Advice on Sky / freesat in rented house

gingernut79

My sisters rent a house and have the local cable tv at €16pm. They want to get more Channel 4 type channels and think a sky installation is the best option. The house is owned by a friend of theirs and there was a dish installed at the house by the previous tenants which they took away when they moved out, but the holes in the wall for the cable are there still. so no prob to install a dish but I was trying to persuade them to get some kind of FTA system rather than sky. of course sky has no upfront payment other than the monthly charge, so they are leaning towards that. There is no phone line in the house - will the installer be able to work around that? They also currently pay about €40 pm for local cable internet from the same crowd that supply the TV but you wouldnt be tied to the 12 month contract with them compared to having the phone line in from eircom.

Can I offer them some advice which will save them money / provide better value for money?

thanks

Cantona's Collars

gingernut79 wrote: »

My sisters rent a house and have the local cable tv at €16pm. They want to get more Channel 4 type channels and think a sky installation is the best option. The house is owned by a friend of theirs and there was a dish installed at the house by the previous tenants which they took away when they moved out, but the holes in the wall for the cable are there still. so no prob to install a dish but I was trying to persuade them to get some kind of FTA system rather than sky. of course sky has no upfront payment other than the monthly charge, so they are leaning towards that. There is no phone line in the house - will the installer be able to work around that? They also currently pay about €40 pm for local cable internet from the same crowd that supply the TV but you wouldnt be tied to the 12 month contract with them compared to having the phone line in from eircom.

Can I offer them some advice which will save them money / provide better value for money?

thanks

If they want to get Sky it is free at the moment for the box with just €30 install fee,ditch the local cable service and put the €16 toward the Sky bill.
Sky now do a free home move so if they decide to move house,Sky will move their equipment for them at no cost.
FTA install averages at around €200 so let them decide which option is best,€16 per month for cable sounds cheap but they are paying for channels that are free via satellite.

gingernut79

Think I have persuaded them in the direction of the DIY kit on satellite.ie. Hubs can put it up for them, last tenants left the holes drilled in the walls, should be a piece of cake. There seems to be a good few polish / eastern european residents near them, would their dish point in roughly the same direction as the ones for polish satellite TV?

Liameter

Roughly the same direction but several degrees further east. It has to be aligned to an accuracy of half a degree or better. I doubt you can judge that by eye!

gingernut79

http://www.dishpointer.com/

this will get me near enough I'd say

Liameter

Yes, then just use a cheap meter for final "peaking".