Satellite Question

[matthewk1971]

Hi all, I am a newbie here and don't know too much about TV cabling.

I have Sky+ and am looking at upgrading to HD.

Sky will send me out a box to install myself, but I thought I needed 4 cables running from the dish to the box for HD, am I wrong?

Secondly, I would like to run a cable to two separate bedrooms, as terrestrial reception is awful in our area. I would just put an old sky box in each room, with no card, just to get freeview.
How many outputs would I need from the dish? Could I share an output, would one cable be ok to each bedroom?

Thanks!!

 

[ChrisFrost]

You only need two cables for a HD box, not four. It is the same as two cables for a Sky+ box. The signal down each cable is both SD and HD. It's the box that determines what you see, not the number of cables.

The reason for two cables is that the HD and the plus boxes have two tuners: One tuner - one cable. Two tuners - two cables. Simples.

The LNB (the bit on the end of the stick on the satellite dish) for Sky+ and Sky+HD installs has four outputs. Two go to the main box - probably a living room in most cases - and that still leaves two spare so that Sky can try to sell you their multiroom package.

You can take the old box and connect up one of these two spare outputs from the dish. You'll only need to use one cable (connected to LNB input 1 on the Sky box) because you're using the box simply as a tuner. However, with no viewing card in the box you won't get many channels.

Talk to Sky about a Freesat card. It's a one-off cost of £20. There are no monthly subs. It simply switches on the satellite version of Freeview. The channel mix is slightly different. You get Dave and Five USA and a couple of other channels not on Freeview.

A Freesat card won't make an old plus box do the pause/rewind/record just in case you were wondering. For that to work you will need to pay for a subscription, or you could by a Freesat recorder instead. They work off the same signal.

 

[ericmark]

Good answer from ChrisFrost just one thing to add. The sky box does allow you to program in extra channels seem to remember had to do it for channel 5! My sister has box now so can't check. The main problem is finding the codes. I find a channel with free to air box then copy the numbers to old sky box.

Note Free to Air is similar to Freesat but does not have 7 day guide and the programs are not in the order used by sky.

Not sure if you can find channel info on internet.

To me problem with sky box is it uses so much power. free to air box in stand-by set to come on at set time on set channel can't measure the power with plug in power meter it's so low. However with sky box 20W on stand-by. It seems they send power to LNB even in stand-by mode. As I watched power meter it did change and after some time dropped to around 10W but as I continued to monitor it went up again.

My wife complains if a fall asleep with bedroom light on (22W) but leaves Sky+ box plugged in 24/7. So much for 1W stand-by rule. TV is less than 1W in stand-by. DVD/Hard-drive recorder again less than 1W in stand-by. Same with blu-ray player. Only Sky seems to have a problem with stand-by modes.

 

[Sam Gangee]

However with sky box 20W on stand-by. It seems they send power to LNB even in stand-by mode.

It has to power the LNB and tuning circuits so that Sky can:

Update the EPG continually.
Update the firmware overnight.
Update or kill the viewing card.
Instruct the Digibox to make a call-back via the phone line.
Download "Anytime" programmes on an HD Digibox.
Keep the LNB warm for good frequency stability.

If you don't like the power usage, use a Freesat receiver instead and do without the above features and Sky programmes.