Foreign channels on sky digital

rcunning03

can anybody tell me how to recieve fta european channels with a sky digibox (if possible)

Thanks

ShaneOC

It is not possible with a standard setup. If you move the dish it may be possible to pick up a few but you then loose all of the usual channels.

watty

I had 3 lnbs via a homemade switch on my digibox...

I got fed up:
1) Digibox tends to crash on changing from 19E to 28E (though not from 13e to 28E).

2) Some channels I wantend the digibox dosen't do the SR

3) Other Channels doesn't show you what you did so you need to write everything down

4) Digibox very poor to select alternate audio feeds

5) Forgets "other channels"

6) Other channels at 20 or 50 (depending on Sky Whim as to what works this week is too small).

I swithered about getting a Humax F1 or a PCCard. The PC Card won. Lots of excellent non-Sky receivers, some with Sky+ type builtin hard disk.

I have 600 FTA TV and 500 FTA Radio. Any decent non-Digibox "living room set top receiver" like palcom, Technomate, Nokia, Humax etc will do the same. You can even put dual or Quad LNB on the 80/90cm dish for the FTA Euro channels and use an o/p of that for the digibox and then use the digibox dish/lnb on holiday etc.

Capt'n Midnight

SKY seem to have gone out of their way to block other channels except for the purposes of testing. - Basically like exery other digital device it is a computer so lots of things are dead easy if you can get at the software...

So best thing to do might be to hang on to it to use as BBC box or sell / swap it for a real FTA receiver.

Real FTA boxes - auto scan - you choose the order channels go into - at home the first 9 channels can be changed by pressing one button and you have a flick button to flick between the last two stations.. - they usually support diseq so you can easily get 13 /19 / 28 on the same dish and decoder...

To swap sky box to other satellites is a hack
If you do swap make sure you are on an "other channels" on 19 first - otherwise the loss of an EPG might get it to hang - probably have the thing searching for listings on the way back..

PS. dithered the other way - nice little Humax box - serial cable allows you to upload / channel listings and edit them on a PC - try that on a SKY box....

WATTY - has anyone ever been able to use the RS232 or PCMCIA slot on the digibox for anything ???

watty

I think the gamepads plug in the RS232.

I have a suspicion that say an ISDN TA / Modem emulator might have been an option for the RS232 incase you had a Digital only phone line (but most ISDN wall units have POTS jacks built in anyway, now). A replacement modem if the internal one got zapped might have been original idea. Almost certinally used for manufactuer diagnostics.

No the PCMCIA (it looks like one anyway) does nothing till Sky tells it. Rumoured enhancements for that have included "DTT freeview receiver(Not likely)", CAM for non Sky viewing (hah! less likely), Hard Disk for record or pause the channel you on (possible, but unlikely), and ADSL adaptor for "high speed interactive" (Possible and slightly more likely).

The Digibox has various features that have I suspect chnaged use since original design. Or never used (Modex card slot and "PCMCIA" like slot).

A possibility is too that if videoguard was VERY compromised a new CAM system might plug in the back..
But does the back connector and internal HW allow a front card to work with module? Unlikely. Does the "PCMCIA" connector have MPEG streams before or after Videoguard or both and for in or out? I'd be very surprised if it had Videoguard decrypted output stream.

rcunning03

cheers

if i bought a fta reciever would i need a new dish or what would i need to do with my current satellite dish also if i got one would i get bbc fta and how much do fta recievers cost and where can i buy one

cheers

Ray

dmeehan

try www.satellite.ie

rcunning03

will do thanks