How do I get Freesat/Freeview/ What is it??

Ballyman

I have a question.
I'm new to all this and it doesn't really make much sense to me. I have been searching around but there is no thread where it's all actually collated together in one go so I'm unsure of what I can do so here goes.

I'm almost embarrased to admit this but I have rabbit ears on my TV at home and only get Rte1, 2 TV3 and TG4!

I was wondering if I bought a digibox and dish on ebay and a freesat card on here will I be able to get BBC1 etc? I do not have a SKY subscription. I presume as they are UK cards I won't get RTE on it and would require an aerial for that? Is this correct? How long do these cards work for? I mean is there a time limit or can SKY just turn them off whenever they want? I presume they have to be ordered to an address in the UK originally.

Another question, if all above is correct and it will work for me, can I then get a sky subscription for just sky sports to add to the freesat without paying for their entertainment packages?? Pay €29 instead of €50??

Sorry if these questions are stupid and I would appreciate any help you can give me.

Thanks.

L1011

Freeview is Digital Terrestrial Television from the UK, it is basically unobtainable in Dublin so I'd suggest ignoring it.

As goes free satellite - you have two choices. For the BBC stations, ITV stations, Sky News and about 110 other channels - 20 good, 90 terrible - you can get a free-to-air system for about €150 (or less if Lidl have an offer at the time). There also about 100 radio stations - including all the RTÉ ones, all the BBC nationals, TalkSport and a load of others.

If you want to add Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky Three and probably Film Four come the summer, you need a Sky Digibox and a FTV card - either a FreeSatFromSky card or an ex-subscription UK one. Theres a few ways to get them - ebay, a few resellers, a mate who has one spare, etc.

You can't get Sky Sports only, and you can't easily add anything to a FTV card from Ireland - as you're not allowed have them here. You -can- add the porn channels, Setanta, the asian channels and a Sky+ subscription, but you need to have a UK adress and bank account to do this.

You'll need the aerial for the RTE still - its an Irish-only pay channel on satellite.

Blaster99

And another thing to consider is that if you sign up with Sky for a year you get the installation and the equipment for free. But you need to have a phone line. I think they're doing promos now as well with half price for some number of months for new customers. You will get a lot better selection of channels for that year. Once the year is up, you can cancel the Sky sub and get a UK FTV card if you want C4 etc, or just view the FTA stations like BBC1-4 and ITV1-4 plus all the rubbish ones for free. But seeing as the FTV card costs about €30 once off, it's worth getting.

L1011

You don't need a phone line, actually - it costs around €30 more on first install to "buy out" the phone line subsidy.

One thing to note is that on an Irish sub half the BBC and all the ITV channels are in a damn inaccessible place - manually tuned into the "Other Channels" menu.

DannyD

Just to clarify..
I have a fta triax box with a cam slot. The satellite is tuned to 28.8 and has all the fta channels. Assuming I buy a card like this one http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/YELLOW-HOUSE-FREEVIEW-CARDS-100-ACTIVE_W0QQitemZ5869817276QQcategoryZ60837QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
I can insert this card into the cam slot and get all the fta channels and C4?

watty

No. A Sky FTV card / Cancelled UK Sub / Freesat from Sky card ONLY works in a Sky Digibox*

*Yes I know there are some ways to get it to work temporarily in a couple of other things like ProgDVB and Dreambox. But these are not simple and may not work tomorrow.

See here from the ICDG
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Free+To+Air+on+Sky

Also other articles and pages there too.