Saorview/Freesat Combo boxes

connie00

I'm thinking of getting rid of sky and buying a saorview/freesat combo box. Looking at the specs I see some of the boxes mention they can record of an external HD. Does this mean they can work of a USB Flash drive or is only a proper external hard disk will record ?

Skill Magill

Both, but its probably better to record onto a usb and then transfer it to your external Hard drive via your computer

doreilly58

connie00 wrote: »

I'm thinking of getting rid of sky and buying a saorview/freesat combo box. Looking at the specs I see some of the boxes mention they can record of an external HD. Does this mean they can work of a USB Flash drive or is only a proper external hard disk will record ?

I have a number of types of combo receivers and they vary in regards to recording, Triax 537 & Ariva 120 record on usb stick,ariva best on HDD,Telestar won't record on either. Telestar is a basic receiver, fine for kitchen/bedroom.

excollier

No such thing as a Saorview/Freesat combo, be careful what to expect from combo boxes (terrestrial/satellite combos are very good machines though)

connie00

good point excollier i did notice that alright they dont tend to have freesat. very difficult to know which box to pick they all sound fairly similar when you look at the features.

NIMAN

Remember that Freesat is a UK system, basically its the EPG over the top of free to air satellite channels, and the software in the EPG makes it convenient in that its well laid out, does at least 7 days ahead, does auto updates when new channels come online etc.

And since it is UK based, you will never see an official box with the Saorview and Freesat logo's on it.

A FTA satellite receiver will not be as user friendly.

Capt'n Midnight

If you want to record then you'll need the EPG

This means the generic FTA satellite boxes aren't a lot of use since they only show now/next because both SKY and FreeSat encrypt their EPG's. You'd have to program in the start and stop times for every program, series link would be painful.

Some of the Ferguson boxes have wifi links but not sure if they allow choosing programs in advance - because that would be cool if you could link with something like www.tvbrowser.org instead of needing an EPG

Linux satellite boxes can pull the EPG off the interweb for you and you can add a usb dongle to get saorview. Unlike SKY/Freesat you may still have to retune / keep to date manually.

There is a certain amount of lock in with freesat boxes, the basic models don't allow USB recording, so you have to buy a more expensive one. And it's unlikely there will ever be any more freesat combo boxes

doreilly58

NIMAN wrote: »

Remember that Freesat is a UK system, basically its the EPG over the top of free to air satellite channels, and the software in the EPG makes it convenient in that its well laid out, does at least 7 days ahead, does auto updates when new channels come online etc.

And since it is UK based, you will never see an official box with the Saorview and Freesat logo's on it.

A FTA satellite receiver will not be as user friendly.

It is also worth noting that a Freesat HD receiver can be used to receive Saorsat and Freesat in one tuner with 7 day epg but it requires a more complicated set up ( different types of lnb and settings) on 1dish but tv3 and 3e are not on Saorsat and it may be sometime if ever before they are.