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I have a portable satellite system which uses a 39cm dish and currently have it centred on Hotbird. We are not interested in receiving all the sky brit stuff for soaps etc, but simply want to keep in touch with events in the world via sky news, or BBCworld, with at least a small selection of freeview alternatives. We have France24, Al Jazeera, CCTV, what was Solent tv, don’t need all the auction channels, but I notice that the first 400 channels or so out of the 700 odd being picked up have no signal at all. Would changing to a larger dish change this or do I have to configure the receiver to extend its frequencyrange to pick up all these freeview channels we currently cannot get? It was an inexpensive camping satellite set, will purchasing a more sohpisticated receiver and larger dish improve the chances of having a larger variety of free channels to choose from? Have similar results with Astra28.

I dont know where you are but location will have an effect.
But I would guess that a min of a 60cm dish will give you generally on the CB
some access to BBC world, and BBCprime, ( ALthough I think on Hotbird one of them is encrypted).
I have an 80Cm and get on 2D, a lot of channels including news channels, plus the free movies channels ( not all of them), plus BBC radio and loads of other radio channels.
On hotbird, BBCradio is ok as well,
You can buy a reasonable motorised system for around the 250/350 EU mark, which will give a good level of coverage

more info here
http://www.kinghofsat.net
http://www.satelliteforcaravans.co.uk
Good Luck