sky box and humax working together.

silkyuk9

ok, i currently have a sky digi box and subscribe to sky, i also have a HD Humax freesat box, which at the moment is no connected up due to my sky box using the sat dish wire.

As i only have HD quality on the Humax i was hoping to have both boxes working off one wire, however, i only have one wire and one screw thingy thats connected to my sky digi box.

Is there any way i could get something so i can connect both boxes to the sat dish?

i really dont want to keep unscrewing the wire and keep swapping them over to sky then Humax.

With the world cup approaching i would love to watch the matches on HD rather than just the basic ITV channel

anyway i can do this, help please.

kwikbreaks

The thing on the end of the arm which sticks out from your dish is called the LNB. If your LNB has only a single connector then it will operate only one box - you cannot split it as you could a TV antenna. What you can do is buy an LNB with more connectors (up to 4) and run an additional coax from one to another box. Take a look on eBay for a quad LNB - they can be bought bundled with a length of satellite coax and F connectors.

So long as you can reach the dish safely the job is simple. If you can't do it then you'll need to look for a switch to swap the cable between boxes (I've no idea if they are readily available).

mkaibear

denvertdino wrote: »

On another note...just moved into a new flat. I've got a Sky Plus box and can't watch one channel and record another. It will only allow me to watch and record the same thing as it only has one feed to the shared dish. Does anyone know if there is an adaptor or any way round this apart from messing with the dish which isn't going to happen!

You can get a splitter but you will only be able to record 2 from a limited group of channels at any one point.

Basically there are 4 multiplexes which are transmitted and each LNB can be "tuned-in" to one of those multiplexes. In a shared-flat arrangement, there are 4 cables from the dish to a box somewhere and then this sharing-box "pretends" to be a normal LNB - passing the relevant signal out down the many different wires to the end user. When your Sky box changes to a channel on a different multiplex it sends a signal to change up the wire and the sharing-box sends the requested signal down it.

MinniMe_2

where can you get the splitter?

ard123en

you could use an a/b switch like this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/F-Type-Satellite-Cable-A-B-Switch-FREE-P-P-UK-SELLER-/190351592624?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_ConEle_SatCableFreeview_RL&hash=item2c51d6ccb0

I would not switch when either receiver is on as there is a voltage going down the cable so a spike may blow the tuner in one of the receivers

Inactive

The only satisfactory way of doing any of this is to change the LNB to a quad one, cost around a fiver on eBay, plus a length of satellite cable, sorted.

Any splitter will not achieve a proper result.

MinniMe_2

inactive, can you explain further - I'm not very technical so don't understand.

JasX

MinniMe wrote: »

inactive, can you explain further - I'm not very technical so don't understand.

Basically any one cable can only ever carry (say) 1/4 of all the channels you have available.

If you only have one cable to your dish you'll only have 1/4 of the channels available at any one time in your living room whatever 'splitter' arrangement you end up with on the end of that single cable.

If one box tries to switch to a channel on a different 1/4 group any channel the other box may have been on/may want to be on won;t be there

with a LNB on your dish that has 4 cables comming out of it all 4 quarter 'slices' of channels are always available, typically these 4 cables go into a big 'multiplexer' type switch so any single cable/box in your flat can independently choose which 1/4 group of channels it gets at any one time.

to get complete freedom to access any two channels you fancy you need all four feeds from a 'quad' LNB going into the 'splitter/multiplexer' and then a separate cable for each box comming out

Inactive

MinniMe wrote: »

inactive, can you explain further - I'm not very technical so don't understand.

You don't really need to understand, you just need to follow my advice, though Jasx has kindly explained for you.

MinniMe_2

jasx - i appreciate your taking the time to explain.

Inactive - the reason I asked was because I don'y understand you advice, hence I was trying to learn so I could understand. Looking at the two solution addressed above, I cannot tell the difference between them, and whe you say of just get X and some cable, how am I meant to install if I don't understand.

I appreciate your help.

kwikbreaks

The reason there is conflicting information is because after the initial question someone using a communal feed piggybacked the thread instead of starting a new one and got some answers which were (probably incorrectly but I've no experience of communal feeds so don't know) declared to be wrong by somebody who didn't spot that the question being answered had changed.

Happens all the time in this forum unfortunately.