Freesat advice please

phona

This is so I can help my parents. They've just cancelled their subscription to Virgin and are looking to move to subscription-free services. They have previously been with Sky and have the satellite dish Sky installed.

Their main TV is going to be using Freeview. I'm ok advising them about this because I have Freeview myself.

There is also a TV in a bedroom, which has been receiving Virgin through their multiroom (excuse terminology) service. There is no aerial connector in the room, but there is a satellite cable from when it received Sky. My proposal is to use the satellite connection to run a Freesat box in the bedroom, because I think this is easier than having to run a cable from the aerial.

The problem is that I know very little about Freesat so would like to ask you fine folks for a bit of advice. Do you see anything wrong with my plan? Does Freesat need a card like Sky boxes do?

Also, it says on Freesat's website that it should be set up with an internet connection. Is this necessary? What features would I be missing if it didn't have internet access? Or would it not work at all?

Thanks in advance :beer:

TadleyBaggie

Do they still have an old Sky box? If so just plug it in and see what you pick up, it's likely to have very similar channels available to Freesat.

Freesat boxes need no card. They only need internet connections for the catch up services these boxes now offer, and possible software updates.

Owain_Moneysaver

There's a difference between Freesat-from-Sky-using-a-Sky-box and 'true' Freesat.

Freesat and Freevoew channel lineups are slightly different (I think Dave and Yesterday are the main ones)

'True' Freesat buy a freesat box (about £30 on ebay), plug in the satellite dish feed, switch on and tune in (usually tell it your postcode so it gives you the local version of BBC and ITV)

Geodark

freesat takes minute to setup, as Owain said - plug it in, tell it where you are and tune. Did one for the mother in law the other week, cheap bush box from ebay and minutes to setup.

phona

Thanks all.

So I've seen a few bits about using a Sky box without subscription and I guess that's where I was getting confused. I've asked if they still have the Sky box and they're not sure but if they do we'll try that.

You all make it sound reassuringly simple It sounds like the setup is pretty similar to Freeview overall so sounds like I'll be able to handle it.

Cheers

Kurtis_Blue

Not trying to confuse matters as a freesat box will work fine and dandy, but.

If you have an aerial feed in the lounge where the main Virgin box used to be then you have the Virgin media cable from there to the external box.

From this external box you also have the old Virgin media cabel to the bedroom.

You can easily connect these up using an F Barreland feed the aerial from the lounge straight to the bedroom.

At both the ends of the VM cable you use one of these F-Male

And some form of cheap splitter in the lounge.

10 minutes work and under £10.00

knightstyle

Do they want to record? If not they can just plug in the Sky box. For recording they can use their Sky+ box with two connections to the dish and a £10 a month subscription to Sky freesat.
Or they can buy a Humax box with hard drive and two connections to the dish. But the Sky box is much easier to use and set up.

Moneymaker

knightstyle wrote: »

Do they want to record? If not they can just plug in the Sky box. For recording they can use their Sky+ box with two connections to the dish and a £10 a month subscription to Sky freesat.

Sky have made this virtually impossible. The only way to achieve it is to reduce an existing Sky subscription to "recording only". Even then, you'd probably fail unless you asked for it by postal letter.

knightstyle wrote: »

Or they can buy a Humax box with hard drive and two connections to the dish. But the Sky box is much easier to use and set up.

However, any Sky Digibox will list ALL the programmes and not just the available ones, which quickly becomes annoying unless you spend time setting up "favourites".

So, while a Sky Digibox is useful for testing, I don't think it's a viable solution.

Heinz

Now that Sky boxes have a 50 channel 'Favourites' capacity, IMHO that's sufficient for most people using one without a subscription.

The satellite versions of the 5 main terrestrial channels leaves 45 more spaces and, although there are many more other FTA channels than that, my view is that it's unlikely that anyone could find 45 others channels they regularly watch (or want to watch).

[Deleted User]

Heinz wrote: »

Now that Sky boxes have a 50 channel 'Favourites' capacity, IMHO that's sufficient for most people using one without a subscription.

But "Favourites" doesn't hide the multitude of additional subscription channels from the actual EPG and I do remember it being a pain to have to scroll past these when I was a Freesat-From-Sky viewer some years back.

Regardless, the Sky EPG is a mess even for subscribers...

Kurtis_Blue

Heinz wrote: »

Now that Sky boxes have a 50 channel 'Favourites' capacity, IMHO that's sufficient for most people using one without a subscription.

That's a bona fide top tip, I didn't know they had increased it.