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digibox question

  • 20-04-2004 8:51am
    #1
    Washout
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,912 ✭✭✭


    Hiyes...

    Maybe this isnt the right place for this but im am interested in buying 2 digital boxes like the one offered by Lidl *link below) to connect to our existing sky digital satellite in order to recieve the free to air channels. such as RTE and BBC. although is RTE dependent on having a subscription to one of skys packages im not too sure.

    link to Lidl box http://www.lidl.ie/ie/index.nsf/pages/c.o.oow.20040422.p.System

    MY questions are
    (1) Is there a site with a range of non sky digital branded digiboxes which will work with a sky dish? (looking for cheap boxes and sky ones are rather expenisve i think)
    (2) can i get boxes which dont need the sky cards?
    (3) if they take other cards which allow us to watch free to air where can i get these cards?
    (4) How many digiboxes can I connect to one satellite dish?

    Hope ye can help

    J


Comments

  • #2
    Darren
    Closed Accounts Posts: 370 ✭✭Darren


    1) Nearly all satellite receivers will work with a sky dish but you will be limited to what you can receive by the size of the dish. Bigger dish generally equals more channels but as dishes get over say 1.2 metres the price increase exponentially.

    2)Yes. No boxes apart from sky boxes use sky cards. Sky us Videoguard, there is no commercially available external Videoguard CAM which implies that no box apart from a sky box can use a sky card. All other boxes don't need sky cards as thay cannot get encrypted sky channels. All the boxes I can think of can receive the FTA channels off 28.2, i.e BBC1

    3) No such thing as an FTA card. Beeb and ITV were doing FTV cards but these are no longer available except you might get one on ebay for an outrageous price.

    4) Not 100% on this but i think it is up to 4. Most standard LNBs have 1 output but say you buy Sky+ and elect to put your original box in the bedroom then I believe that SKY install a dual LNB. I'm not sure if it is poss to spilt a single LNB output furhter down the coax though.

    My advice for what it is worth is to buy one of the 99 euro systems for lidl and try and get a secondhand 90cm dish, it'll get you footie on Saturdays as well.

    Good luck,

    Darren


  • #3
    PK - the king
    Closed Accounts Posts: 294 ✭✭PK - the king


    NEVER EVER split one cable feed to serve more than one decoder!!! If you have two decoders, connected by a split to the one co-ax cable, and you're watching, say BBC One (which is highband) on one box, and Sky Sports on the other (which, as far as I know is lowband). Box 1 with BBC will be telling the LNB "I want the high channels" and so it will feed the dish with a 22kHz tone and 18v (I think). Box 2 wants low band so does NOT give a 22kHz tone and feeds 14v. The LNB is being fed with 2 voltages and doesn't know what the hell is going on. The chances are, you will most likely short out the LNB, and possibly short out both decoders too. Expensive to fix. You're better off paying €80 for a quad lnb (www.satellite.ie)


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