Freesat: 80 channels, £150, or £200 with HD inc. installation

Former_MSE_Lawrence

mike_paterson wrote: »

How can I do this Oliver - it does not work on my sky plus box - I pay £21 per month or sopmething ridiculous, but this does not give me the BBC HD channel.

Hi Mike,

To receive BBC HD free over Sky you need a Sky HD box. Since these go for about £120-150 on eBay (and a fair bit more direct) it's probably not a particularly economical solution.

My advice would be to wait until the price of HD Freesat boxes drops (and Freesat PVRs come out) and invest in one of those; in 2009 they're likely to offer more HD channels than Sky's freesat.

Whilst being marketed as an 'open' service, the BBC/ITV freesat service is actually being controlled quite tightly. Only a handful of manufacturers are allowed to make boxes at the minute, and only 4 retailers are allowed to sell them. In six months the market will open up to other manufacturers and retailers, and this competition should see prices drop (hopefully) just in time for Christmas.

Hope this helps.

Poppycat

I doubt the Humax prices will drop much, over times yes, but they always at a premium price and tend to be well built. Prices may vary a few quid here and there but I have bought many Humax hardware over the years and shop around and there little difference in prices.

I am planning on buying a Humax pvr for freesat when they come out in Summer 08

chardir

Is it possible to get Freesat from Sky and then buy an additional BBC Freesat box and have them both in use simultaneously? (eg for watching & recording 2 different channels)

stphnstevey

I have a dish left still attached from when we had Sky a few years back, but don't have the box anymore. Can I use it to get any satalite channels? What sort of box would I need?

davtom

Here is a very good resource for those of you who want to have a go at pointing your own dish:

http://www.dishpointer.com/

You put in your postcode, and set it to show 28.2E (Astra 2A/B/D). It shows you Google satellite imagery of your location and the direction in which you need to point your dish as a line pointing in the right direction. You can also use a compass to help; the magnetic bearing of the satellite is provided. If you use a compass, note that it should be away from metals which would tend to screw up the alignment.

I purchased a portable set-up from Lidl's about three weeks ago for £65 that I intend to use for caravan use. I tested it out at home, and I got excellent reception after maybe ten minute's fiddling around aligning the dish after using this resource. The kit gets the Freesat services fine (free-to-air ones only).

Note that it seems to help to align the dish horizontally first before getting the vertical alignment (elevation) right, because it's far easier to get the horizontal alignment right; you can tell where the dish is pointing horizontally, but not vertically if it is an offset-focus dish (like most of them).

mzungu1960

MartinG wrote: »

tc80tc80 wrote: »

Any problem with getting the Dixons offer mentioned earlier in the article....



Got the Dixons deal last summer when it was a 6 month offer. Phoned to cancel and they couldn't do it on the system (after 30 minutes on the phone). So cancelled in writing.
Lost count of the number of letters I got from them threatening/reminding me of my contract and that I owed them £19.99 per month. Phoned again (by the way don't forget Saynoto0870!) and again. Transpired that their system couldn't cope with 6 month contracts as everything was for 12 months. I will NEVER have anything to do with Sky ever again. Took about 8 weeks to sort out.

dont blame you sky are greedy cant some company come up with a more simplistic structure where your not paying for bits here and there im fed up with paying 45quid a month and then 9.99 for setanta:eek:

cb101

Hi

I have a dish on my house that belonged to the previous occupiers (so pre 2001) and was wondering how I would know whether it could be used with a freesat box or whether it is too old.
I bought one of the Bush SD ones from Argos today (so I can return it :-) ) but get no signal when I connect it to the cable. Obviously it is possible that the dish is no longer in alignment or maybe the nearby cherry tree is blocking the signal but I just wondered if it's more likely to be the dish itself.

Any thoughts?

( I know I could obviously get a new dish fitted but I may be moving in the next few months so reluctant to do so.)
Thanks
C

AlanUdale

Oh come on why make things difficult.

If you have a sky dish fit the new receiver and off you go.

No dish - you can pick them up for around £10 in most local paper advertisements or free if you see houses being pulled down fit the receiver use http://www.dishpointer.com/ and off you go.

You can also use old satellite receivers found at car boots for £5 (not sky) the ones used for multisat or motorised satellite use.

Maplin sell units from around £19.

I have used a COMAG SL45 HDMI receiver for a few months to pick up free channels I think this is £39 now.

stphnstevey

AlanUdale wrote: »

Oh come on why make things difficult.

If you have a sky dish fit the new receiver and off you go.

No dish - you can pick them up for around £10 in most local paper advertisements or free if you see houses being pulled down fit the receiver use http://www.dishpointer.com/ and off you go.

You can also use old satellite receivers found at car boots for £5 (not sky) the ones used for multisat or motorised satellite use.

Maplin sell units from around £19.

I have used a COMAG SL45 HDMI receiver for a few months to pick up free channels I think this is £39 now.

I quite orten see them around the bootsale's. Can I use any receiver with a Sky dish?

jchrishall2000

Question for those with a Sky sat system installed and who are thinking of cancelling Sky subscription:
(http://www.freesatfromsky.co.uk/?pID=6)

So is there a way yet to get the £20 Freesat card for nowt from Sky (or elsewhere)? (Apart from stealing it!) I don't like the principle of paying £20 to Sky for very little in return. What do I get for my £20 - will I even get the Freesat menu displayed on screen or will I get a jumble of channels whose number I will have to remember?

What about cancelling from Sky and just using my current Sky card? What channels will I get?

As you may have guessed, I'm not very keen on Sky - they seem fixated on getting you to subscribe and once they've got you, that's the last you hear from them - unless you threaten to leave, when by all accounts, they'll try almost anything to keep you.

TTFN,
Chris