Digital TV

[gman76]

Hello All,

I'm a bit nieve when it comes to the world of dig satellite tv - just wondered if any one could clarify something for me?

AFAICT you can receive Freesat from Sky if you fleabay a dish/LNB/receiver & obtain a viewing card from Sky (£20)?

If I have got this much right - if I got a quad LNB, would this work with a Sky plus receiver?

TIA

Graeme

 

[Steve]

You can get freesat without a viewing card. Sky isn't involved.

Satellite TV is broadcast on the Astra satellite. Point your dish at this, and you'll pick up all the free (unencoded) channels.

Sky boxes need a viewing card to work. You'd need one that is free channels only. But freesat boxes need no card.

I think.

 

[gman76]

Mmm, that's what I thought too Steve, but after checking the channel line ups on digital spy, it looks like freesat from sky has many more channels available than freesat from the beeb/itv.

 

[streetlighter]

You can prob buy a Sky DigiBox with a card for £20 or less from eBay if you plug this into a dish thats lined up on Astra 2 at 28.2 degrees east then this will pick up all the Free To Air channels and the Free To View channels the latter require the veiwing card.
There is also the Freesat service this requires no card has around 80 channels and a HD option plus a PVR is avalable.

The recording features of the Sky+ box will not work without a valid subscription to Sky.

The other option is to use a FTA digital satellite reciever but this has a limited EPG unlike the branded Freesat boxes.

 

[gman76]

Ok thanks Streetlighter - obviously, what I was trying to do was obtain FTA + FTV with HDD recording. The freesat (beeb/itv) Humax PVR seems pricey for the available channel line up.

Back to the drawing board!

 

[ericmark]

Originally there was quite a lot of channels that were FTV but not FTA but one by one they have been getting fewer and fewer.
UK History is still only FTV but
E4, Channel 4, More 4 have all now become FTA and most of the advantages of having a card are going but many web sites have not yet updated their info.
Of the 350 FTA channels many are repeats, shopping and sex channels so in real terms only around a 150 channels but by time you also take the shopping channels etc from freeview it has about 3 times the channels.
I have two FTA boxes and they are very different especially with the EPG the one we got from Turkey will only give now and next and very poor but the German on has things like showing pre-view of 9 programs etc.
To try an compare FTA boxes with Ex Sky boxes is not really possible as there are so many different ones on the market.
Also our FTA boxes will receive a lot weaker signal than the Sky box the cable we are running the FTA box failed on the Pace Sky box.
Plus added features like the Turkish box we have can be connected to a rotator so you can select the satellite from the box.
Once you start adding channels from Eurobird etc then of course it becomes a complete different ball game.