Satellite receiver recording

John32c

As far as I understand you can only record the channel you are watching on Satellite TV (FTA). Is there a way around this?

Can anyone recomend a receiver capable of receiving FTA and and that is capable of recording more than the program you are watching?

dkane

You need a receiver with two tuners and PVR functionallity to record one channel to hard disk while you are watching the other.
Your satellite dish will need a twin (or quad) LNB and two cables connecting it to the receiver.
Some receivers come with a hard disk built in, others allow you to add your own hard disk and some even allow you to connect an external hard drive via USB and record onto it.

John32c

dkane wrote: »

You need a receiver with two tuners and PVR functionallity to record one channel to hard disk while you are watching the other.
Your satellite dish will need a twin (or quad) LNB and two cables connecting it to the receiver.
Some receivers come with a hard disk built in, others allow you to add your own hard disk and some even allow you to connect an external hard drive via USB and record onto it.

Thanks for the info, a couple more probably stupid questions:
1. What is PVR?
2. I need two cable feeds from the one LNB, do both of these connect into the new receiver? Do most receivers have the capacity to take two cables?

dkane

PVR - Personal Video Recorder.

If you want to record one channel while watching another you need two tuners.
(Just like with your bog standard analogue TV, one tuner in the TV and another in the VCR)
Most standard satellite receivers only have a single tuner, hence you can only watch/record one channel. There are plenty of receivers out there that have two tuners (Sky+ and SkyHD for example, although not FTA). Any satellite receiver with two tuners will need two feeds from the LNB.

vistaphotos

I understand the idea of needing two tuners. If the two tuners are not co-located then they each need their own feed. However, I've seen tuners with IF-in (to take feed from LNB) and IF-out (which I'm guessing is a pass through of the IF-in). Is it not a case of connecting IF-in on the second box to IF-out on the first? or would the signal be degraded two much? Just curious

dkane

Satellite TV is broadcast on two separate bands, a low band between 10.7-11.8GHz and a high band between 11.6-12.7GHz. Also some Transponders are horizontally polarized and others are vertically polarized.
The satellite receiver supplies the LNB with power and also switches the LNB between it's 4 settings (LOW-H, LOW-V, HIGH-H, HIGH-V).
Therefor if you were to daisy chain the signal from one tuner to the other you would only be able to tune in two channels in the same band and polarity.

watty

The IF loop is for an Analogue Receiver (e.g. east Germany). one Receiver is always in standby.