Fta

wheres me jumpa

Lads,

Im kinda confused. Im thinking about popping up a FTA Sat. However I dont know what I can recieve. Im in Carlow. What package/sat should I be looking at?

Skyuser

You get all the BBC and ITV channels. Also Sky News, Channel U (music) and other crap.

wheres me jumpa

So if i buy any sat i will pick up these channels?

yup

Have a look at the sticky thread at the top of the forum.
Theres some sites there to start with,where you can buy stuff.
Then maybe come back here with a make and model and we'll give a comment.

givecredit

If you are interested in getting the uk Main channels, i.e. BBC, ITV, CH4, CH5, SKY News, CNN, I would strongly recommend a Sky Digibox with uk free to view card. These can be bought from ebay.ie or check links on this site. A sky digibox is the only box that will receive Ch4, Ch5 and Sky3 free on satellite. Pace ds430n digi box would be my recommendation. Nice tidy fast digibox. With card you should be paying circa E150 for this, Dish is extra, unless you know what your doing, get a local Installer to supply and install dish. Circa E150 FOR DISH AND INSTALLATION.

Lennoxschips

having owned a sky dodgybox for four years and using it for only the free channels i'd recommend getting an proper non-sky fta receiver and living without c4 and c5. you'll still get BBC 1-4, BBC News, ITV 1-4, Sky News, CNN etc, and you don't have to put up with Sky's proprietary software, which is purposely really badly designed for non-customers, to frustrate you to into shelling out for a subscription

and it will work out cheaper too, and you don't have to rely on ebay. dish and box can be got for 100 euro new and even less second hand. a good installation would be 50 euro or you could try your own hand at it, it's do-able if you have a bit of knowhow and is half the fun

Blaster99

And my recommendation is to go for a free Sky install and do a Sky sub for a year and then cancel it and use FTA or FTV only. This will cost you marginally more than a DIY job but is completely hassle-free and you'll also get a bunch of non-FTA stations for a year, many which are quite watchable.

watty

See all about Sky:
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Sky+Specific

Free Channels on Cancelled Sky or FTA Receiver
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Free+To+Air+on+Sky

Some general FTA Satellite info
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Satellite+General

All contributed by posters here.


If you are into DIY and would like more than what is on Sky Free, (Bloomberg English, BBC World TV, CNBC, TV5, DW-TV, TVEi, and 1000 more free) get a FTA system with 80cm to 1.1m dish and pay 100 Euro extra for a motor. Gets about 20 satellites. Delete which of the 1500TV and 1400Radio free you don't want, including ALL sky Free channels.

If you ONLY want the free channels on Sky and are not able to drill four bolt holes then get a Sky deal and cancel after a year. You own it all from day one anyway.

givecredit

Lennoxschips wrote:

having owned a sky dodgybox for four years and using it for only the free channels i'd recommend getting an proper non-sky fta receiver and living without c4 and c5. you'll still get BBC 1-4, BBC News, ITV 1-4, Sky News, CNN etc, and you don't have to put up with Sky's proprietary software, which is purposely really badly designed for non-customers, to frustrate you to into shelling out for a subscription

Have you tried skys new software, The favorites epg is ideal for fta/ftv users.
Sky digibox is the only digibox that will give you a 7 day programme guide for uk mainstream channels. The only box that will remind you when your favorite programs are starting, even change channel so you can watch your fav prog. Also the only box if you want to utilise the interactive features on BBC,ITV,SKY NEWS and Ch5

But again, if you would prefer some german channels etc over Ch4 Ch5 and Sky 3 with a now and next epg and manual tuning when a channel changes transponder etc go for a fta receiver. The choice is yours!

watty

Most of the FTA boxes have a reminder / time program feature. However the rest are good valid points.

I have both the Digiboxes (3 ) and FTA receivers (2 Digital, 1 analog).

Having a fixed dish Digibox and a motorised FTA receiver is a good multiroom solution.

wheres me jumpa

Thanks guys. Id say I will go for an FTA reciever as opposed to the Sky box. I was thinking of waiting for another Aldi/Lidl deal, are they worth the wait?

wheres me jumpa

Actually one more question, is the quality of picturre = to digital?

watty

The picture quality depends on how much the broadcaster cares. BBC is very good, similar mostly to DVD quality. Some shopping channels are worse than a Web cam.

The Lidl systems recently have been having dishes really a bit small. Comparable quality can be bought at same price if you shop around, or Get a Strong with RF modulator built in a bit more expensive but worth it.

Mostly the Lidl models have no RF out for other rooms.

It is all "Digital". Diginal for 6 or 8 years now says nothing about quality. A digital MP3 can be at 96k and terrible or 256k and nearly CD quality.