Move into new house - is cable active?

ballisticbrian

Just moved into a new house and there appears to be one aerial running to a room at the back of the house down the side of the building and the rooms at the other end of the house are served by what appears to be cable.


If I was to purchase a second hand box (?) can I get freeview on this cable without a subscription?


Or when the people moved out, is the cable service stopped altogether?


I thought it might be cheaper to use the cable than get a new wire put up to the existing aerial?

HappyMJ

ballisticbrian wrote: »

Just moved into a new house and there appears to be one aerial running to a room at the back of the house down the side of the building and the rooms at the other end of the house are served by what appears to be cable.


If I was to purchase a second hand box (?) can I get freeview on this cable without a subscription?


Or when the people moved out, is the cable service stopped altogether?


I thought it might be cheaper to use the cable than get a new wire put up to the existing aerial?

Cable? What's on the other end of the cable?

A co-axial cable connected to an aerial will give you Freeview and if it's a satellite dish a Sky box will give you some free channels on Sky (it's not freeview but it's close).

The word "cable" usually refers to Virgin and you won't get any service on that unless you pay.

ballisticbrian

Yes, cable like Virgin. Is there like a viewing card you can get for the freeview channels only? I once moved into a house with Freesat that was like that, I think 15 quid for a new card. Basic freeview channels only.

mwarby

As I understand it the cable set top box, always remains property of the cable company (and I think they take this seriously, so there very few if any secondhand boxes. I believe historically this was to protect against pirate decoding

There are sellers of generic boxes (search for DVB-C / C2) but I've got no idea if they work on Virgin(they won't be supported for sure). I suspect there are few if any unencrypted channels. It's also worth bearing in mind that with no contract there's no obligation for them to keep to cable attached and working at the other end

If you don't want to pay for cable, i'd just get a freeview box, for me the channel selection is better than freesat

eamon

Virgin not only take the set top box back they also disconnect at street cabinet level. On the plus side as a potential new customer they will fall over themselves to snare you.

ballisticbrian

OK, thanks for the replies, I guess I am looking at calling out an aerial guy to have the other side of the house reconnected to the aerial which I see it was at some point in the past.