FreeSat AND Sky from same dish?

baldeagle1

Standard Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2010
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Folks, really sorry if this question has been asked before but i am new here so please forgive me! (First post of many i promise) I tried piggy backing on an existing thread but it was too old to do so.

I live in a new build house with no aerial, however i do have Sky+ (not HD) in the living room. I am for putting sky in each room (bedroom, kids room etc) via the Magic Eye, which is no problem. What i was also for doing was trying to get FreeView in each room, however i have been thinking that it may be as easy to get FreeSat HD in each room instead.

What i planned too do was run another cable from the Sky dish to a splitter to the FreeSat boxes to the TV via HDMI cable.

Basically, will this work? Will i be able to get Sky and FreeSat HD and work each individually from each other (not taking the magic eye controls into account).

What would be the best cable to use for this and what would be the best FreeSat boxes to get if it would work?

Thanks a million in advance for your help, really appreciated.
 
You can not split Sat signals. You need to run an individual cable from the dish direct to each box.
If the box records then that is two cables.
Max size LNB you can fit on a dish is an 8way.
Best solution for some HD channels is get a aerial installed with a distribution box in the loft. RF2 from your SKY box can then run to that box and onwards to individual TV's.
 
Also note that HDMI cable will NOT carry a satellite signal you need double screened satellite quality coaxial cable (and NOT cheap single braid screened TV aerial cable) from the lnb to each receiver (two for a twin tuner PVR).
 
run another cable from the Sky dish to a splitter to the FreeSat boxes to the TV via HDMI cable
At first that did read as if you meant dish to tv via HDMI cable, which as dm2 says does not arise, but maybe that's not what you meant?
So, you have two alternatives:
A Freesat receiver in each room, each with its one or two connections to the LNB, which will need replacing if the total for all the rooms is more than four.
Terrestrial aerial to a booster and amplifier where it's input beside the output sent up from the Sky receiver's RF2 aerial output, and the combined output goes to the rooms for use with the analogue and digital tuners of the TVs.
Again as dm2 says, the first uses satellite quality co-ax cable, the second aerial quality.
 
Thanks for the replies folks, very much appreciated.

So the best option for what i'm after would be to change the quad LNB to an octo and run co-ax from the dish to every room i want to put a FreeSat box? Is it hard to change the LNB? Where can i get one from?

DM2, thanks for the advice. I'm a sparkie by trade and we only use the double screened stuff, unfortunately the house i bought only has the cheap crap so i'm having to upgrade them!

Ps, i meant from dish to box with co-ax then take a HDMI cable to the TV from the box, just didn't type it clearly!
 
That's OK and the octo LNB to separate receivers will be fine - try EBay for it.
You mentioned Freeview at first though and I wouldn't write that off as you'll already have its tuners in the TVs.
 
Cheers, will start looking on there. Only reason i'm looking at FreeSat is as i live in South Wales and the reception where i am at is still pretty rubbish for FreeView. Will be trying that first though.
 
That's reasonable - I rarely use Freeview myself.
 
Hi baldeagle1,
***This is wrong***
I am planning to buy a freesat recorder at some point which should need two satellite inputs (cables) to work properly. Despite having installed an octo LNB, I can't easily run another cable to my main room.

As en experiment to see if there was a way round running extra cabling, I bought a 2 way satellite splitter from Amazon and plugged it into my existing Humax Foxsat HD box i.e. plugged the existing satellite cable into the splitter and ran a short length of cable to the Humax box.

The Humax showed a slight drop in signal level (in the setup menu) but worked perfectly well. No loss of image / sound quality at all.

My verdict on this is that I should be able to upgrade to a Freesat PVR in future using a single cable and then splitting it just before the PVR.

I have run cables all through my house for TV, but only two are currently in use i.e. linked to the LNB. The rest of the cables are lying around in the loft unconnected. I can't be bothered drilling through more cables from the outside until I absolutely have to. Therefore the next room to get TV (probably the study) will be done by splitting one of the two 'live' signal carrying cables - in the loft - using a splitter.

I know some will say I could/should run a dedicated cable from the LNB, but the hassle of running a cable through my recently renovated house would be too much to stomach.

Hope this helps.
 
Last edited:
I should be able to upgrade to a Freesat PVR in future using a single cable and then splitting it just before the PVR
If this is about changing from a receiver for one channel at a time to a PVR for recording one channel while recording another that can be done simply by using a short length of cable to connect the PVR's satellite out socket to its second satellite in socket. That will allow a limited range of channels to be accessed simultaneously.
 
I know some will say I could/should run a dedicated cable from the LNB, but the hassle of running a cable through my recently renovated house would be too much to stomach.

Hope this helps.


You should run a dedicated cable from the LNB for each reciever. Splitters don't work with satellite.
 
You should run a dedicated cable from the LNB for each reciever. Splitters don't work with satellite.

Thanks for that.

I took my testing a bit further and sure enough when I tried to split the signal between a sky box and a freesat box, the sky box wouldn't see anything and the freesat box lost the HD channels.

I read others have been successful at splitting the signal which is why I assumed I could do it too.

Is there an easy to understand reason why you can't split satellite signals?

It seems counter intuitive to me.
 
Is there an easy to understand reason why you can't split satellite signals?

Unlike with a terrestrial TV aerial, which picks up all terrestrial channels just by pointing in the right direction, a satellite channel broadcasts on one of four combinations of polarity and frequency (high or low, vertical or horizontal). So, when you select a channel, the digibox has to send a signal back to the LNB telling it which polarity and which frequency to tune to.

If you try to split the output from a single LNB to two different digiboxes, and the two digiboxes aren't tuned to the same channel, one digibox could be telling the LNB to tune to high vertical, the other could be telling to it to tune to low horizontal. It can't tune to both simultaneously - so one may get through, the other would fail. That is why you need discrete connections to each tuner from the LNB.
 
When more than one channel share the same parameters it may be possible to access two of them but this is not standard practice. :)
 
Unlike with a terrestrial TV aerial, which picks up all terrestrial channels just by pointing in the right direction, a satellite channel broadcasts on one of four combinations of polarity and frequency (high or low, vertical or horizontal). So, when you select a channel, the digibox has to send a signal back to the LNB telling it which polarity and which frequency to tune to.

If you try to split the output from a single LNB to two different digiboxes, and the two digiboxes aren't tuned to the same channel, one digibox could be telling the LNB to tune to high vertical, the other could be telling to it to tune to low horizontal. It can't tune to both simultaneously - so one may get through, the other would fail. That is why you need discrete connections to each tuner from the LNB.

Thanks Broadz and logiciel,

I am a lot clearer on this now.

My issue is that having renovated my house and run sat cables all over the place, the one thing I never considered (four years ago) was the need for twin cables for full PVR functionality i.e. record one thing whilst watching another.

If pushed I could put in another cable to my living room, but would require holes, drilling, redecoration etc. to keep the cable 'hidden away' like all the others.

Oh well.
 
the one thing I never considered (four years ago) was the need for twin cables for full PVR functionality i.e. record one thing whilst watching another.

But Sky+ has been around since 2001 - over nine years. And Sky+ has always required two cables for full PVR functionality. It's more than four years since Sky HD boxes arrived on the scene - and they are all twin tuner PVRs.
 
But Sky+ has been around since 2001 - over nine years. And Sky+ has always required two cables for full PVR functionality. It's more than four years since Sky HD boxes arrived on the scene - and they are all twin tuner PVRs.

Yes I understand that, what I mean is that if I'd have thought about it properly I would / should have run extra cables.

To be honest it was low on the list of priorities at the time.

Hindsight is full 20/20 glorious technicolour.
 
And recording one channel while watching another is hardly vital is it?
Especially when you have all that nature around you out of doors.
 
And recording one channel while watching another is hardly vital is it?
Especially when you have all that nature around you out of doors.

You're right it is not the killer feature as far as I'm concerned (image and sound quality are). If there was something worthwhile recording I might take a different view.

As for 'nature' and 'out of doors'. Have you seen how much wind and rain we get in Scotland?
 
Yes, I was being optimistic, about the short time you get for summer.
 
Yes, I was being optimistic, about the short time you get for summer.

Sometimes optimism is all we have.

As for the short summer, yes we have a 'summer' but on the west coast of Scotland summer time is midge time. Time best spent indoors watching DVDs.
 
:):hiya:
 

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom