BBC HD For 100 Quid

[dazza74]

Early day's I only connected it up yesterday but thought I'd post a thread highlighting the virtues of the Pace DS810XE High Definition Satellite Receiver. If you've got an existing satellite pointing to Astra 2 and your looking for a cheap of way of getting BBC HD this is the way to go can't go wrong £100 of ebay.

[bu5ter]

Will this work with a normal sky install or does it need to have the dish realigned?

Also if you have a subscription can you put a card in this to use your subscription channels aswell?

[Chris Muriel]

Should work with a normal Sky 28 degrees East dish and LNB.
Won't work with a Sky card as $ky use an embedded non CI-compliant CAM (conditional access module).

Chris Muriel, Vienna (normally Manchester)

[dan1979]

This has sparked my interest.

There's an old satellite dish on the back of my home left by previous owners, with a £100 box I could get HD content on it?

What else apart from BBC HD would I get through the box?

Thanks

[thegeby]

BBC 1/2/3/4 ITV 1/2/3/4 and lots of dross. No other HD yet, but depending on the access solution chosen by BBC Freesat, it might be able to pick up all those coming channels.

[dazza74]

Originally Posted by dan1979

This has sparked my interest.

There's an old satellite dish on the back of my home left by previous owners, with a £100 box I could get HD content on it?

What else apart from BBC HD would I get through the box?

Thanks

Watched that "Murder on the Lusitania" last night on BBC HD on this box and the quality was excellent, can't distinguish between this and Blu Ray or HD DVD quality wise it's superb. You only really get BBC HD and the BBC and ITV Channels in saying that I haven't managed to tune channels like ITV 4 in, you also get Film 4 but no channel 4 or channel 5. As far as I understand it if you've got a sky digibox connected already and that works and picks up the Free to Air channels you shouldn't have any problem picking up the BBC HD channel. I literally just plugged the dish input into the back of the box got it to scan on Astra 2 satellite and it picked up the BBC HD channel.

[dazza74]

Originally Posted by thegeby

BBC 1/2/3/4 ITV 1/2/3/4 and lots of dross. No other HD yet, but depending on the access solution chosen by BBC Freesat, it might be able to pick up all those coming channels.

As far as I understand it the school of thought is that this box will still be usable when they launch the freesat. I bought this box to tide me over until they launch a high def PVR at an affordable price.

[langbarb]

Dazza could you comment on the picture quality of the SD channels, specifically the BBC, ITV channels and Film 4 compared to other satellite boxes or Freeview...

[dazza74]

Originally Posted by langbarb

Dazza could you comment on the picture quality of the SD channels, specifically the BBC, ITV channels and Film 4 compared to other satellite boxes or Freeview...

In my eyes it compares favourably. One of the great things on this box is everything is connected via HDMI rather than my old Digibox which was connected via RGB scart so the SD channel's get output at 576p. I really recommend it hopefully at the weekend if I get the lead I'll be able to loop my old digibox through it so I can get Channel four and five from the same dish input.

[Cablechap]

I been comparing the Pace against my Toppy for SD on my Hitachi 42PD5200 plasma, and I would say that HDMI/DVI gives a 'softer' picture compared with scart RGB so text is less readable. I've also tried RGB scart out of the Pace and although better it is not as good as the Toppy. The Pace also needs the colour turning down. So with this in mind, is the HD feed as good as it could be over HDMI/DVI?

One big problem is that the Pace cannot see 28.5° and 28.2° on the same LNB.

[dazza74]

I suppose HDMI was designed to carry high def signals and maybe because of this it shows up the flaws in an SD signal. On a good day as far as SD goes nowt compares to my freeview topfield PVR picture

[cooperda]

Originally Posted by dazza74

I suppose HDMI was designed to carry high def signals and maybe because of this it shows up the flaws in an SD signal. On a good day as far as SD goes nowt compares to my freeview topfield PVR picture

Well I've had for about three weeks now and am very pleased with it.

Because I still had my Sky box in another room (just the free channels) I had a chap fit a Quad LNB to my Sky dish and as well as re-connecting the old cable I had two cable runs added (in case of later update ie. record/viewing) plus of course the Pace box.

The main reason was to get BBC HD - and that is great!

The 'How We Built Britain' 'Last of the Summer Wine' 'Torchwood' etc. all look great and this is only on my 26in Philips LCD.

Sometime between now and Christmas a 42 or 46in will take it's place.

Cheers, Dave C.

[NicolasB]

Originally Posted by dazza74

I suppose HDMI was designed to carry high def signals and maybe because of this it shows up the flaws in an SD signal. On a good day as far as SD goes nowt compares to my freeview topfield PVR picture

The usual problem with HDMI and SD is that many devices refuse to output an interlaced SD signal via HDMI. That means the box has to deinterlace the signal before outputing it - and most set top boxes do a lousy job of deinterlacing.

On my Sky HD box, for example, the picture via RGB scart is a lot better than an SD picture via HDMI, for precisely that reason: the deinterlacer in my television does a much better job than the one in the Sky HD box, so much so that it more than compensates for the inherent quality difference between digital and analogue.

[Cablechap]

Weird thing is that under Pace resolution settings when first setting up the box, there is 720 x 576 i 50 as an option to enable using the HDMI. This is not accessible again to my knowledge unless a factory reset is done. I am sure I had it enabled originally, so why is it not available to view/adjust later or can be output over HDMI, I don't know.

By the way, my old Humax 8000T gives an even sharper/better picture than my Toppy.

[FunkyMonkey]

If I got a satellite cable splitter, could I hook up my existing Sky box along with this as I have a spare HDMI socket on my TV? (P.S. I don't even know if you CAN split a satellite coax like you can an aerial coax. Actually, thinking about it, you can't cos you always need two cables with sky plus, etc. Unless of course you can have a switcher box which sends the signal to one box or the other?????)