Freeview?

James__10

I'm looking for a relatively cheap freeview dish for my house just for my bedroom. We have got sky already out in the kitchen and in the sitting room but i've only got saorview in my bedroom. BBC and ITV channels quality is fairly poor so i'm looking to get my hands on a freeview box. Is it possible to get a freeview box and use the sky dish ?

brian_gall85

Freeview is through your aerial, Freesat is what you need.

You can use your current Sky dish just run a cable from it to the room - you will need a new LNB if the current one has no spare connections.

Freesat boxes are the dearest but give you a Sky like EPG and do all the tuning of new channels etc for you. Although any Satellite receiver will do your job.

St Senan

James__10 wrote: »

I'm looking for a relatively cheap freeview dish for my house just for my bedroom. We have got sky already out in the kitchen and in the sitting room but i've only got saorview in my bedroom. BBC and ITV channels quality is fairly poor so i'm looking to get my hands on a freeview box. Is it possible to get a freeview box and use the sky dish ?

There is is no such thing as Freeview satellite.

Freeview = DTT in the UK

FTA = Satellite. Generic receivers need retuning constantly when channels change a Tp or frequency

Freesat = Satellite. Freesat Receivers do not need retuning.

Lucy1982

You can link free to view box to your sky dish , there is an option also to link your tv in bedroom to either of your sky boxes ,but this way you will not get independent connection, still you would be able to watch sky channels

James__10

How much would this cost? and what sky channels would I have access to?

Lucy1982

IF you run cable from rf 2 outlet of your sky box to antenna input of your tv from bedroom and do search for channels tv will find picture from your sky box .you will need thing called magic eye to be able to control box from bedroom.

John mac

anything from ~£50 up.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_4_7/275-1361582-0505102?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=freesat+box&sprefix=freesat%2Caps%2C249

although the first one in the link is for £35 (not hd)
depends what you want.

this is what's available free at the present time

saorview do not do bbc / itv . so what have you got in your room ?
is it just from aerial or is it analogue cable?

brian_gall85

James__10 wrote: »

How much would this cost? and what sky channels would I have access to?

A Freesat HD box will get you over 100+ channels - http://www.freesat.co.uk/what-you-get/our-channels
I believe they cost around €150+

A FTA box isn't as advanced but will pick up all the Sky channels but will only unlock the the FTA ones. These can be picked up for around half the price - a decent option is an Openbox s9/10 which isn't the most high tech box but can open Sky channels with your Sky card inserted and through other means which can't be talked about here.

If you need any help on setting up the Openbox so it's more user friendly give me a shout.

t c

@james_10

As scaller said no such thing as freeview satellite.

Freeview is mainly for the UK and is DTT.......Digital Terrestrial Television, same as our SaorVIEW.

FTA is Free to Air and gives all the UK stations and lots more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free-to-air_channels_at_28%C2%B0E It only has now and next programme info.

Freesat is similar to Freeview but received through a satellite dish pointing at the same satellite as Sky. see http://www.freesat.co.uk/
It has a seven day programme guide similar to Sky.

The only Sky station you can get is,as far as I can see only on FTA, is Sky News.

You could, provided you LNB, (the little unit on dish with cable coming out of it) will take another cable run to a FTA, Freesat or old Sky box in your room. I am sure there are some on Adverts.ie at good prices.

Sky is a pay service all the others are free so you cannot expect the same selection. However, I changed last year from UPC and have no regrets and am up about €600 per year!!!!!!!!!!

Also, if you start with just the one satellite for tv, do not expect to stop there as it is infectious and as soon as you realise you can get all these free you will begin to wonder, "what else is free out there", and then the fun starts.

If you are putting up a dish, I would recommend to put one up that you can expand on. I started with a sky size dish and soon realised I wanted more so bought a 1.1m dish and have set it up for 4 satellites.....so beware.

Cheers

TC

paddydu

Hi tc could you tell me what else can u get for free once u have set up a satellite dish for the free to air channels. Could u also advise me on whether i should go for free to air or freesat and i want the box i eventually get to be a combo so i can get soarview as well.
Are the channels the same on freesat box as free to air box?
Also can u tell me the best box to get,, I want to be able to record on the box and play films through it on a memory stick, the guy in the shop the other day was pushing the fergusson ariva 120 and was reluctant to tell me about any other boxes so this put me off the fergusson box which he was selling for 120euros. Any advice would be really welcome because i want to make sure i am happy with what i get thanks Paddy

t c

Hiya Paddydu,

There is no Freesat/Saorview combo box, so if that is a must have you are left with a FTA combo box.

If you look at the link in my last thread or in John mac's thread you will see what's available on FTA.
The FTA and Freesat channels are the same, except, the Freesat box is more user friendly for the 28.2 satellite and gives a 7 day programme guide and the FTA probably has more "useless" channels, shopping, religious and foreign language. (not meant to offend anybody, but useless to me).

If, however, you added extra LNB's (you need an LNB for each satellite you want to receive) and a Diseqc switch, (a switch between dish and receiver that switches automatically to the LNB of the satellite you want to watch), a FTA receiver is probably easier to use. See http://www.freesat.co.uk/about-freesat for info and what Freesat is.

If you add extra LNB's for more satellites there is a huge selection of programmes available. The popular ones are 13E and 19E which are easy enough to set up. But, most of the programmes are not in English. There are a fair few sports channels and Eurosport Deutschland, all of which are in, mostly, German. But I did watch the BDA darts on Eurosport and commentary is not vital.

I added Badr26E, which is fiddly to get, but I do receive about 4 English language movie channels. If you look at http://www.mbc.net/en.html and click on the MBC2, 4, max and action links you will see the type of programme.

I have a Humax Freesat HDR box which I find very good, but, it is a bit messy changing from Freesat to FTA, which I need to do to watch all the other satellites, it has a built in hard drive so I can record no problem. My TV has a Saorview receiver built in so no need for a second box, but I do have to change between Saorview and Freesat.

In another room I have a Technomate FTA receiver and a Saorview box. Again no problem with reception, but you do have to swap between the receivers.

There are other receivers that do a lot more, networking and Linux, but I am not at all up to speed about those so I wont go there.

Your best bet is to read up on it all on the various forums, look a suppliers web sites and decide what way you want to go. Google is your friend.....

If I can do anything else, let me know as it can be hard to explain and sounds a bit daunting...........

Cheers.

TC

paddydu

Thanks Tc for your help, I think i'll go for a FTA box then, I might just get that Ferguson Ariva 120 combo box, coz u can record with it and play movies through it on a memory stick. Once I am set up I could then look at expanding on it couldn't I, I suppose I should make sure that I have the dish and LNB kit that I can expand on.
What size dish should I get? I am in Dublin cc. Do u think the deal I was offered in the shop of everything I need including the UHF aerial (and the Ariva box) is good at 190euro (dish is 65cm) thanks again Pat

t c

No probs Paddy, hope you could understand it.

Price seems ok, do not know much about the Aviva combo box but there is a thread on this forum about it.

I would try and get a receiver with a hard drive built in as I am not sure what the max size of memory stick you can use on the combo. I would also try and get a bigger dish for future expansion, in this case, bigger IS better..........

Also see http://www.satworld.ie/ I have found them good and they have a walk in shop and also, http://www.tvtrade.ie/ who a lot of people on the forum are happy with, and one other that is e-mail only but I have found very quick and competitive on price, http://www.sat-planet.ie/

Good luck with whatever you decide and am sure we will see you again on Boards........

Cheers.

TC