Freesat in multiroom?

nmbash

Hi.
I recently both an HD tv (1080p) with built-in freeview (which is standard now). I am thinking of installing Freesat (but after reading all the comments I might stick to Freeview for awhile) into two rooms. We are going to buy another HD tv.

Currently we have a CRT tv and a Freeview receiver in the main room. There is a 'tv aerial splitter' on this reciever. A cable then goes from the reciever to the 'back' room. This way we can watch different Freeview channels in two rooms.

I want a similar set-up for Freesat. In the 'back' room I only want the tv and no boxes (wii, HD recorder etc). If I go the freesat route, I will buy a Freesat box with a recorder.
I rang to get Freesat installed, but was told that I needed to buy two Freesat receivers, one for each room. Is this correct?

The other alternative is to have Freesat etc in front room, freeview in the back room.

Thanks

isofa

You need two separate feeds from the dish for 2 freesat items, (and I think... if you also have a freesat recorder etc, you'll need another feed for this too...).

If the TV has freesat built in then you don't need a freesat box, if it is just a freeview TV (or analogue) you'll need a freesat box. Also you'll need a freesat PVR/recorder if you want to record anything from freesat too. Humax make a freesat PVR and several TVs now come with it freesat, such as flat screens from Panasonic.

It doesn't work like freeview from an aerial which you can split, you have to have a separate feed from the dish for each TV.

Personally I'd stick with freeview. And if it's a good CRT it'll offer a good picture compared with new LCDs too, unless you are comparing HD quality...

nmbash

Thank you for such a quick response. Yes, I must admit I am thinking of sticking to Freeview for now.

The CRT tv is good, but 10+ ten years old and now the screen looks really small compared to the 37" in the back room. So for that reason we will upgrade to a 40" in the front room. Also before we finish the decorating and put our new flooring in I want to get the cabling done now.

Since we will be buying a Freesat recorder in the future, I guess it is not worth buying a tv with built-in freesat? Or do I need that in order to watch one channel and record another? The tv in the back room will just be for viewing.

Leopard

isofa is, as always, correct. The nature of the signal being distributed is different with FreeSat.

You could attach an HDMI splitter box to the output of the FreeSat HD receiver (or recorder) and cable an HDMI connection to the television in the back room. But this would not enable you to watch different things in FreeSat HD in the front room and the back room simultaneously unless your television in the front room has a FreeSat HD decoder inside it, fed with its own lead from your dish.

If the latter is not the case, your best bet would be to purchase for the back room a television that does have a FreeSat HD decoder inside it and then give it its own cable feed from your dish. Alternatively, if you wish both to record and to watch HD things in the back room, you could purchase a second FreeSat recorder and give that an independent feed (two, if it's a twin-tuner device) from your dish. That, of course, would result in you having two different sets of recorded material stored in the two different recorders and neither would be available to the television in the other room without running an HDMI (or component video + sound) cable connection between the two rooms.

Remember that Freeview HD is coming soon...

nmbash

Leopard wrote: »

Remember that Freeview HD is coming soon...

No I did not know that. I thought the FreeSat was the alternative. So thanks for that. I will definetly wait for Freeview HD. So what is the point of FreeSat, apart from having the few HD channels now?

Thinking ahead .. what would I need? From just reading about it, I know I will need a new Freeview HD receiver. Hopefully a splitter will work for the two rooms on Freeview HD? We were going to renew the existing cable from the aerial - should this be a particular spec?

Leopard

nmbash wrote: »

No I did not know that. I thought the FreeSat was the alternative. So thanks for that. I will definetly wait for Freeview HD. So what is the point of FreeSat, apart from having the few HD channels now?

Thinking ahead .. what would I need? From just reading about it, I know I will need a new Freeview HD receiver. Hopefully a splitter will work for the two rooms on Freeview HD? We were going to renew the existing cable from the aerial - should this be a particular spec?

Forgive me. There was some ambiguity in your original posting. If you have put your recently acquired LCD HD television in the back room, what you need now is an LCD or plasma HD television for the front room that has its own FreeSat HD receiver built-in. Give that its own feed from the dish, give any Freeview recorder you buy its own feed from the dish (two, if it's a twin-tuner device), connect an HDMI splitter box to the output of that and then run a cabled HDMI connection from it to your back room.

FreeSat provides free HD television now and also offers an alternative solution for those who cannot obtain an acceptable Freeview signal from any position in which they can mount a conventional television aerial.

nmbash

Brill. That's a good plan.

Thanks to both of you.