Question No TV Aerial, only a satellite dish

cR4cKF0x 5TevE

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Hi

My in-laws have bought a new house which doesn't have a TV aerial, only a Sky dish with a dual LNB and shotgun cable going in 2 rooms (1 downstairs, 1 up).

I note that Freesat from Sky is subject to a £259 (!!) charge.

Does the Freesast service work via Sky dishes?? If so, is the Humax HB1100-s easy to set up and use?
 
Yes it does work fine,although you will need two satellite cables for each box as it has two tuners(watch one channel whilst recording another)
 
How old does the sky dish/lnb look, it's quite unusual to see a twin output lnb, you need to check it's not a newer wide-band lnb.
If it looks very old, it will almost certainly be a twin (or a quad - 4 output lnb if you haven't noticed it's actually got 4 outputs but the weather cover hides the other 2 outputs) & if it's quite new, it's more likely a wide-band lnb & swapping it might be the easiest solution.

There's also lots of generic Satellite receivers that will work & some TVs with satellite tuners.
 
Sorry
How old does the sky dish/lnb look, it's quite unusual to see a twin output lnb, you need to check it's not a newer wide-band lnb.
If it looks very old, it will almost certainly be a twin (or a quad - 4 output lnb if you haven't noticed it's actually got 4 outputs but the weather cover hides the other 2 outputs) & if it's quite new, it's more likely a wide-band lnb & swapping it might be the easiest solution.

There's also lots of generic Satellite receivers that will work & some TVs with satellite tuners.
Sorry, to clarify ts actually got 4 outputs connected (2 shotgun cables) so its likely a Quad-LNB. The dish and LNB actually look to be in decent condition, especially given the location (coastal views).

I'm not sure they are bothered about recording programmes, so I'm pondering this box for them Freesat+ HD with Freetime 1TB - pause, rewind and record live TV, scroll back through the last seven days of shows and watch on demand, with built in WiFi. But might have a quick scan of the classifieds.
 
Yes it does work fine,although you will need two satellite cables for each box as it has two tuners(watch one channel whilst recording another)

The twin tuner model is the HDR-1100S. Single tuner models recording to USB are HB-1000S and HB--1100S (adds built in WiFi to the HB-1000S).
 
Sorry

Sorry, to clarify ts actually got 4 outputs connected (2 shotgun cables) so its likely a Quad-LNB. The dish and LNB actually look to be in decent condition, especially given the location (coastal views).

I'm not sure they are bothered about recording programmes, so I'm pondering this box for them Freesat+ HD with Freetime 1TB - pause, rewind and record live TV, scroll back through the last seven days of shows and watch on demand, with built in WiFi. But might have a quick scan of the classifieds.

The box will record to a portable usb hard disk. Can record one and watch another from same transponder. eg Record BBC1-HD and watch BBC2-HD or vice versa.
 
Hi I note that Freesat from Sky is subject to a £259 (!!) charge.
FREESAT from Sky - Call now to order and it's "only" £254 :censored: It does include a dish install and a receiver box, though. Dish install is obviously not needed, as it's already there. So you could buy second hand $ky boxes and they'll work (BBC London and ITV Granada by default) but with all the $ky channels cluttering the EPG. Freesat from $ky cards will get the correct regionality for £25 each.

Freesat reckon on lower installation prices (but you have to buy the receiver or recorder box(es). http://www.freesat.co.uk/help/get-freesat/switching/installation However you don't need installation, as the $ky dish and cables should work fine.

Finally, LOCATION is key:
It may be possible to receive Freeview on a set top aerial in some places close to a main (or relay) transmitter. A UHF aerial in the loft might work in some places, but would need cabling to the rooms but could be done d-i-y at low cost?

An outside UHF aerial installation, for Freeview(TM), to the two rooms may even be cheaper than buying two non-recording freesat(TM) boxes? {Check price estimates from a few local installers}?
 
Thanks. Its in rural Cornwall and the Freeview signal is very poor (we live 1/2 mile up the road and frequently lose BBC signals from our Freeview aeriel (which has a high power booster fitted), hence why I think the previous homeowner used the Sky dish instead.
 
In rural Cornwall with coastal views I'd live without any TV!

Freesat will be the obvious choice though if you really want it.
 
In rural Cornwall with coastal views I'd live without any TV!

Freesat will be the obvious choice though if you really want it.

What would you watch when it's foggy and the fog horn is blaring ? :D

Freesat was actually launched for exactly the OP's situation.

Limited Freeview reception post DSO, because the commercial channels wouldn't pay to upgrade the relay transmitters.
 
Freesat was actually launched for exactly the OP's situation.
No. BBC and others wanted to escape reliance and cost of $ky. Satellite broadcasting can get to locations terrestrial cannot, but some rural locations can still have no usable signal depending on topography.

Limited Freeview reception post DSO, because the commercial channels wouldn't pay to upgrade the relay transmitters.
Base Freeview is three PSB muxes and on all relays. DSO added more 3 mux relays! The COMmercial muxes are a commercial, cost sensitive, other matter.

@OP. Without knowing precise location we cannot advise on reception predictions for your home or the in-Laws'. But use the digitaluk prediction tool in detailed view. Half a mile often makes a very big difference in Cornwall due to the topography.
 
I have set up freesat from sky a couple of times, its not that much, you need to get a second hand box which should be about £20 and a freesat from sky viewing card which is used to be £20, it may have gone up but i assume £259 is if u are ordering the box
 
Freesat is a jointly owned ring fenced company set up by the ITV and BBC under a licence to provide as similar as possible a epg controlled service to a post DSO main power transmitter (the epg fees are basically it's only income), to those in areas that post DSO could get no service or a limited relay 3 mux only service. It is not and never was designed to replace Sky, it's licence precludes any sort of competition with existing digital subscription services and is only available to Free To Air broadcasters paying the epg fees. It is not a broadcaster either.

Freesat - Wikipedia

The BBC and ITV, the two biggest free-to-air broadcasters in the UK, make their services available digitally through three routes: free-to-air via digital terrestrial and digital satellite, and subscription-only via digital cable.

On digital terrestrial, the channels have always been available free-to-air with the appropriate equipment. In 2007 Freeview was available to only 73% of the population.[2] After analogue TV services were replaced in the digital switchover, this increased to 98.5% for the public service channels and 90% for the full 'Freeview' service. To provide more widespread coverage and a larger number of channels, a digital satellite alternative was felt necessary.
 
No. BBC and others wanted to escape reliance and cost of $ky. Satellite broadcasting can get to locations terrestrial cannot, but some rural locations can still have no usable signal depending on topography.

Base Freeview is three PSB muxes and on all relays. DSO added more 3 mux relays! The COMmercial muxes are a commercial, cost sensitive, other matter.

@OP. Without knowing precise location we cannot advise on reception predictions for your home or the in-Laws'. But use the digitaluk prediction tool in detailed view. Half a mile often makes a very big difference in Cornwall due to the topography.

The BBC is obliged to provide it's PSB services to Sky under the PSB service arrangements (For which charges the BBC not vice versa). In what way does it reduce it's dependence on Sky ?
 
In what way does it reduce it's dependence on Sky
If there was no Freesat then surely peeps would be 'reliant' on Sky for a sensible? EPG to obtain FTA broadcasts (and have to pay Sky for it). So FS removes the dependency on Sky for a sensible EPG that is similar to the FV EPG without loads of stuff that you can't get unless you pay Sky even more.
 
If there was no Freesat then surely peeps would be 'reliant' on Sky for a sensible? EPG to obtain FTA broadcasts (and have to pay Sky for it). So FS removes the dependency on Sky for a sensible EPG that is similar to the FV EPG without loads of stuff that you can't get unless you pay Sky even more.

There's a million generic fta boxes out there starting from about £20.00 that will give you all the FTA channels on Freesat plus many more. Many of these have an epg.

And of course you can watch FTA channels on a Sky box for free anyway. You can use favourites to filter the epg to 50 channels which ought to be enough for most. Remember the first SD and HD Freesat boxes didn't record anyway.

So a subscription free Sky box provided more channels than a Freesat box for free if you already had one. It's recording for free and lower power costs that makes Freesat a sensible choice. In fact Freesat depends on Sky to approve the Freesat epg on channels on both platforms, so in fact the opposite is true Freesat does depend on Sky.
 
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BBC at one time were paying for all the solus $ky decryption cards... as well as all the other costs associated with providing its services to $ky (BBC were on satellite long before DSO to provide TV coverage in remote parts).

BBC eventually went FTA (2003) to avoid the $ky/NDS encryption costs / solus cards and at the same time were developing what became freesat in the background. (NB I was there at the time, although the freesat launch was after my redundancy.) $ky heard about the plans and launched their 'Free Sat from $ky' offering... NB the trademark was registered in 2003 Search for a trade mark - Intellectual Property Office

AFAIK BBC still pay $ky lots for carriage on their EPG and adaptation (albeit now much less than before) {and need to provide teletext subtitles for compatibility with their non DVB compliant boxes}, but get nothing for delivering their PSB services to them (Worldwide may recoup a little via their UKTV pay channels). Even Virgin pay BBC nothing (but at least collect the uncompressed SDI data from the BBC C&M centres at their expense).

BTW $ky have very little say in the freesat EPG listings / prominence (no more than any other broadcaster/member of freesat) . NB BBC 'owns' 50%. Certainly they do not 'approve' the freesat EPG; but do have more say in their own platform's EPG. Both are regulated by Ofcom, though, in terms of fairness, due prominence, charges etc.,. What they do insist on is that new channel launches and significant changes are offline 'sandbox' tested with their adaptation kit in good time, to ensure that they will not cause any disruption to their services; since so much data is cross-carried for both $ky and freesat.

Anyway all this is way off the original topic of this thread and if we need more in depth discussion, perhaps the posts should be moved into another thread?
 

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