Freesat, the downside?

taker920

Sorry to hijack the thread...

We are just about to move into our new place and on trying out the new tv yesterday the reception is really poor (no digital channels and 4 grainy analogue channels).

We are planning on having sky plus in the living room and I was originally going to have freeview in the kitchen and bedroom. After reading up on freesat I am now thinking of taking 2 lines from the new sky dish, one to the bedroom and one to the kitchen (which i've already run).

Does anyone know if the new sky dish has 4 connectors? (2 for sky plus and hopefully 2 for freesat) or just 2? Someone has told me the only dishes with 4 connectors are for those with multiroom.

Also we have a line connector on the cable to the kitchen (long story but i've spent ages running it under the floor and through walls and now it's too short to reach the dish!) - is a line connector likely to effect the quality of the freesat reception on the kitchen?

robredz

@ PeteHerts
Yes so long as you pay an extra £10 a month on the Sky subscription for SKYHD, but free if you cough up £150 + for a HD Freesat box

robredz

taker920 wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread...

We are just about to move into our new place and on trying out the new tv yesterday the reception is really poor (no digital channels and 4 grainy analogue channels).

We are planning on having sky plus in the living room and I was originally going to have freeview in the kitchen and bedroom. After reading up on freesat I am now thinking of taking 2 lines from the new sky dish, one to the bedroom and one to the kitchen (which i've already run).

Does anyone know if the new sky dish has 4 connectors? (2 for sky plus and hopefully 2 for freesat) or just 2? Someone has told me the only dishes with 4 connectors are for those with multiroom.

Also we have a line connector on the cable to the kitchen (long story but i've spent ages running it under the floor and through walls and now it's too short to reach the dish!) - is a line connector likely to effect the quality of the freesat reception on the kitchen?

I
think the Sky dishes come with a quad LNB now, so if you have Sky+ it will take 2 of the connections leaving 2 that could go to another Sky+ or poss a Freesat

machofairy

The tone of this post was very anti-freesat in the beginning. I got Freesat HD for under £60. No regrets as I get free HD. During the big sports events like Olympics, Wimbledon, they are all in HD. If you dont have HDTV, then maybe its not worth the hassle. Freeview HD is not available yet and I begrudge paying sky £10 on top of their already inflated sub fee. And that, after having to pay for the HD box too! Its not free when there are conditions attached to it.

cobnobbler

Picture quality on both Sky and Freesat are both noticably poorer than Freeview on larger tellys.

I used to have a 28" CRT and Sky looked great.

On switching to a 37" LCD it looked very poor indeed, whereas Freeview looked great. I'm just talking about SD broadcasts here.

aliEnRIK

cobnobbler wrote: »

Picture quality on both Sky and Freesat are both noticably poorer than Freeview on larger tellys.

I used to have a 28" CRT and Sky looked great.

On switching to a 37" LCD it looked very poor indeed, whereas Freeview looked great. I'm just talking about SD broadcasts here.

If your talking about through SKY HD then your quite correct as most of the boxes are inferior for SD viewing to the old SKY + boxes

unhappyvirgincustomer_2

PeteHerts wrote: »

Remember people if you have SKYHD then you can tune it into ITVHD.

So can I on my Freesat HD box but virtually NOTHING is broadcast in HD by ITV and BBC are nearly as bad.
The majority of stuff in HD is US Imports.

Sky channels are complete waste of money anyway so you're not missing anything worth watching by getting Freesat

cobnobbler

aliEnRIK wrote: »

If your talking about through SKY HD then your quite correct as most of the boxes are inferior for SD viewing to the old SKY + boxes

Just talking about satellite vs Freeview generally. Something to do with bitrates and stuff I guess.

juliescot

unhappyvirgincustomer wrote: »

So can I on my Freesat HD box but virtually NOTHING is broadcast in HD by ITV and BBC are nearly as bad.
The majority of stuff in HD is US Imports.

Sky channels are complete waste of money anyway so you're not missing anything worth watching by getting Freesat

There are a number of channels that I watch on Sky that are not available on Freesat so it would be no use for me.

When(if) Freeview starts to provide HD then all those people who wish to view it are going to be less than amused to find that their shiny new TVs with built in Freeview will not be able to decode the HD signal

kwikbreaks

... and a lot to do with how well the box upscales SD signals for your HD TV.