FTA & SKY card joint operation

charlieb

Hi Guys,
I am new forum member from Bray. I have just received a NI FTA card and already have a suscription with sky. Assuming that the FTA is activated sucessfully can I then interchange it and the Sky card as I wish without losing the operation of each card?
I would appreciate any advice from anybody in a similar position.

Charlieb

Stiabhna

Hi Charlie,

I have the same setup as you (and I'm in Germany!). Yep, it works fine. If you leave the NI FTA card out of the box for a certain period of time (roughly about a week or so), it'll need to be activated again - in this case, just leave it in the box overnight (it gets the signal automatically).

I've also found that switching the cards on a "joint channel" (i.e. when you're watching a channel that is both on the SKY card and on the NI FTA card - say BBC 1 NI) seems to make the card swap go faster.

Happy viewing!

Stephen

charlieb

Hi Stephen
Thanks for you advice.
I will now start the process of activating the FTA card (it has been sitting in my drawer for the last 6 months).
Do you recommend the swapping of the 4th & 5 numbers when giving the digibox serial number to you know who?
From reading through the forum I know about the precautions to be taken when making that phone call,luckly my employer has ISDN phone lines thus eliminating country of origin.
Are ther any more hidden pitfalls?
Out of interest are you Irish?

Charlieb

Stiabhna

Hi Charlie,

Sorry I can't help with the activation. I got (bought) the card from a guy on this forum. He also got it activated for me, so I didn't have to do anything.

Good luck,

Stephen

PS: Yep, I'm Irish

charlieb

Hi Stephen
FYI I phoned up this morning and got the card activated.The only requirement was to confirm the card no. and my NI postcode,easy!(I guess I was lucky ,friday is a good day to call)
When I go home tonight I will insert the FTA card (assuming I can get my kids off the cartoon network) and hopefully the activation signal will activate the card overnight.

Thanks for your help ,hope you will enjoy RTE over ther when it goes on the airways(shortly!).

Charlieb

ShaneOC

Hi Charlieb,

You should have inserted the FTV card before phoning to get the card activated. If Sky send out the signal to your box it may register that it has an active Irish subscription. You may have just shot yourself in the foot. Hopefully not though. If I were you I would try and get the FTV card into the box asap.

Our man in Havana

Dont they send the signal serveral times?

I took over 24 hours for my card to get activated.

ShaneOC

I am not sure of the number of signals that they send. When I got my card activated all channels were active within 2 hours of making the call with the exception of BBC1 though this was on the EPG. BBC1 took over 24 to come through.

Our man in Havana

Shane,

What BBC 1 region do you have?

ShaneOC

I have BBC1 England. The ITV Region is Granada.

Must say that the standard BBC2 is much better than BBC 2NI but it is great to have the choice of all the different BBC2's.

Our man in Havana

It would be nicer to have all the BBC1 regions too!

I agree that BBC2 is better than BBC2 NI

BTW mine is BBC 1 England
ITV is Carlton/LWT

charlieb

Thank to all
I woke up this morning and found my FTV card activated with ch4,Ch5 etc.
Regarding interchanging I can swap the sky package card and the FPV card on the fly (ie without switching on or off the digibox).

Do anybody know if swapping the cards will have any long term effect? Also is ther any device(legal or illegal ) that allows one to have the two cards plugged in at the same time??


Charlieb