Advice wanted for freeair/freesat channels

kelsblockh

Hello,
I'm a complete novice when it comes to technology these days. Any feedback for below will be greatly appreciated.

I need to cut my monthly expenses by cutting out Sky Plus. I have a dish and the sky plus box. I'm so confused by so many different freeair/freesat boxes etc out there.

What is the best (and cheap) box out there for getting 50+ channels and have the same functionality as the Sky Plus box (subtitles, record, pause, on demand)? I'll be looking for something that won't require changing to a new box next year or in the near future due to new software updates.

Is there any box that will show the FOX channel?? I'm addicted to the Walking Dead :-).

I also want to cut down the expense for home broadband and telephone. I've looked online but it seems that the UPC is the cheapest. I'm on the "Fibre Power Broadband 120Mb" package with them.

I look forward to reading your feedback.
Thanks in advance!

LMK

I'm not an expert and never had Sky installed but here is my experience -
Free to air and FreeSat are the same insofar as they are satellite TV signal broadcasts of the same TV channels.
What box you buy to receive the signals is what differentiates the two. I've both free to air and FreeSat boxes at home.
For the free to air I use a combo box (Edision) that takes both the satellite signal and the Irish terrestrial signal, so all channels you choose can be sorted, deleted using one interface. With this set-up I have 24 hr EPG for terristral and now/next for Free to air, with an external HD I can record a channel but its restrictive to do so. one downside with this is if the channel being broadcast changes frequency you'll have to rescan to get it back.
For the freesat I have the HUMAX HDR-1000S I've 2 feeds from the satellite dish into this, plus lan connection to BB router, it only receives the satellite signals (plus some on demand..because Irish ip address) so no Irish channels, but I have 7 day epg , can pause /rewind live tv and can record quite easily from the epg list. the Remote setup is good. drawback with this is you don't have the Irish channels coming through and have to stick with the pre-ordered channel listing.

kelsblockh

Thanks a million, LMK. I've heard about Humax so will look into this more.

Technofobe

Im using an amiko alien 2
its a triple tuner
2 sat inputs and 1 terrestial
I can record 2 sat stations and watch saorview ( RTE ) using a usb hard drive
or record saorview and a sat station and watch another sat station ( you get the idea )
When the box is connected to duh interweb I get 7 day epg
the on demand I can watch is rte player and 3 player and utv player
With geoblocking I cant use the bbc iplayer
Only 1 remote
I can organise the channels in any order I like using dreamboxedit

The amiko alien 2 can be had for around €140
For more cash there are better spec boxes like the eddison with a faster processor and more memory
these things are important if you want to use more plugins like permanent timeshift ( rewind live tv ) and such

This is our sky replacement and it works well but there is no sports really on free to air freesat whatever you like to call it
Picture quality is great as some channels are are HD like RTE 1 + 2 UTV and some BBC
Hope this helps

John T Carroll

LMK wrote: »

I'm not an expert and never had Sky installed but here is my experience -
Free to air and FreeSat are the same insofar as they are satellite TV signal broadcasts of the same TV channels.
What box you buy to receive the signals is what differentiates the two. I've both free to air and FreeSat boxes at home.
For the free to air I use a combo box (Edision) that takes both the satellite signal and the Irish terrestrial signal, so all channels you choose can be sorted, deleted using one interface. With this set-up I have 24 hr EPG for terristral and now/next for Free to air, with an external HD I can record a channel but its restrictive to do so. one downside with this is if the channel being broadcast changes frequency you'll have to rescan to get it back.
For the freesat I have the HUMAX HDR-1000S I've 2 feeds from the satellite dish into this, plus lan connection to BB router, it only receives the satellite signals (plus some on demand..because Irish ip address) so no Irish channels, but I have 7 day epg , can pause /rewind live tv and can record quite easily from the epg list. the Remote setup is good. drawback with this is you don't have the Irish channels coming through and have to stick with the pre-ordered channel listing.

I have a Humax HD 1000S (for the past 10 days or so) which is a single feed receiver, I have a 500 GB hard drive paired to it which enables pausing of any programme and recording but you must watch the same programme that you are recording. I only noticed a few nights ago that I can watch certain other channels while recording, ie I can record say either BBC1 or BBC2 or BBC3 and watch either of the other two whilst recording. How is this possible with a single feed ??.
Its a Humax HB 1000S that I bought.

Gerry Wicklow

The digital signal your box receives contains the information for a group of TV channels on one broadcast frequency. There are many different frequencies in use to accommodate all the TV (and radio and data) channels. Because your box only has one tuner it can only 'listen' to one frequency at a time which means it can only receive that group of channels. If you look at this site you will see how channels are grouped together on different transponder frequencies. For example, the first TP listed carries several Channel 4s, Film4 and More4 +1

evilivor

John T Carroll wrote: »

I have a Humax HD 1000S (for the past 10 days or so) which is a single feed receiver, I have a 500 GB hard drive paired to it which enables pausing of any programme and recording but you must watch the same programme that you are recording. I only noticed a few nights ago that I can watch certain other channels while recording, ie I can record say either BBC1 or BBC2 or BBC3 and watch either of the other two whilst recording. How is this possible with a single feed ??.
Its a Humax HB 1000S that I bought.

It's got twin tuners.

John T Carroll

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

The digital signal your box receives contains the information for a group of TV channels on one broadcast frequency. There are many different frequencies in use to accommodate all the TV (and radio and data) channels. Because your box only has one tuner it can only 'listen' to one frequency at a time which means it can only receive that group of channels. If you look at this site you will see how channels are grouped together on different transponder frequencies. For example, the first TP listed carries several Channel 4s, Film4 and More4 +1

Thanks Gerry, thats fascinating and an unexpected bonus, I'm very impressed that this is achieved with just the one tuner.
I didnt see any any suggestion of this when I was reading up on the different Humax Models but then again I probably wasnt expecting this from the one tuner.

Gerry Wicklow

In practice it's very limiting and confusing as the other channels available when recording will vary depending on which transponder (TP) you are using. It's best considered a side-effect rather than a feature.

Mint Sauce

Quick question on the Freesat Boxes. Because they are set up using a postcode, if I enter a NI postcode, can I manually add BBC and ITV London, and visa versa if I use a London Postcode.

Basically meaning I would have both regions for ITV and BBC.

John T Carroll

John T Carroll wrote: »

I have a Humax HD 1000S (for the past 10 days or so) which is a single feed receiver, I have a 500 GB hard drive paired to it which enables pausing of any programme and recording but you must watch the same programme that you are recording. I only noticed a few nights ago that I can watch certain other channels while recording, ie I can record say either BBC1 or BBC2 or BBC3 and watch either of the other two whilst recording. How is this possible with a single feed ??.
Its a Humax HB 1000S that I bought.

Should also have said that I can watch a pre recorded programme and also record from any of the 3 or 4 channels available on some TPs.

Sam Russell

Mint Sauce wrote: »

Quick question on the Freesat Boxes. Because they are set up using a postcode, if I enter a NI postcode, can I manually add BBC and ITV London, and visa versa if I use a London Postcode.

Basically meaning I would have both regions for ITV and BBC.

If you use a London Postcode, you can get most of the regional BBC channels in the 900s.

winston_1

Sam Russell wrote: »

If you use a London Postcode, you can get most of the regional BBC channels in the 900s.

If you use a NI postcode you likewise get all the BBC regions, UTV and ITV London.

kooga

if you use a ni postcode you will not get itv +1 , on the epg. not a deal breaker as you can scan it in non freesat mode.