Freesat box advice - Humax

[jonwade]

Hi

I have a Sky dish already and an old box, so have been on freesat for a while.

I want to upgrade my box to have a hard disk, high def, BBC iPlayer. So am looking at the HUMAX FOXSAT HDR FREESAT SATELLITE PVR (500GB), i.e. HUMAX FOXSAT HDR FREESAT SATELLITE PVR: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

I have a Hitachi 42PD2700 and a Harmon Kardon home cinema amp.

I am hoping this will all connect up OK, i.e. the HDMI out will go to the tele and there will be a digital audio output for the amp. Is this how it should all work?

Eager to buy, don't want to get the wrong thing.

Any advice / suggestions?

Cheers

Jon.

 

[grahamlthompson]

Exactly

The hdr has an optical s/pdif that will connect to your amp fine. Also unlike Sky boxes it will deliver Dolby Digital sound via hdmi as well if your amp supports this.

Ideally you need two cable feeds for the hdr, you don't say if the dish has a quad lnb or only a single. It will work with only 1 cable as a stop gap if you make up a short coax to connect tuner 1 out to tuner 2 in. This will however restrict your choice of 2nd channel viewing/recording and 3rd channel viewing while recording two

 

[jonwade]

This is my amp: HDTV UK: Harman Kardon intro AVR 350 7.1-channel HD receiver and DVD 29

I am probably not using it to its full potential, certainly have not put the DVD through it.

At the moment I just have the DVD digital sound input into it plus the FreeSat L/R sound. That is all.

I have an old Pioneer DV-636D DVD player (bought in 1999 I think), just SCART I think. One of these: DVD Times: Hardware Reviews: Pioneer DV-636D

So, what is my optimum set up with all this? Happy with the DVD really, we do not watch it much these days anyway (kids).

 

[jonwade]

Exactly
Ideally you need two cable feeds for the hdr, you don't say if the dish has a quad lnb or only a single. It will work with only 1 cable as a stop gap if you make up a short coax to connect tuner 1 out to tuner 2 in. This will however restrict your choice of 2nd channel viewing/recording and 3rd channel viewing while recording two

Ah, did not think of that. One cable, one lnb. Basic Sky satellite dish, installed 8 years ago, then been on Freesat for about 6 years now.

Can I need to get someone to add another lnb, or is a whole new dish required? Is the stop gap easy to do? Bit confused about that to be honest!

 

[grahamlthompson]

This is my amp: HDTV UK: Harman Kardon intro AVR 350 7.1-channel HD receiver and DVD 29

I am probably not using it to its full potential, certainly have not put the DVD through it.

At the moment I just have the DVD digital sound input into it plus the FreeSat L/R sound. That is all.

I have an old Pioneer DV-636D DVD player (bought in 1999 I think), just SCART I think. One of these: DVD Times: Hardware Reviews: Pioneer DV-636D

So, what is my optimum set up with all this? Happy with the DVD really, we do not watch it much these days anyway (kids).

You can simply connect the hdr to the amp using a hdmi cable (presume you already have an hdmi cable from the amp to the TV) and use the amp select input to view the hdr if you always want to use the amp for listening. If you want to retain sound on the TV then simply connect the hdr direct by hdmi to the TV and use your optical connection. Doing it this way you will have to mute your TV or turn down the volume or you will get sound from two sources.

 

[jonwade]

At the moment I do not use the HDMI on the TV at all. All I have is DVD player image connected to TV SCART, and Freesat image connected to TV SCART.

DVD digital sound is connected to amp, Freesat left/right sound connected to amp. So no sound passes the tele. In fact, the tele has no speakers, just the screen.

Sounds like the Humax wil ldo the trick, I will order it and then fiddle with the connections.

So what about upscaling DVD's? Is that something I could do with my Harmon Kardon and Pioneer? Or is my DVD player too old even for that? Until today I did not even realise my amp could do that. Actually, only SCART on DVD would make that impossible?

Oooh, back of my AMP, and a Harmon Karon 330, not 350:

http://www.audiorama.com.br/harmankardon/harman_kardon_AVR330_back_large.jpg

 

[logiciel]

Can I need to get someone to add another lnb, or is a whole new dish required? Is the stop gap easy to do?

Just the new LNB and extra cable.
The DVR has two satellite-in sockets and one satellite-out, so you get a short length of co-axial cable, fix f-plugs to it, power off the receiver, and screw one end of the cable into satellite-in-2 and the other into satellite-out.

 

[grahamlthompson]

How to fit F plugs

How to fit F Connectors to coaxial cable

You don't need the grease for indoor connections. For the very short cable ordinary low loss coax is fine. Don't forget after swapping the single lnb for a quad a factory reset is required to recognise you now have two independent feeds