What can I do with an old sky box?

Ashfield

Just a quick question,
Here is my situation: We had a normal sky digital up a couple of years ago, then we upgraded to sky plus, so we now have a spare leftover sky digital box,
im about to move into a new house myself and plan on getting sky for myself in one room
ivr wired all the other rooms for satellite tv so i was wondering if i subscribe to sky myself for one box, can i do anything with the spare box to get it working,
i dont have a phone line and dont want to pay for multi room
thanks very much for any replies

byte

As it stands, if you connect the box to a dish (one that is working and aimed in the right direction) will give you free channels like BBC, ITV, C4, etc.
You'd need a quad LNB on your dish though, unless you're getting Sky+/Sky+HD where a quad LNB is installed by default.

Ashfield

byte wrote: »

As it stands, if you connect the box to a dish (one that is working and aimed in the right direction) will give you free channels like BBC, ITV, C4, etc.
You'd need a quad LNB on your dish though, unless you're getting Sky+/Sky+HD where a quad LNB is installed by default.

Do you mean so that even without a viewing card, I can get these channels off the sky plus dish which will feed my tv downstairs?
Sounds good

tomslick

You can get the following channels without any card inserted into your sky box

http://en.kingofsat.net/pack-skydigital-fta.php

Just run a cable from your LNB to the box and you good to go.

Wilde_37

I did this and it worked fine - I cancelled my SKY subscription but still got loads of free to air channels such as BBC, ITV etc.

However, since the new user guide was downloaded to my box (I still had the phone line connected) I now get no signal from the dish. Everytime I power up the box I get "No Satalite signal Received". I've tried everything to get the channels back but no joy. Now when I try to press the settings button the box goes into standbye.

Someone said that they are issuing new cards to everyone and unless you have a card then the box is now useless. Any ideas?

staker

have you tried taking out the card Wilde-37?

Wilde_37

staker wrote: »

have you tried taking out the card Wilde-37?

I've tried the following

• Taking out the card
• disconnecting everything
• switching the inputs
• forcing a software update
• changing to one input
• leaving it disconnected and unplugged overnight
• checked the settings for frequency's

If it was my box then I could live with that - but if it is Sky blocking me because they updated the software then I would be very mad!!!!

Wilde_37

Tried a friends old SKY Box and it worked with my system. So it seems the problem is my Thompson HD box.

My next dilemma is do I buy an old sky box on ebay or do i go with a freesat box.

stanley1

try adverts.ie, theres usually a few sky boxes for sale.