Downgrade from sky to freest or freeview

[oph]

Ok most of what's on sky is ****e . I personally would only miss the sopranos.
My question is this, I have sky plus hd in the lounge and an old sky plus box in the dining room. I have a quad LNB rigged for the potential of four standard set top boxes. We are considering ditching sky, but want either freesat or freebies on each box.

How can I do this

Cheers lads

 

[Sureitsoff?]

cancel sky and the box will become a freesat from sky type box that will allow you watch some channels but not record them. even without cancelling sky you can still use the old box connected to the dish

 

[big-all]

you need one connection for each channel watched or recorded so if you have a box capable off recording 2 channels you need 3 of the four if you want to watch something at the same time

 

[Sam Gangee]

Easier to say: "you need an LNB connection for each tuner 'F' connector".

 

[ericmark]

Since once you stop paying you can't record on a sky+ box it will only need one connection to LNB.

I use both old sky boxes and free to air boxes. There are three options
Sky
Free to Air
Freesat
The free to Air often does not have 7 day guide but will allow you to scan for free programs only so you don't have to wade through all those you can't watch. Also you can change order so ITV 3 is next to ITV 3 +1 for example.

I have not got Freesat but I am told it has 7 day guide.

The Sky box has fixed channel numbers so UK Gold for example will always be 110 you can't change it.

Also some channels like Channel 5 have to be manually entered.

I far as I can tell Yesterday is about the only program you can't watch on free to air but can watch on freeview. There are loads the other way around. Personally I can't justify fitting an aerial just to watch Yesterday.

 

[Sam Gangee]

Since once you stop paying you can't record on a sky+ box it will only need one connection to LNB.

True. Good point!

 

[xr4x4]

Go for freeview if you can, you get more channels.

I can't see the benefit of free sat for channels tbh.

 

[ChrisFrost]

Go for freeview if you can, you get more channels.

I can't see the benefit of free sat for channels tbh.

I can. Picture quality. Freeview has the worst PQ because it has the highest compression. Freesat from Sky just looks better.

 

[Lower]

There is a rumour that says if you disconnect your sky plus box, cancel your subsription and then wait 3 months before reconnecting the box, the sky plus will still work, albeit on the free to view channels.

 

[oph]

Theres one thing I have never understood with sky

HOW do they know what package you have? I mean, it cant be because they are beaming an infinite amount of personal signals down from the satellite to each set top box surely

Is it down to the card?

confused dot com

 

[plugwash]

my understanding is they send signals down from the sattelites to enable/disable stuff on the card, the card then decides whether or not to provide the box with the decryption keys it needs to view a given channel.

 

[Sam Gangee]

There is a rumour that says if you disconnect your sky plus box, cancel your subsription and then wait 3 months before reconnecting the box, the sky plus will still work, albeit on the free to view channels.

There is indeed such a rumour. The premise being that Sky stop sending the "kill" signal after a while so the card continues to work in a limited fashion. However, it also needs a perodic "refresh" signal so, after the 3 months, you must leave it in the slot to receive that and hope it doesn't kill it instead!

 

[xr4x4]

i believed sky had to provide a free to air service.

 

[Sam Gangee]

Sky News is FTA.

 

[paulandfrodo]

My vote is for a Humax Freesat HDR using your existing Sky cables. It's a great product. Sure it's like £200.. But you pay it once...