Freesat - Luddite needs advice

[bridge too far]

Sensible answers please guys and gals.

 

Moving house next week and we've decided we don't want Sky multiroom anymore. We'll have Sky in our sitting room but just freeview or similar in the bedroom. Someone has mentioned Freesat but I don't know anything about it.

 

Once our Sky dish is active, is it right that we don't need to do anything else except buy and plug in a Freesat box? Would a Freeview box suffice? Could we have more than one room 'wired up' to receive Freesat?

 

All sensible replies gratefully received xx

[Bearsy]

I had the Freesat for a bit and it has some more channels than Freeview... bit none of them is worth watching. Definitely not worth the bother over Freeview unless you got crappy aerial receptions or something. I went like 3 weeks then had my sky turned back on!

 

Edit: Here is what you could win for comparisons: http://www.ukfree.tv/allchannels.php

 

PS - I also have amusing comedy answer if you change ur mind!

[boxosponge]

A Freeview box (or a digital TV) takes it's signal from a normal ariel whereas Freesat works from the same dish as Sky.

 

So once your new sky dish is active (I assume connected to a Sky+ box) you can also have it wired to give a feed to a Freesat box.

 

But check out with your installer how many feeds you can take off of the dish. I think its usually 4. You will need 2 for Sky+ and

another 1 for a standard Freesat box or 2 for a recordable Freesat box.

[bridge too far]

Thanks Bearsy - the thing is, our house is brand new and there's no aerial ATM. We tend only to watch the news channel in the bedroom and we don't want sky multiroom. I just wondered if Freesat was a cheaper / easier way of doing it rather than fork out for an aerial installation.

 

And thanks too Boxo - I reckon we'll just need the 3 feeds.

Edited 14 January, 2013 by bridge too far
Boxo's reply needed appreciation too

[stu0x]

When you get a Sky package, your channels will fall into one of two categories:

 

- premium, ie all the Sky branded stuff, and a few others

- free to air, ie all the rest

 

You're actually only paying for the stuff that Sky provide - all the rest (eg the ITV/C4 channels) are free anyway, Sky just provide you with a way of watching them via the box.

 

When you cancel Sky, they won't come and take your kit away, they'll just downgrade your card so it no longer descrambles the premium channels. So your Sky box essentially becomes a Freesat box. Conversely, a (branded) Freesat box is just a Sky box that can only decode the free to air channels.

 

Presumably you already have a spare Sky box if you have multiroom at your current address. So all you need to do is run a length of decent co-ax from the dish to your second box, and you will essentially have Sky in your main room and Freesat in your second room.

Edited 14 January, 2013 by stu0x

[Essruu]

If you use your old Sky+ box without a subscription, you will be able to view the free to air channels, but will not be able to record on it. To do this, you have to pay a monthly fee to Sly - I think it is still around £10/mth - about the same price as multi-room anyway!

 

I ditched Sky a while back for Freesat. Haven't missed it one bit, as I combine this with an Apple TV (Netflix) and Mac Mini for downloads and streams.

 

Freesat is decent enough, although the EPGs aren't as user friendly as Sky's, in the main.

[bridge too far]

Thank you so much all of you.

 

Our new house is in a terrace of four and the builder has erected a dish on one of the end of terrace houses, 3 doors away from us. That dish has 4 LNBs on it, one for each house. The cable runs along the guttering to each house.

 

I don't think we can make a decision until we've moved in as we don't know how many cables run from 'our' LNB so we won't know how many connections are available to us.

 

But at least thanks to all of you I now understand how Freesat works.

[mcjwills]

Probably the cost of the satellite equipment would be more than the cost of the installation of a TV Ariel that could run a free view box with recording ability. You can get a free view HD recorder from £120.00 or a non recordable one for £70.00. Hope I have not confused you too much.

[Essruu]

Probably the cost of the satellite equipment would be more than the cost of the installation of a TV Ariel that could run a free view box with recording ability. You can get a free view HD recorder from £120.00 or a non recordable one for £70.00. Hope I have not confused you too much.

 

Well she's already got an old Sky box, so she has a 'non-recording Freesat' box at no outlay. A Freesat box with record / pause / rewind functions are between £125 and £225 ish, depending on what you go for - i.e. pretty similar prices to a Freeview alternative. By choosing Freesat instead of the 'new aerial & new Freeview box' option, she'll save a fair amount of money.

[Baj]

Well she's already got an old Sky box, so she has a 'non-recording Freesat' box at no outlay. A Freesat box with record / pause / rewind functions are between £125 and £225 ish, depending on what you go for - i.e. pretty similar prices to a Freeview alternative. By choosing Freesat instead of the 'new aerial & new Freeview box' option, she'll save a fair amount of money.

Does the skybox she have allow her to view freesat channels? Last I checked the skybox's were locked on to a frequency range that wasnt wide enough to get some/all of freesat?

[mcjwills]

Well she's already got an old Sky box, so she has a 'non-recording Freesat' box at no outlay. A Freesat box with record / pause / rewind functions are between £125 and £225 ish, depending on what you go for - i.e. pretty similar prices to a Freeview alternative. By choosing Freesat instead of the 'new aerial & new Freeview box' option, she'll save a fair amount of money.

 

All true but not in HD

[Essruu]

My Humax Foxsat Freesat box plays the HD channels just fine, thanks.

[Essruu]

Does the skybox she have allow her to view freesat channels? Last I checked the skybox's were locked on to a frequency range that wasnt wide enough to get some/all of freesat?

 

I've had my Freesat box some time now. When I was looking into my options when ditching Sky, as far as I can recall, all of the terrestrial channels plus the usual 'Freeview' ones were viewable. The extra Sky ones like Atlantic weren't, however.

 

Really, using an old Sky box without subscription is just going to get you the bare minimum channels and no recording. If there is no aerial in the house, though, it's a good cheap way of doing it.

[Big John]

I just use an old sky box since cancelling. Is there an idiots way of deleting all those channels that don't work and saving me from scrolling through them all the time?

[Baj]

I've had my Freesat box some time now. When I was looking into my options when ditching Sky, as far as I can recall, all of the terrestrial channels plus the usual 'Freeview' ones were viewable. The extra Sky ones like Atlantic weren't, however.

 

Really, using an old Sky box without subscription is just going to get you the bare minimum channels and no recording. If there is no aerial in the house, though, it's a good cheap way of doing it.

Totally agree its an excellent way to use a spare box if you have the dish on the wall. I just seem to remember old sky boxes are in effect "hard coded" to a certain frequency range meaning you cant tell them, for example, to get as low as 10700's. I use a dreambox 800hd, together with a decent card sharing service. My dish is on a motor, in effect I receive every satellite channel in Europe, which is nice.

[Essruu]

I just use an old sky box since cancelling. Is there an idiots way of deleting all those channels that don't work and saving me from scrolling through them all the time?

 

Set up the ones that DO work as favourites?

[Baj]

You can pick up a DM500 now for less than £40, with this you have ultimate configurability of how things are set up, and of course if you want to, say, do a google for "card sharing", you might find some interesting information...

http://www.espow.com/index.php?currency=GBP&cPath=328_520_523&oPath=47&vPath=208&gclid=COfXiqfG7LQCFYXLtAodqwMAyw

[Essruu]

That's interesting. Anyone want to buy a Humax Foxsat box?!!

 

Baj, do you 'know' anyone who subscribes?

[Baj]

That's interesting. Anyone want to buy a Humax Foxsat box?!!

 

Baj, do you 'know' anyone who subscribes?

 

I know someone who used to try to do the traditional cardsharing method of joining forums and exchanging clines, but he said that performance can suffer and you can get frequency breakup for signal.

He recommends, really, just paying a service. He suggests http://www.cccamsharing.com/ as an option. I cannot confirm or deny either way.