!@!NEWSFLASH!@! New Sky+ box for 2006

bigpaddy2004

I was at a meeting in Dublin yesterday with sky people. They were unvailing a new sky+ box which is going on the market in 2006. It's called Sky+ HD. Basically it has 3 rf connections coming from the back of the box just the same as the ones to date, only difference is each rf outlet is independant of one another. You can look at one channel in the main room, run 3 co-axial's to 3 other rooms and watch an additional 3 different channels in 3 other rooms! The box also has 3 tuner's in it. This will do away with all the phone line connections around your house for multiroom.

Mossy Monk

Sky+ HD? high definition?

tabatha

how much is what i want to know?

tabatha

bye bye ntl!!!

Aquos76

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

I was at a meeting in Dublin yesterday with sky people. They were unvailing a new sky+ box which is going on the market in 2006. It's called Sky+ HD. Basically it has 3 rf connections coming from the back of the box just the same as the ones to date, only difference is each rf outlet is independant of one another. You can look at one channel in the main room, run 3 co-axial's to 3 other rooms and watch an additional 3 different channels in 3 other rooms! The box also has 3 tuner's in it. This will do away with all the phone line connections around your house for multiroom.

Am I not right in thinking it must have atleast 4 inputs from the dish in it also. RF will only allow rf signals pass through it. Say for example, I am watching Sports 1 and the kids want to watch Bomerang and my wife wants to watch Home and leisure, how can one input allow these 3 channels to be views as they are probably all different frequencies also. Also remember I will need another input for my Sky+ feature to operate. This must me some box.

center15

More details here
Dont think you can watch two different channels from the box at the same time, only record 1 and watch one.

JohnC.

Newsflash? Hasn't this box been known about (with pictures) for months? Or is this a different HD box?

sharkman

lensman

if the box has 3 digital tuners you'll need a triple output LNB on the dish !! all the freq's switching is done at the dish end correct ? otherwise the rf outputs will not be independant and can only supply the same channel to each room !! or am I missing something here ?

dmeehan

what do sky themsleves have to say about the hd box specs?

ShaneOC

This sounds interesting...

And maybe you won't need any extra outputs from the dish! If there are three tuners in the box each with a seperate output you could potentially have one output wathing the channel from sat input 1, another output watching the channel from sat input 2 and the final output watching a prerecorded programme (from the disk).

Only problem now will be getting more coaxial cable from back of Sky box to other TVs. I have 4 coaxial cables behind the TV but all are in use (two for Sky+, one for FTV box and one for terrestrial).

Maybe they will be really clever and output the different channels on different freqs so a sngle cable can be used to distribute the 3 outputs (so then just run that cable to a splitter in the attic and Bob's your uncle).

dmeehan

ShaneOC wrote:

Maybe they will be really clever and output the different channels on different freqs so a sngle cable can be used to distribute the 3 outputs (so then just run that cable to a splitter in the attic and Bob's your uncle).

if only!
i dont think herself would appreciate another re-wiring of the house

L1011

Theres been a rumour going around that Sky'll be fitting Unicable LNB's to dishes when someone goes to SkyHD, this would justify that

A Unicable LNB can send four outputs down one coax lead - I've a feeling the maximum distance to first box is constrained a bit though - you feed extra boxes by loop through from the first, or the first can take 2/3/4 outputs for multiple tuners

I'm intrigued as to how they can, if needed, get the ENTIRE IF band down a cable at once, as if one tuner wants HV, another HH, another LV, another LH, that'll be needed..

Sparky

wouldnt sky be losing money by this method, considering they can get €15 per extra points, unless they have a trick up their sleeve where they will enable rf2 and 3 by method of OTA announcements to the box after you pay 15 extra PM per point.

Overall plan sounds good tho, would save the hastle of having to install a box in the bedroom when i can enable all outlets and assign them to a different freq channel down one coax.

rabbitinlights

The 3 RF/tuners are either for:

2 tuners for Picture in Picture + 1 tuner for recording.

Or 2 for recording and 1 for viewing.

watty

It is about 1.8 Ghz to feed low and High part of band on the cable. Adding H/V gives 3.6GHz

I can't see how it can be done to have three or four tuners.

Two tuners, yess that is only worst case of 1.8Ghz, but cable run is more limited. Upper limit if you frequency shift BOTH tuner feeds is 2.0 GHz if lowest frequency is 200MHz.

VERY limited cable length.

Two live channels and one playback?

Or are they really independant? That would need THREE MPEG2 / MPEG4 decoders (that run up to 5 times the work of current MPEG2 decoder, EACH) and THREE PAL DACs! A lot of expense.