FreeSat?

[Scalesy]

My house still has the dish and cable from previous owners sky. If I buy a freesat box I presume it will work (fingers crossed) would I need something extra if I got Freesat HD ?

[krh134]

It should work as long as the dish is still aligned, Freesat uses the same satellite as Sky see

www.freesat.co.uk for more info.

[Duncan]

Yep, you just need the FreeSat box - you may need the dish tweaked a smidge but that's all.

[steve1975l]

I was looking into this as PVR based freesat boxes are out or coming out. I would need to run a new wire to make 2 feeds from the LMB.

[Duncan]

I looked into the first, and currently only, FreeSat PVR box (Humax I think) before I went for the free Sky+ box offer that was going at the time (not the one that's in a recent thread on here) and found that it doesn't have a digital audio out, be it optical or coaxial, for the sound - so not able to get Dolby Digital through a surround system. So I decided to get the Sky+ and wait to see what other FreeSat PVR boxes come out in the future.

I reckoned that if after my 12 months Sky+ is up there's not any better ones then I'll stick with Sky, but hopefully there will be better boxes and I'll cancel Sky+, keep the dish and cable run and just get the FreeSat box and possibly, if needed, a dish tweak by a friend who does that sort of work.

[steve1975l]

I am waiting for this to come out...could be a long while. My Topfield is still going strong luckily.

http://whathifi.co.uk/News/Panasonic...n-HD-recorder/

[Duncan]

Oh yes please! I hope that one pans out (did ya see what I did there?! )

[steve1975l]

You do dish it out don't you.

It looks like a great bit of kit.

[67688c]

All the boxes are freesat if you use the Sky freesat card, some cheapo boxes being sold as freesat boxes often dont have a slot to use a card.
You will receive most of the free channels with those boxes, but to receive channels 4 & 5 you will need to buy a freesat card from Sky which costs £20 and lasts for 3 years, so its quite cheap. However, if you want channels 4 & 5 you need a box that has a slot for the freesat card. ie. Boxes without a slot cannot receive channels 4 & 5.

Obviously if you picked up a cheap Sky+ box even with a freesat card you would not be able to utilise the recording facilities that sky+ offers. IOW you would use it as a standard sky box.

If you bought a Sky Plus HD box then you would also be able to watch the 3 free un-encrypted channels, ie. BBC HD, Channel 4 HD, and the Luxe channel. (as mentioned above..again you need a freesat card for channel 4 HD)

HTH

Freeview via a normal antenna with a freeviw box offers all of them including HD for nothing of course.

[Duncan]

You do dish it out don't you.

Oh dear! lol

Useful info there Cameron. For me though using the Sky+ box and not getting the PVR facility, if I stopped the subscription, would make it a bit pointless. If I ditched Sky it would to get an HD Freesat PVR box so I had all the channels, including a few HD ones, for just the cost of the box.

Freeview via a normal antenna with a freeviw box offers all of them including HD for nothing of course.

Huh? Freeview HD? - since when? I thought it was only SD through the aerial?