Should I buy a used Sky Digibox

derol4

Hi All,

I have one of those Lidl satellite setups - the problem I find is that I receive a maze of channels and it's difficult to sort out the good from the rubbish sometimes (using the receiver's channel display view).

I was wondering if I bought a used Sky digibox from eBay if it would make my life a bit easier?

Would the channels be organised better - i.e. BBC1, 2, 3, 4, News, ITV1, 2, 3, 4 and other useful channels all displayed one after the other.

Would appreciate your opinions on this?

Thanks,
Derol4.

watty

You can organise the channels and delete the ones you don't want.

A Sky digibox is less flexible, you can't reorder at all, the ITV and BBC aree not all together, though you can set favourites.

Look at your boxes main menus. It definately lets you delete channels and reorder. Most also have a favorites as well.

A used Digibox may be old and be very slow or fail. You need to know which model it is. The advantage is you can get a FTV card for C4 and Five to a UK address (or someone with UK address) and you can use BBC/Sky /ITV satellite text and "so called interactive".

But ANY FTA non-sky receiver beats a Digibox for re-ordering and deletions.

derol4

Thanks for that, it's good to know that the sky digibox will not give me anything in terms of channel organisations.

Having text and interactive would be a big advantage though.

BigFoot_

Hi, I'm kind of satellite newbie

Can you receive some/all of the freeview channels?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeview).

thnx.

watty

BigFoot_ wrote:

Hi, I'm kind of satellite newbie

Can you receive some/all of the freeview channels?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeview).

thnx.

Freeview is a UK digital terrestrial system via aerial. few few people in Ireland can get it at all.

But most channels yes, by satellite. This is the list of free SATELLITE channels from 28.2E (Sky)
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Free+To+Air+on+Sky

No Sky Digibox or Sky subscription required. You need a FTA satellite receiver, LNB and at least 60cm dish.

In addition about 20 other satellites possible on 80cm dish.

See www.lyngsat.com europe and atlantic Frequencies sections
Note not all these satellites, nor all the channels are receiveable in Ireland. Also only Clear MPEG2 with a normal receiver. Any encrypted channel requires a subsbcription.

A few Pay TV channels on Sky are free elsewhere so some people pay 100 Euro extra for a motor to automatically move the dish.

Specifically C4 and Five need a Sky Digibox and a UK Subscription or UK Freesat/FTV card (only sent to UK addresses). An Irish card in a Sky Digibox is no use for that, and even hides most BBC and all ITV channels (Though they still work on a separate menu).

If you want about 20 good pay channels as well as the free ones, then a 21.50 Euro per month Sky sub is good value. If you cancel after a year you still own the gear (Often install is free too) and still get all the free channels above.

Otherwise a non-Sky box, which can even have a Hard Disk for recording and Ethernet to stream to PC or possibly XBox 360.