Any use for old satellite dish?

Skint_Catt

Sorry if this is in the wrong place. We moved into a rental a few months ago that has a sat dish attached to the rear of the house - the aeriels are still attached but as we are just watching terrestrial at the mo we havent thought much about it. We would like Freeview but think we would need to change the external antenna aeriel to do so (weak signal area according to the Freeview website) but we wondered if we could use this out of commission sat dish for the same purpose? We have freeview boxes but the connectors are different. Would it work?

superscaper

You'd need a satellite decoder.

Inactive

Skint_Catt wrote: »

Would it work?

In a word NO, different technology alltogether.;)

Garetha

A satelite receiver doesn't work on terrestrial signals - just the signal from a satelite in the southern sky.
You could buy a Lidl sat receiver for £40 when next on offer there. Or buy one on ebay.

Skint_Catt

ok, so if I buy a sat reciever or decoder could I get Freeview or would I have to sign up to Sky? Only want Freeview really.

superscaper

Skint_Catt wrote: »

ok, so if I buy a sat reciever or decoder could I get Freeview or would I have to sign up to Sky? Only want Freeview really.

Freeview is terrestrial only. You can get free to view channels via satellite (e.g. sky's free to view and soon Freesat) but you won't necessarily get all the freeview channels.

Inactive

Skint_Catt wrote: »

ok, so if I buy a sat reciever or decoder could I get Freeview or would I have to sign up to Sky? Only want Freeview really.

You have 2 realistic and workable options;

1). Get a Freeview Receiver with a proper aerial for your location.

2) Get a second-hand Sky Receiver and get the free channels that are available on it.

Don't bother with the FTA Satellite Receivers from Lidls, you will probably find them too complicated and not very user friendly for your needs.

The free channels on Freeview are different to the free ones on Sky, Freeview are better IMO.

Hope that helps.;)

Bigcammy

If it's a Sky Digital dish, you can pick up a secondhand Sky Digibox from Ebay as some people sell them after upgrading to Sky+, should cost £30-£35. You then ring Sky for a Freesat card, that'll cost you £20. Hook the Sky box up to the dish (I'm also assuming it's still wired) and ring Sky with the serial number of the Digibox and the Freesat card and ask them to pair them up. You should then get all the Freesat channels if the dish is aligned correctly.

Do a google search for Freesat channels and you'll see what you should get.

Lakeuk

Following link lists the channels you'll get from a satellite decoder with no sky subscription or card
http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html

You can get a second hand sky box of ebay for a low as £15 (inc postage) if you take your time or an alternative is to put a wanted ad on your local freecycle forum, you never know you maybe lucky

I wouldn't bother getting the £20 sky card as it'll only give you Ch4 / Ch5 on top of the free channels in the link above and ch4 is expected to be free on satellite at somepoint this year and I'm sure Ch5 will follow once it sees what it's missing when Freesat launches

Or finally you could wait it March when BBC/ITV will launch Freesat which is the same as above but should be easier for the end user to use

barrymung

Try Freecycle..there are usually loads of unwanted Sky receivers on there.

You won't get all the Freecycle channels, just most of 'em. However, you'll get a bunch of other channels that you don't get on Freeview.

Horses for courses but I think this will be the cheapest option.

barrymung

Freesat is going to be HD only: http://www.freesat.co.uk/home.php

So you will need a Freesat receiver and HDTV.