New house, Freesat, Saorview, Eir Sports

budgemook

Hi,

I was searching this forum but couldn't find a definite answer. I *think* I read before that this will work:

- Satellite dish installation
- Saorview / UHF aerial
- Enigma 2 combo box (Gigablue Quad HD Plus probably) with internal hard drive
- Irish Sky viewing card
- Eir broadband subscription

Having items 1, 2 and 3 means I can watching Irish and UK channels with no subscription charges and have features like recording. I know having Eir gives me access to Eir and BT Sports online but my question is can I put an Irish Sky viewing card into the satellite receiver box and watching the sports channels on my TV so I don't need to stream it over the Internet. I understand I will need to contact Eir to give them the viewing card number.

So the question really is do I need a Sky box for a Sky viewing card to work?

lertsnim

budgemook wrote: »

So the question really is do I need a Sky box for a Sky viewing card to work?

If you would like to have BT Sport in HD you will.

Johnboy1951

budgemook wrote: »

So the question really is do I need a Sky box for a Sky viewing card to work?

Yes ..... for the past 4 months I had a card working in a non-sky box but it failed last weekend , and I had to borrow a Sky box to pair it to receive the eir channels.
It needs to be a Sky HD box to work fully = channels in HD.

Would there be some possibility of streaming the eir sports channels on that Enigma box?

budgemook

Not sure about streaming.

What about standard def, will that work?

EDIT - just reading previous post, it seems SD won't work without a Sky Box either

So I guess it's one of:
- Get Sky
- Get Eir TV
- Stick with the plan but have a Sky Box for the sports

Not mad about any of these.

Johnboy1951

budgemook wrote: »

Not sure about streaming.

What about standard def, will that work?

EDIT - just reading previous post, it seems SD won't work without a Sky Box either

So I guess it's one of:
- Get Sky
- Get Eir TV
- Stick with the plan but have a Sky Box for the sports

Not mad about any of these.

I am not mad about my options either
At present I have been forced into the third option as I am unable to use my PCs for streaming eir sports.
I have a full FTA & Saorview setup working nicely over my LAN.
I cannot integrate eir sports into that, so at present it is a 'stand alone' set up.

Not very convenient if I want to watch something and the one TV it is connected to is occupied!

I have eir broadband so have eir sports that way.
I do not deliberately pay for any sports channels.
Neither do I pay a subscription to Sky.
So I have no 'monthly outlay' to watch TV.

I wish someone would develop a Kodi plugin that would accept the eir sports credentials and allow the channels to play.

It seems there is not much hope of anything changing on the Sky or the eir side of things.

Johnboy1951

budgemook wrote: »

Not sure about streaming.

What about standard def, will that work?

EDIT - just reading previous post, it seems SD won't work without a Sky Box either

That has been my experience. I have no idea how others might have fared. During that time I had mostly SD channels, but was able to receive Premier in HD.

In any case to use a Sky branded card in a non-Sky branded set top box, is contrary to Sky's terms and conditions, so if they find you doing so they might well cut off the card.

budgemook

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I am not mad about my options either
At present I have been forced into the third option as I am unable to use my PCs for streaming eir sports.
I have a full FTA & Saorview setup working nicely over my LAN.
I cannot integrate eir sports into that, so at present it is a 'stand alone' set up.

Not very convenient if I want to watch something and the one TV it is connected to is occupied!

I have eir broadband so have eir sports that way.
I do not deliberately pay for any sports channels.
Neither do I pay a subscription to Sky.
So I have no 'monthly outlay' to watch TV.

I wish someone would develop a Kodi plugin that would accept the eir sports credentials and allow the channels to play.

It seems there is not much hope of anything changing on the Sky or the eir side of things.

Why can't you stream eir sports?

Johnboy1951

budgemook wrote: »

Why can't you stream eir sports?

Because I do not use either of the two operating systems they allow .... MAC & Windows.
They disallow all others because they insist on Silverlight being installed to receive the streams, and that is only available for the two mentioned.

budgemook

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Because I do not use either of the two operating systems they allow .... MAC & Windows.
They disallow all others because they insist on Silverlight being installed to receive the streams, and that is only available for the two mentioned.

I see. Similar to Sky Go so. I have a Mac so covered there.

If the streaming is good enough I suppose I'd go for that over a second box.

STB.

budgemook wrote: »

Not sure about streaming.

What about standard def, will that work?

EDIT - just reading previous post, it seems SD won't work without a Sky Box either

Are we talking about an unsubscribed viewing card for an Eir Customer in an E2 box.

Why wouldn't it work.

Use Oscam. Forget the HD variations though.

Johnboy1951

STB. wrote: »

Are we talking about an unsubscribed viewing card for an Eir Customer in an E2 box.

Why wouldn't it work.

I had used a former 'Setanta Card' in an Ariva 120, which eir 'enabled' in July, to receive the eir sports channels.
I could only receive SD channels with the exception of Premier (I think) which was in HD.

Some days ago I discovered I could no longer view any of the 6 "eir sports" channels. I tried everything I could think of, even checking with 'Setanta' that they still had the card approved.

A couple of days ago I borrowed a Sky+HD box, inserted and paired the card, and could receive all the channels .... 5 in HD as expected. I guessed there must be a problem with the card reader in the Ariva.

Tonight, after reading your post I revisited the Ariva.
Inserted the card and could not receive any of the eir sports channels.
BUT ..... the card decrypted the two Sony Movie channels, which indicated to me that the Ariva is after all working correctly, but something appears to have changed with the requirements for reception.

I expect an explanation of why this happened to me (after working the previous 4 months) would provide an answer to your question.

I don't have an answer, just speculation.

Use Oscam. Forget the HD variations though.

EDIT:
I came across this today and thought it might be relevant. It dates from the approx day my service failed on the Ariva ...
https://community.eir.ie/service-updates-70/issue-with-eir-sports-service-on-sky-box-05112016-284797

STB.

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I had used a former 'Setanta Card' in an Ariva 120, which eir 'enabled' in July, to receive the eir sports channels.
I could only receive SD channels with the exception of Premier (I think) which was in HD.

Some days ago I discovered I could no longer view any of the 6 "eir sports" channels. I tried everything I could think of, even checking with 'Setanta' that they still had the card approved.

A couple of days ago I borrowed a Sky+HD box, inserted and paired the card, and could receive all the channels .... 5 in HD as expected. I guessed there must be a problem with the card reader in the Ariva.

Tonight, after reading your post I revisited the Ariva.
Inserted the card and could not receive any of the eir sports channels.
BUT ..... the card decrypted the two Sony Movie channels, which indicated to me that the Ariva is after all working correctly, but something appears to have changed with the requirements for reception.

I expect an explanation of why this happened to me (after working the previous 4 months) would provide an answer to your question.

I don't have an answer, just speculation.


EDIT:
I came across this today and thought it might be relevant. It dates from the approx day my service failed on the Ariva ...
https://community.eir.ie/service-updates-70/issue-with-eir-sports-service-on-sky-box-05112016-284797

The cards are married to the chip on box for HD regardless of the operator now. In the past the BT and other operator channels werent locked down. They are now.

An Ariva 120 does not have Oscam EMU. It would have CCCAM if your were running the patched firmware, but that alone would not be enough to keep the entitlements up to date. It would let you watch the SD channels, but you would have to keep swapping it back and forth between that and the Sky box to keep the card up to date.

Only Oscam will update the entitlements albeit for the SD channels. So you are looking at an E2 box rather than a Ali Chip box like the Ariva.

SkinnyBuddha

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Because I do not use either of the two operating systems they allow .... MAC & Windows.
They disallow all others because they insist on Silverlight being installed to receive the streams, and that is only available for the two mentioned.

would you not use a VM ?

Johnboy1951

SkinnyBuddha wrote: »

would you not use a VM ?

I tried .... but in attempting to get it working I got hit by the limitations of only two devices and two swaps per month, so very soon I was told to wait a month to try again.

Last try gave me some DRM message and I have no more 'devices' allowed.