SKY+ Questions??

[rscott4563]

I have recently moved into an apartment block and have a sky aerial point in my apartment, I currently have an old grundig Sky digital box connected and am using freeview card to attain the free to air channels. I now want to buy some sort of digital recording device and Sky+ seemed like a good choice as it is a hd recorder with twin tuners running sky's menu system all for only £250, a good £200 cheaper than other recording options I had been looking at. I enquired at my local Dixons store about whether I would be able to buy the box with out taking out any subscription packages and just use my freeview card to view channels and just use the Sky+ box as a hd recorder with twin tunners?

There response was that I couldn't use the Sky+ box on its own as you need to pay the £10 a month charge for the EPG and I would need a new dish for my box as the normal ones cannot support the twin tunners of the Sky+ box!! (I cannot have my own dish installed)

My question is:
Why would I need a new dish when the current one that the entire apartment block is fed off manages to feed up to 40 different sky boxes different channels at the same time why would I need a new one just so my Sky+ box could have two different channels at one time????
Secondly why would I need to pay Sky £10 a month for an EPG when you get Sky's own EPG when using the free freeview card, I realise that I may not be able to record dirrectly from the EPG without this payment to Sky but I heard that in one of the latest software upgrades Sky introduced manual recording with the Sky+ box, so couldn't I just use that option for all my recording??
If I could go down this route would all of the other abilities of the Sky+ box be available to me still, such as the pausing live tv and the instant rewind option etc........

Sorry for the rambling, but if anyone has any answers to the many questions it would be a great help....

One last thing if the whole Sky+ thing turns out to be a no go-er what would be the next best thing for a digital recorder, I would prefer a hd recorder but would consider a DVDR, I already have a DVD player and have no intentions of replacing it so I feel a DVD player/hd recorder is a bit of a waste of money......

THANKS

Scotty

[Ridcully]

My question is:
Why would I need a new dish when the current one that the entire apartment block is fed off manages to feed up to 40 different sky boxes different channels at the same time why would I need a new one just so my Sky+ box could have two different channels at one time????

You don't. Dixons and the like do not understand communual systems. Your system works by the dish feeding a distribution system that then sends the signals to each apartment. However Sky+ does need two feeds so you probably need to have one additional cable from the distribution point to your Sky+ box


Secondly why would I need to pay Sky £10 a month for an EPG when you get Sky's own EPG when using the free freeview card, I realise that I may not be able to record dirrectly from the EPG without this payment to Sky but I heard that in one of the latest software upgrades Sky introduced manual recording with the Sky+ box, so couldn't I just use that option for all my recording??


A common question to which the brutally honest answer is 'So that Sky can fleece you'. Basically the £10 per month additional fee enables the recording. Without the fee the only only difference between Sky+ and a normal digibox is 5.1 output when availalbe and live pause (rather than predefined recording)

Hope this of help and that my info is correct as I don't have Sky+. I live in a set of flats hence the knowledge of the wiring and did a lot of investigation in to Sky+ but until Sky drops the £10 a month charge I'm not buying one