Freeview vs Sky FreeSat ?

Hunnymonster

andy88 wrote:

https://www.freesatfromsky.com



2nd hand box (trade price) about £100, so maybe you can find one for £50; their £150 deal doesn't look too bad in comparison

You can buy a new box for under £100 unsubsidised - with the £20 card ordered for you at the same time http://www.simplydigital.co.uk/acatalog/Sky_Digital_Receivers.html or a tenner more without the card

never paid more than £20 for a Sky box myself though

raeble

With Sky Freesat the only things that require the decryption card from Sky are ITV 1, Channel 4 and Five. There may be one or two others that are free to view and require a card but everything else is free to air - so if you had a dish and receiver and pointed it at the satellite you would be able to view it without the sky viewing card. I suspect that itv 1 and the others will become free to air sooner rather than later doing away with the need to keep buying cards off Sky. Itv 2 & 3 are already free to air on satellite.

Hunnymonster

ITV2 is most definitely *not* free to air - it still requires a card to view it.

trevor_john

Blondie21 You should look to pay around the £125 mark for a quality aerial upgrade including coax cable etc.I install sky and aerials for a living and strongly suggest you visit

https://www.cai.org.uk

This is the cai website and lists mainly the best and most reliable companies.

michaels

Blondie21 have you checked that you can't get all the channels with your existing arial - I have never had any problems using old aerials, argod £5 aerials on the side of the house, indoor aeials even.

I heard elsewhere that sky have a contract with E4 till 2008 making it unlikely that it will be added to freesat before then

bunking_off

Hunnymonster wrote:

ITV2 is most definitely *not* free to air - it still requires a card to view it.

http://www.freesatfromsky.com/?pID=3

...3rd line middle entry.

I haven't got Freesat so can't confirm it, but if ITV2 isn't available, perhaps you might like to inform Sky of that so they can amend their website?

Hunnymonster

ITV2 is available with the FreeSat card - that makes it FTV (free to view) but not FTA (free to air) like BBC/ITV3

Martini

http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-Kingdom.html

Here's a better FTA TV list for UK viewers.
Please note that you will need a "steerable dish" for some of the channels.
Digital Sky dishes point at 28 degrees East, which is the home of Astra 2A, 2B, 2D and Eurobird 1. Old $ky dishes point at 19 degrees East.
You don't have to buy a $ky receiver and dish to receive English TV.
You will not receive FTV and subscription channels without it though as they are encrypted in Videoguard! For this you need the $ky box and card.
There is a lot more to satellite TV than SKY!

Sky UK package:
http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/skyuk.html

Or another site:
http://www.satcodx2.com/0282/eng/ Astra
http://www.satcodx2.com/0285/eng/ Eurobird

Apple_Bob

I am looking at moving to FREESAT as we are spending £60 per month on Sky with all the packages and since the movies now are a waste of time, there is no real reason to have it...

My question is... we have SKY+, will I still be able to use this on FREESAT, as this is very useful???

Your help woudl be appreciated...

Apple Bob

ragingbass

One thing to keep in mind when choosing between freesat and freeview, is how powerful the digital signal is in your area. I have Sky's freesat downstairs and freeview upstairs, because we couldn't get a quality signal to receive most of the freeview channels. I just keep the freeview so I can watch sky sports news

We initially got the freesat working with just the dish and the receiver box, and this allowed us to receive the free to air channels. We later signed up with Sky to get the £20 freesat card, and this gives you the rest of the free to view channels like CH4, CH5 and a few others.

As for which one's better, well that depends on what kind of prgrams you watch. I really like E4, More4, Sky Sports News and Dave that you can get on freeview. But freesat have loads of music channels and news channels that I like to have too.