New Freesat.

McKneff

We have an ordinary freesat box in our Conservatory.

My OH watches telly in there a bit and he is nattering to have the new Freesat box that you can pause, rewind, etc.

We have Sky HD plus in the house, is there any other way we can get the pause etc.

We have an unused sky plus box kicking about too

Failing all the above, if we end up buying a new freesat box do we just take the old one our and plug the new one into the TV in the same way as the old one.

macman

A Freesat box will need a twin feed from the LNB if you want the full PVR functions (i.e . to watch one channel while recording another). Other than that, it is just a straight box swap.

McKneff

'scuse my ignorance but how do i know whether Ive got what you said. about a year ago, the men came and set up a dish next to my sky dish and just wired it up to the freesat box.

Avoriaz

McKneff wrote: »

'scuse my ignorance but how do i know whether Ive got what you said. about a year ago, the men came and set up a dish next to my sky dish and just wired it up to the freesat box.

That is unusual.

Sky and Freesat are broadcast from the same satellite group at 28.2 east and can use the same dish.

You need two feeds (cables) for Sky+ (which has two tuners), one feed for a Freesat receiver (one tuner) and two feeds for a Freesat recorders (two tuners).

A Sky dish can have a quad LNB (the bit on the dish that sends the signal down the cables) or an octo LNB which provide four and eight feeds respectively.

Older Sky dishes had single or double LNBs. All recent dishes are usually fitted with quad LNBs.

Your man should have fitted (if one was not already fitted) a quad LNB on your existing dish, attached the existing two Sky+ cables and added an additional cable for Freesat.

There is no point having two dishes when one dish with a quad or octo LNB will do the same job.

Count the number of cables. There will probably be two on your Sky dish and one on the newer Freesat dish.

You need to add a fourth cable so you have two for Freesat. It is an easy DIY job if the dish is accessible and not too high up the wall.

Check what type of LNBs you have. You should be easily able to tell if there is a spare outlet for your 4th cable.

Have a look at this site.

McKneff

I seem to remember the fitter saying that there wasnt enough outlets on the Sky dish, at the time we had apart from the TV in the sitting room we had multi room in a bedroom.

I'll get son in law to have a look, lol, I dont do ladders............

Avoriaz

McKneff wrote: »

I seem to remember the fitter saying that there wasnt enough outlets on the Sky dish, at the time we had apart from the TV in the sitting room we had multi room in a bedroom.

I'll get son in law to have a look, lol, I dont do ladders............

You probably had a quad LNB that was full. Two feeds to the living room and two feeds to the bedroom.

It would have been far easier and cheaper to replace that with an octo LNB rather than install a second dish. The fitter probably had a dish in his van and didn't have an octo LNB with him. Or maybe he wanted to up the price of the job.

No matter, what was done was done.

Assuming you have a spare outlet on the freesat dish, all you need to do now is buy the appropriate length of cable, two F connectors (one each end) and install it. A simple DIY job, perhaps for your son in law.

If you don't have a spare outlet then either buy a quad LNB for the freesat dish or buy an octo LNB, fit that to the dish that is in the best condition and get rid of the other dish.

That site I linked above has all the advice you need.

Post again if you have any more questions.


PS: I am currently upgrading our existing Sky dish. Sky installed it last year with a quad LNB and two feeds to our living room for Sky+. A few months later we bought a TV with built in Freesat so I added a third cable for that. I just ran the third cable parallel to the existing pair and through the same hole. That left only one spare unused feed on the LNB.

We now need two more feeds for a Freesat TV room upstairs so I have bought an octo LNB, 50 metres of cable and cable clips and F connectors. I purchased them on Ebay as that is far cheaper than from a retail shop.

£15 for latest model Zinwell octo LNB; £22 for WF100 cable, clips and connectors. All brand new and the same or better than Sky and Freesat installers use.

McKneff

Thank you kind Sir !!!
I'm sure son in law can follow your instructions.

The annoying thing is that daughter moved out a fortnight after the freesat dish was set up.

Cost was the same as it was done on this £40 subsidised scheme.
Thanks again.