Sky and Freesat in the Same House, Same Dish

GrantB1980

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Hi Guys

Thought I’d best check here first before I take the plunge. I live in a new build house with no aerial, I’ve only got a Sky dish and conventional Sky box in the living room. Now the misses has been pestering me for ages to get TV throughout the rest of the house (bedroom, kitchen, kids room etc). But as I don’t have an aerial I’ve been trying to work out the best and cheapest way to do this.

I did look at getting an aerial installed but I live in poor reception area and live in a town house so due to the added height of the install and boosters required I’ve been quoted £400+.
Then I thought about getting Sky multi room. We're not heavy Sky users (just £22 pm for all mixes, no sports/movies) so I’d grudge paying the extra £10 pm for each additional box which will soon add up.

Now I see Sky are doing the HD box for £75. So I’m thinking go ahead with this to go in the living room (where most TV is watched) and get Freesat boxes in the bedrooms as and when I decide to put TV in that room.

Am I right in thinking you can run a mix of Sky and Freesat from one dish, or is it a case that the dish can purely be used Sky or purely Freesat.

Of course if you can think of a better way to do this I’d be grateful (house is fully wired with all co-axial cables going to the loft, just nothing to plug them into to receive a signal)
Thanks in advance for the help!
 
Hi Guys

Thought I'd best check here first before I take the plunge. I live in a new build house with no aerial, I've only got a Sky dish and conventional Sky box in the living room. Now the misses has been pestering me for ages to get TV throughout the rest of the house (bedroom, kitchen, kids room etc). But as I don't have an aerial I've been trying to work out the best and cheapest way to do this.

I did look at getting an aerial installed but I live in poor reception area and live in a town house so due to the added height of the install and boosters required I've been quoted £400+.
Then I thought about getting Sky multi room. We're not heavy Sky users (just £22 pm for all mixes, no sports/movies) so I'd grudge paying the extra £10 pm for each additional box which will soon add up.

Now I see Sky are doing the HD box for £75. So I'm thinking go ahead with this to go in the living room (where most TV is watched) and get Freesat boxes in the bedrooms as and when I decide to put TV in that room.

Am I right in thinking you can run a mix of Sky and Freesat from one dish, or is it a case that the dish can purely be used Sky or purely Freesat.

Of course if you can think of a better way to do this I'd be grateful (house is fully wired with all co-axial cables going to the loft, just nothing to plug them into to receive a signal)
Thanks in advance for the help!

The cheapest option would be to plug your existing coaxial cable into the back of your Sky box, in the 'RF Out' socket and connect a 'Magic Eye'. One thing to watch out for though, is that some loft distribution amplifiers block the 'magic eye' signal.Details here.

Alternatively you could purchase the Sky HD box and use your old Sky box as a Freesat from Sky box. You would still get the CH5 family and negate the purchase of a Freesat box. Just need to check that you have a quad LNB on your dish.

HTH

ATB

Max
 
Last edited:
Hi
I currently have a sky dish with three cables, two going to what was Sky+ (now upgraded to Sky HD) and 1one to the freesat connection on my Panasonic TV. Works fine. When the Sky engineer came to upgrade me to HD, he put a new dish/LNB on the wall and reconnected the Freesat along with the two Sky HD cables.
Hope this helps.
 
It should work fine. I am running two Sky+ boxes and a Freesat off the same dish.
 
Hi Guys

Thought I’d best check here first before I take the plunge. I live in a new build house with no aerial, I’ve only got a Sky dish and conventional Sky box in the living room. Now the misses has been pestering me for ages to get TV throughout the rest of the house (bedroom, kitchen, kids room etc). But as I don’t have an aerial I’ve been trying to work out the best and cheapest way to do this.

I did look at getting an aerial installed but I live in poor reception area and live in a town house so due to the added height of the install and boosters required I’ve been quoted £400+.
Then I thought about getting Sky multi room. We're not heavy Sky users (just £22 pm for all mixes, no sports/movies) so I’d grudge paying the extra £10 pm for each additional box which will soon add up.

Now I see Sky are doing the HD box for £75. So I’m thinking go ahead with this to go in the living room (where most TV is watched) and get Freesat boxes in the bedrooms as and when I decide to put TV in that room.

Am I right in thinking you can run a mix of Sky and Freesat from one dish, or is it a case that the dish can purely be used Sky or purely Freesat.

Of course if you can think of a better way to do this I’d be grateful (house is fully wired with all co-axial cables going to the loft, just nothing to plug them into to receive a signal)
Thanks in advance for the help!
When you upgrade to Sky HD, ask the installer to add 2 cables from the spare LNB (you will have a quad LNB with 2 cables for Sky HD), then run the cables to the rooms you want to install freesat. You might as well run the 2 cables even if you just use one now. The cables cost very little (if short) and later you might be glad that you do it now.

You can then just connect the cable the your freesat box (SD or HD).
 
thanks for the help guys. Go the Sky Guy coming the 16th so I'll get him to wire up the bedrooms while he's there.
 
It should work fine. I am running two Sky+ boxes and a Freesat off the same dish.

Have you got an Octo LNB as the 2 Sky +'s use 4 LNB's and Freestat 1.

I'm thinking of getting 2 freestat lines run for the kids bedrooms but am already using 3 of the 4 LNB's for sky + and multiroom. Anyone know if its easy to upgrade the quad LNB to an Octo ?

Also I imagine software updates come via the sky dish - bloke in Comet said I'd still need to connect to an ariel for updates, dish for channels only.

thanks
 

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