sky and FTA

syboit

I understand if you have a sky box (with no subscription) you should be able to receiver the free to air channels.

If I was to get a box & disk from a friend of mine (which he no longer wants), how easy would it be for me to setup in my house ?

thanks...

DMC

Spot on.

If you take the dish down from the wall bracket, and don't move the LNB arm or the dish itself, it shouldn't be too much hassle.

How to align a dish on the side of your house.
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=How+to+align+a+satellite+dish

XDA2prisoner

you'll need a compass if there are no other dishes around and a sat finder

syboit

thanks :-)

My neighbours have dish's so I can figure out the general direction. I do get signal strenght of around 25%, so some more playing perhaps. Will look over that page, is a sat finder what the sky installation guy would use ?

byte

If using the Sky Digibox signal bars as a guide, refer only to the Signal Quality - that's the important one!

Installers would use satellite signal meters yes. Dunno if I'd refer to them as sat finders, though I suppose that's their purpose!

syboit

thanks for all the info, got the dish setup last night. A slow process but it works, now receiving the freeview channels through the skybox.

Just one other question, so the digibox tells me the transponder code is 0002 (which I believe it the reference for the Astra Satellite system). I've seen references to eurobird and hotbird satellite's, would you have to move the dish again to allign to these, or can they be picked up from the dish's current position ?

ddev

I'm moving to the England from NI shortly and want to know if I take my sky card with me, and put it in the box already over there with no card, will it work. I've been told that the card and the box need to be paired up but will this mean I'd loose the NI programming.

L1011

Eurobird 1 is co-located with Astra 2.

The "transport ID" is what tells you what sat it is, 0002 is Astra 2, 0001 is Astra 1 and 013e is Hotbird... which is at 13E oddly enough :P

Hotbird needs the dish to be moved and the Sky Digibox is extremely, extremely bad for any sats other than Astra2/Eurobird1

watty

ddev wrote:

I'm moving to the England from NI shortly and want to know if I take my sky card with me, and put it in the box already over there with no card, will it work. I've been told that the card and the box need to be paired up but will this mean I'd loose the NI programming.

Yes it will work. Only the premium channels are paired and a phone call to Sky with card number and box details (even on mobile) will fix those if you have any.

I have a repalcement box supplied by Sky and it has never been paired. Some channels (all premium) that I don't have gives. "This is the wrong card " etc message. If I ever upgrade the subscription I can sort it in the same phone call.

ddev

Will they pair them even if the box is in Eng and it is a NI card. ie. can they tell where the box is located.