it's just impossible to get an Italian translation of the language.

WT-yes, itunes works everywhere. before I had internet in my apartment, I used the local internet point, where it was constantly full of tourists downloading the latest episode of whatever show they follow in the states...very funny. But yes, I use it all the time here in Italy, for TV, music and audiobooks. Just use the itunes US store and pay with a US credit card.

alaska - I stand corrected. I'm really impressed that you get all those HBO shows on Sky. Do you get the new one 'Weeds' also? How about the one about the polygamy family?

Another point about DVDs. We find that in Blockbuster many of the DVDs, even those of American movies, are dubbed in Italian and do not have English language option audio or subtitles. Has anyone else encountered this?

No, I haven't found that major brand DVDs don't have English option, but I have had to jump on my player with both feet to get the English to play! Of course if a film were originally in French it may only have French and Italian offered. OTH, some have doppiagio and subtitles in 6 or more languages, and it can be fun to listen to a classic in one language and see titles in Greek. For 5 minutes, anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Pienza:
Have you tried I-Tunes? The itunes store carries a lot of shows and you can download them episode by episode or buy a whole season. They go onto the store the same day they are on television. For things like LOST, 24 and lots of other shows, I just download them on my computer and watch them on the computer. They take up a lot of space, so I usually delete them afterwards, but you would be surprised how easy it is and how much they have available.

WT, I second Pienza's recommendation. So far I've only downloaded "Lost." It's very easy and individual episodes only cost $1.99, so it's not too expensive. It's great watching without commercials.

Karen

quote:

Another point about DVDs. We find that in Blockbuster many of the DVDs, even those of American movies, are dubbed in Italian and do not have English language option audio or subtitles. Has anyone else encountered this?

Not sure about Italian DVDs, but the UK ones we hire often have all sorts of language options and quite by chance we end up hearing them in German (usually husband pushes the wrong button on the playstation control!) before we manage to get the English back. It often depends on the DVD and what language options they offer.

In the UK I use a great DVD rental service called Easycinema. I pay £ 2 per video and they send me two at a time. You keep these as long as you want and then you get the next choices in your selection when you post the others back. I think my friend in Zurich uses a similar service offered by Amazon? Might be worth checking if these places offer an international postage service.

Well it looks like itunes is going to be our best bet ,so I am excited to hear that it works well there! That saves me the trouble of bothering with the slingbox.I think the confusion was because its not available to Europeans,but its not a problem with an American in Europe who has an American credit card.Thats why we got two answers.

quote:

In the UK I use a great DVD rental service called Easycinema. I pay £ 2 per video and they send me two at a time. You keep these as long as you want and then you get the next choices in your selection when you post the others back. I think my friend in Zurich uses a similar service offered by Amazon? Might be worth checking if these places offer an international postage service.

Is this available to Americans? We will have an UK bank. Not sure if this will work for us while we travel or not but it sounds like our netflix which is very convenient & they have a great selection.

Thanks all for your help as I feel like I have another decision solved.

I have been looking for someone who will do one of those movie rental deals (e.g. Amazon or CD Wow) to Italy, but so far haven't found one that ships overseas. Probably just too much hassle with postal.

Maybe it also depends on the country’s postal service (ie effiency/honesty?). In the UK it works perfectly because our post is, usually, very quick. Things posted 1st class can arrive the next day and 2nd class the day after. It’s very rare for anything to go missing (never happened to me). Maybe the Swiss post works the same way – I’m sure even better.

With all respect to Italy, I’m not impressed by what I hear of their postal service and the chance of items going ‘astray’ seems high. Certainly every time we’ve expected things to arrive they often don’t, and we never know whether they got nicked or lost. We recently posted an anniversary card to my cognate and he was amazed that it only took 3 days to arrive from London!

I'm wondering if there's a way of getting C-Span. The Washington Journal is the only program I miss.

2italy2 listed a link for cspan thru the link he left to his blog. I haven't checked it out yet ( I am clueless at this point even how to down load but I was very happy to see it as I love a bit of Cspan now and then for real takes on what is going on ( instead of just sound bites).

Right! Where is it? Other European countries recieve it. I miss it.