Thompson Sky box - Question

Johnboy1951

I have been offered a Thompson Sky box (FOC) to 'play' with.
I know nothing about the capabilities of this box, except it has a couple of Scart sockets and no HDMI.

I note also it has a couple of RF outputs but know nothing about them either.

I have a centralised tuner set up with TV channels distributed over the LAN by tvheadend.

So, is it possible I could make some use of this box .... maybe to feed an output to a DVB-T tuner for tvheadend to distribute with other channels?

I don't care about HD/SD and such .... just if a signal from the box could be used somehow in the present set up.

I like to 'play' with discarded devices just to see if they can be re-purposed or somehow made use of.
There is no point in taking it if there is no way I could make any use of it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Vic_08

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I have been offered a Thompson Sky box (FOC) to 'play' with.
I know nothing about the capabilities of this box, except it has a couple of Scart sockets and no HDMI.

I note also it has a couple of RF outputs but know nothing about them either.

I have a centralised tuner set up with TV channels distributed over the LAN by tvheadend.

So, is it possible I could make some use of this box .... maybe to feed an output to a DVB-T tuner for tvheadend to distribute with other channels?

I don't care about HD/SD and such .... just if a signal from the box could be used somehow in the present set up.

I like to 'play' with discarded devices just to see if they can be re-purposed or somehow made use of.
There is no point in taking it if there is no way I could make any use of it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

It only has analogue outputs and will not display any more channels than your current fta setup so it's hard to see what use you will get out of it unless you want a fuzzy SD digital-analogue-digital output (I shudder to think how bad that would look if the DVB-T encoder was MPEG2). There are plenty of old sky SD boxes on adverts/scumdeal, wouldn't pay more than €10 even if I wanted one for something.

The Thompson boxes were + boxes (they were also the crap ones that blew their PSU boards AFAIR) so presumably you will also have an IDE HDD to play with.

Johnboy1951

Got the box this afternoon.
I had never owned one or even seen one previously.

After reading your post I opened it to see if there was a HDD inside.
Nope, no HDD.
Space for a CA module ok - not fitted.

Box looks like new .... not even a scratch on it (before I got to opening it )

It has aerial in and RFI & RF2 outputs with #2 apparently providing 9v dc for some external equipment.

So I guess it would 'pass-through' the broadcast signals received via aerial on RF1.

What is the purpose of RF2?

It has a single LNB input and two SCART connectors (marked VCR & TV).

Is the tuned channel on the LNB sent out on one (or both) RF connectors?
If one - which one?

What use could I make of it?
Have no idea yet ..... won't have until I can determine what it might be capable of

Thanks for any info you can provide

ninja 12

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

It has aerial in and RFI & RF2 outputs with #2 apparently providing 9v dc for some external equipment.


What is the purpose of RF2?


Is the tuned channel on the LNB sent out on one (or both) RF connectors?
If one - which one?

I think I've only ever tried the aerial in socket on a Sky box once (many years ago ), and it did indeed pass the aerial signal through RF1 .



The same feed is sent through both RF outputs , but RF2 is for feeding a second room , and allows remote control with a Sky Magic Eye (I think it has to be enabled in the settings )

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

What use could I make of it?

If you have Eir broadband , ask for a free Sky viewing card and just use the box for the Eir Sport / BT Sport channels

That's the only thing I use an old Sky box for .

Johnboy1951

ninja 12 wrote: »

I think I've only ever tried the aerial in socket on a Sky box once (many years ago ), and it did indeed pass the aerial signal through RF1 .



The same feed is sent through both RF outputs , but RF2 is for feeding a second room , and allows remote control with a Sky Magic Eye (I think it has to be enabled in the settings )




If you have Eir broadband , ask for a free Sky viewing card and just use the box for the Eir Sport / BT Sport channels

That's the only thing I use an old Sky box for .

Thanks for the response

Yes I do have an eir card and a Sky +HD box which is linked into the distribution system via a HDMI to DVB-T modulator.
It works quite well with the tuned channel viewable everywhere by multiple users.
It is a horrible box and I absolutely hate the thing

Nonetheless, if this Thompson box could be added to the system using the RF out, with a second eir card, then two channels would be accessible at the one time (maybe).
That would considerably reduce the need for channel changing.

That would be important for this set up as the Sky box is in the media press and generally inaccessible for anyone viewing.

So, maybe two Sky boxes are in my future (much as I hate them)

Johnboy1951

OK, I am finally getting back to this.

Maybe I should post a new thread with more appropriate heading for my next questions, but will try here first.

So I have this Thompson Sky Box which has RF 2 output (includes pass-through of Saorview aerial) and also has Scart connection.

I have a HDhomerun DVB-T tuner being fed by that aerial whose output is fed to tvheadend to manage distribution to client boxes.

I want to try, with as little cost as possible, to be able to tune in some output from the Sky box.

I have set up a newer box with HDMI-to-DVB-T modulator which the HDhomerun can receive ok.

What would be the best (least costly) approach to add this box to the mix?

Yes I know the output quality will not be good, but nonetheless I want to play with it (hence cost sensitive) to see.

Suggestions? ..... please.