New home - has satellite dish - only want freesat

Tiggerwendy_2

Hi

We have just moved in to our new home. There is a satellite dish on the wall outside and cables going to the lounge and the main bedroom, although we have no way of telling if it is working, other than assuming it is as it was when we viewed the house!

We are not interested in getting movies or sport - we were perfectly happy with freeview at our old house.

Our new house doesn't have a digital aerial, analogue only, and even then the aerial is only connected in 2 bedrooms upstairs and not in the lounge.

I have currently booked BT to come and reconnect the line, and we used to have and were very happy with O2 broadband so thought we'd go with them again.

What would be our best option?

From what I see:

Buy a digital aerial and continue as before (although we were having problems with our Humax box).

Buy a freesat box (either SD or may be tempted by a HD one), the danger being that the dish might not work afterall.

Or should we look at getting Sky or Virgin? If we did, after the minimum time, do we get to keep the box and then continue to use getting only the freesat channels or are they completely separate?

Many thanks in anticipation
Wendy

ukcarper

No such thing as digital aerial does your human box work on upstairs aerial points.

victor2

As ukcarper says, there's no such thing as a digital aerial. The existing aerial should be capable of receiving Freeview channels if you are in an area with decent coverage, so try that first. If the "analogue" aerial is struggling to receive terrestrial channels, then possibly it will be worth replacing it with a new one.
If your Humax box is working, you may receive Freesat through the dish, but if you're happy with Freeview and can still get that, there's little benefit. Unless you've got a really large TV, I wouldn't bother considering an HD Freesat box, you'll hardly notice any difference.

macman

If you already have a working Humax PVR (what problems are you having with it?) then you just need to sort out a working aerial to get Freeview.
If you want to go down the Freesat road then you would need to buy a Humax Foxsat HDR and just use the existing dish and feed (twin feed is required for a PVR of course). the advanatage of Freesat is that you will get the HD channels. I wouldn't pay out just for SD-the great majority of Freesat boxes are HD.
There's little to go wrong with a dish-if it is correctly aligned, has intact cabling (clearly visible) and a working LNB then no reason why it shouldn't work.

Tiggerwendy_2

Thanks for the replies.
Following your suggestions, I tried again to tune to digital TV, but the signal isn't strong enough, presumably as it's an old basic aerial without the super duper extra bits to magnify the signal.
I had a look and have bought an old sky box from ebay for £9 so will see if that does the trick. I see there's fiddling required to get channel 5 and some others, but hopefully we'll be able to follow instructions.

Regarding my beloved Humax. I had one for about a year or so, and it was fine, although it gave the odd niggle of missing the begining or end of programmes. I then gave it to my Dad and got a reconditioned one from Humax for myself. It was fine, but it still missed the endings, but it got progressively less reliable, with lock ups, and then eventually the recordings got doubled on the list and over recorded older ones. Humax to their credit replaced it after it happened again after a reset and reformat. However, then it continued to happen with the replacement, so they replaced again, and yep, you've guessed it, the second replacement stopped recording things and on last look before we moved the recording list looked like it had duplicated itself again. My husband hates it, and wants to get anything else instead, hence him wanting to try freesat! But I will need something to record with, so we will see. At least we can try it with the £9 box, which we can then use upstairs if we decide to buy a Freesat recording device. I may however get a quote for a better aerial just so we have that to compare with!

Baldur

Tiggerwendy wrote: »

I had a look and have bought an old sky box from ebay for £9 so will see if that does the trick. I see there's fiddling required to get channel 5 and some others, but hopefully we'll be able to follow instructions.

Freesat from Sky and Freesat are slightly different animals - see links and the Freesat from Sky/Freesat/Freeview comparison HERE.

To receive the full Freesat from Sky service, you will need a viewing card (£25 from Sky, see link - if one isn't supplied with your EBay purchase).

tomitma

I have paid £29.99 for a freesat box from Argos, I hooked it up to my sky dish and it is brilliant, I am now recieving more channels that what my hubby has got and he has got virgin on his TV, (my TV is in the computer room, we very rarely watch the same programme)

corners_2

Baldur wrote: »

Freesat from Sky and Freesat are slightly different animals - see links and the Freesat from Sky/Freesat/Freeview comparison HERE.

To receive the full Freesat from Sky service, you will need a viewing card (£25 from Sky, see link - if one isn't supplied with your EBay purchase).

Thank you for the info about the sky freesat viewing card - :T have been frustrated at the lack of channels when we went back to our old sky box, and couldn't find details of just how to get a viewing card only to decode the free channels without paying for a 12+ month subscription.

Very much appreciated your link therefore and rang sky to buy one - it should be here in a few days.

Although I was surprised in the t & cs to hear that the viewing cards expire, :eek: I asked about this and the advisor said the cards are good for about 3 years.

Thanks again :j

Kurtis_Blue

corners wrote: »

Although I was surprised in the t & cs to hear that the viewing cards expire, :eek: I asked about this and the advisor said the cards are good for about 3 years.

Thanks again :j

As far as I am aware they only state expire dates on cards just in case they need to change the encryption method/codes in the future, if hacked.

ncfc1902

corners wrote: »

Thank you for the info about the sky freesat viewing card - :T have been frustrated at the lack of channels when we went back to our old sky box, and couldn't find details of just how to get a viewing card only to decode the free channels

The only extra channels you will get with the card are Sky 3, Fiver (and +1) and Five US (and +1). If you have a Sky HD Box the card will enable viewing of Channel 4 HD and Channel Five HD.
The card will also put your correct BBC1 and ITV1 regions on 101 and 103.

davemurgatroyd

ncfc1902 wrote: »

The only extra channels you will get with the card are Sky 3, Fiver (and +1) and Five US (and +1). If you have a Sky HD Box the card will enable viewing of Channel 4 HD and Channel Five HD.
The card will also put your correct BBC1 and ITV1 regions on 101 and 103.

You will also get Sky 3+1, Viva and LFC TV as well as allowing full use of parental controls on the box. It will also put Five into the EPG which is absent without a card and can only be viewed by added "other channels". Not only does it regionalise BBC1 and ITV1 it also regionalises BBC2, Channel 4 and Five - although the last two are usually only advertising regions unless you are in Wales.