How can I watch South American channels?

[DanRod78]

Hello, I'm from Venezuela and for a long time I've been wanting to watch TV from Venezuela in Missouri.
I got Directv and I get to watch a few channels in spanish, but I really want to be able to get channels from Venezuela.
I know very little about satellites, but based on what I read is not possible to do so with a directv satellite.

How much would it cost me to buy a system that would allow me to watch channels from Venezuela? (I'm in college <-- poor)
How likely is it that after I have the system I'm going to be able to watch what I want? Is the signal usually crappy, good, excellent?

Thanks for the help

[uwarrior]

i´ll answer in spanish, i hope you understand:

una opcion es comprar el DTV de venezuela y llevartelo a missouri, y despues comprar una antena de por lo menos 1.80m y orientar la antena al satelite y tratar de agarrar la señal del DTV de venezuela.

saludos

bay

[ccuina]

Switching back to english in order to increase audience. How can I tell the dish size needed for receiving GLA (Direct TV LatinAmerica) off Galaxy 3C (95W)?

DanRod78:
Were you able to make it work? Similar setup in Houston and unsucessful in getting signal, nor programming.

Brought both receiver and LNB from Venezuela. Bought a 18" dish. When aiming at Galaxy3C (175azimuth 55elevation) with original LNB signal reads 99, but replacing by GLA LNB (LNB04GLA) signal drops and receiver signal meter unable to pick signal (short tones instead of continuous one).

Uwarrior:
Might be an antenna size issue? If so, how I determine appropriate size?

Thanks in advance,

[SatFreak101]

ccuina, since i don't speak spanish I'm kind of guessing what uwarrior said, but "googled" into english I believe he is saying you need a 1.8m dish to recieve DTV Latin America along with a subbed reciever. I can't find a good coverage map to tell for sure, but the tiny one i did find only shows the beam to S. America. Therefore I assume that a 1.8m dish may work, but it also may be to small to get a spotbeam from so far away. To put it simply your 18" dish is way to small to get any signal even as far south as Houston.