Freesat - talk to me...

[ajprice]

At the moment I don't have any TV recorder box, I've got a Freeview TV with iPlayer on it, various other things with 4od, ITV player, Youtube, Netflix etc but nothing that records and keeps stuff. There's a satellite dish outside and a cable doing nothing. So what's the good bits and bad bits of getting a Freesat TV recorder box? From what I've seen on the Freesat website it has the same channels as Freeview plus a few more. I'm not bothered with paying monthly for Sky.

Is there any way of checking that the satellite connection works, without buying a box and plugging it in?

[downthepub]

Not really any way to test AFAIK, perhaps borrow a Freesat box from a friend to check or get one cheap off the 'bay.

[telford_mike]

If you want a recording Freesat box you really need 2 cables coming from the dish.

[tricky1962]

telford_mike said:

If you want a recording Freesat box you really need 2 cables coming from the dish.

No, if its a Humax box you can do it with the one cable and a link loop in the back of the box

[BarnatosGhost]

tricky1962 said:

No, if its a Humax box you can do it with the one cable and a link loop in the back of the box

That'll limit the recording/watching to certain quite restrictive combinations though, won't it?

[igiveup]

BarnatosGhost said:

That'll limit the recording/watching to certain quite restrictive combinations though, won't it?

Yes it does, but it does work, just get a few conflicts at times or can not watch other channels.

2 Cables is better.

[downthepub]

I've got a single connection to my Humax HDR, it's a bit of a ballache as it doesn't cope well with clashes. Need to get a bloke round to bung another LNB on the disk, last quote was £150+VAT to fit a £10 part.

[ajprice]

It's the Humax box I've been looking at. Thanks for the info, I've got Freeview so clashes when watching/recording on Freesat shouldn't happen that much. I'll double check but I'm pretty sure there's just the one cable coming in.

[tog]

ajprice said:

From what I've seen on the Freesat website it has the same channels as Freeview plus a few more.

It's not quite the same mix of channels as Freeview. I have Freesat and find the selection more than adequate (but then I only had four channels up until I got the Humax Freesat box about a year ago), but you don't get Dave, for example, and there might be others.

[Dogwatch]

downthepub said:

I've got a single connection to my Humax HDR, it's a bit of a ballache as it doesn't cope well with clashes. Need to get a bloke round to bung another LNB on the disk, last quote was £150+VAT to fit a £10 part.

I replaced the 4-way LNB for my Sky+ system recently, new one from Maplins works fine. Ok this was a like for like but the principle is the same if upgrading from a single to double lead. Was careful to measure the distance from the nose of the old LNB to the centre of the dish and keep to this distance when fitting the new one.

I was having recording problems with one of the box tuners so changed the LNB so eliminate that from any argument, now on HD with good picture so diy does work!

BTW the packaging for the new lnb made no reference to the pull-down skirt to protect the connections from the weather and it isn't very obvious on inspection, but it's there!