Help setting up FreeSat PVR

[sedalbis]

Hey,
Please bear in mind that I am not techincal in this area AT ALL
Ok so I had normal Sky installed, cancelled my contract, and today went out and bought a Humax Foxsat HDR.
The man in John Lewis showed me the back of the box which had LNB1 IN and LNB2 IN. He said this was so that I could record 2 channels at the same time, and to do this I would need to buy a "two way satellite splitter".

So I went in to Maplins and bought the following:
- A two way satellite splitter which "splits the signal from one dish to two receivers"
- I also bought 2 satellite TV leads.

So I got home, and unplugged the Sky box. I then plugged the cable (coming from the dish outside) into the "IN" socket on the splitter I had just bought. Then from the two "OUT" sockets on the splitter, I attached the two new cables and plugged one into LNB1 IN and the other into LNB2 IN on the Foxsat box.

I then connected the Foxsat box to the TV and turned it on. It scanned for a satellite signal, and found it right away, then installed all the channels etc. At the end of setup, it gave me a summary. I noticed that next to antenna type it was showing up as "single cable". I then tried to record two channels at the same time and it was having none of it.

So obviously the splitter has not worked and it is just receiving one direct feed from the dish.

Please can anyone explain where I have gone wrong, and what I need to do to fix it. I apologise in advance if I have made an obvious mistake, as I said before I am not technical in this area at all.

Many thanks in advance

 

[grahamlthompson]

To use twin tuner Foxsat-hdr using only 1 cable you need a short piece of coax with a f connector on each end. Connect the cable from the lnb to tuner 1 in. Use the short piece of coax to connect tuner 1 out to tuner 2 in. (see bottom of P16 in the user manual)

This will let you record two channels at once but the choice of 2nd channel recording is determined by what your tuner 1 is doing. There are a few 3rd channels you can view while recording two as well. Most freesat channels are in the low band so if you are recording a horizontally polarised low band channel using tuner 1 then all other horizontal low band channels can be recorded/viewed. Same applies to the vertical transponders. You can if recording a bbc 1 channel choose a horizontal or vertical variant so this means most 2nd channels can be recorded. The epg will grey out any channels you can't access after you set a recording for tuner 2.

Ideally you need to change your existing single lnb for a quad and run a second cable.

 

[sedalbis]

Ideally you need to change your existing single lnb for a quad and run a second cable.

Thanks for the advice Please could you explain the above a bit more? What does this mean and how would I do it/how much would it cost, etc? Thanks again.

 

[grahamlthompson]

Thanks for the advice Please could you explain the above a bit more? What does this mean and how would I do it/how much would it cost, etc? Thanks again.

Assuming you only have a single lnb at the moment, A quad lnb for a sky dish can be bought on fleabay for around a fiver. The old one is normally simply secured by a pin so after disconnecting the coax the new one simply replaces the old. (Make sure you get the right fittings, sky dishes have used several variations over the years, many lnb's come with the appropriate adaptors). The new one will have 4 outputs, screw the old cable back on and run a new extra one using WF100 or PF100 cable.

How to fit F Connectors to coaxial cable

You will have to do a factory reset on the hdr after installing the second cable to recognise the additional lnb connection