You can certainly buy satellite receivers that will pick up Freesat and lots more, control one or more motorised dishes, etc. plus will take a SKY card - I've never used mine for that, but it will do it and others have. Not a cheap option though.
or one of these
Interesting. What receiver will control a motorised dish and will accept a Sky card?
Bill
In most cases yes. Its a suck it and see thing. Brian
Not sure what contextual leap took you from Grahams post to yours but here goes anyway . . . .
Item looks interesting but in typical Hauppauge style (from an Amazon review):
"I needed the 13v - 18v dc to power the LMB and the sat finder to enable the dish set up. After several calls to the H.O. I finally told this item does not output this voltage until after the EPG setup and then when a signal is demanded on Live TV. I was advised that it will only work on a pre-installed and aligned dish.
This item would welcome the information as to how it operates such as you must have a pre-installed Sat Dish properly aligned to the required satellite."
I wonder if multiple devices are supported.
A generic Free to Air box may/will not necessarily have the Freesat EPG. Only having now/next may be acceptable for a basic receiver but can be a PITA if its also a PVR.
Relying on a EGP from a third party via the web can result in some boxes becoming unusable when the third party pulls the plug for financial/commercial reasons.
Linking this here so Sky will wake up. Don't be taken in.
Technomate TM-Twin OE, running Linux/OpenVIX and using a software CAM. There a loads of similar units from different manufacturers and different options for the software too (Technomate, VU, Dreambox, Icecryt / OpenVix, OpenPLI, Blackhole).
It's apparently difficult to set SKY up, but there are guides online. Not 100% perfect - no pay per view, card can fail to update at times, but that can be solved by sticking it back in the SKY box overnight.
You can also plug in USB TV tuners and get digital terrestrial on the same box. Record and play back from internal/external hard-disk or home network.
HD and 3D as standard.
There's a load of "plug-ins." For instance catch-up, which can also include some channels from other countries. Auto-bouquets, which automatically populates and keeps up to date channel list in a variety of formats. Calandar/appointment lists ... For God's sake, there's even a plug-in to remind Muslim's when to pray!
One handy feature is that someone can watch a channel or a recording, while someones else can simultaneously stream another channel or recording to a PC or other device.
Multiple channels on the same transponder can be accessed by a single tuner, which apparently allows recording 6 channels at once or 7 if live pause is disabled - can't say I've ever tried this.
It all takes some configuring, but it's worth it in the end.
SteveW
Not really suitable for ordinary folk then?
Bill
It most definitely isn't plug and play! Although as the software has matured, the newer versions have got a lot easier to configure generally and it is certainly possible that SKY is easier to set up now.
SteveW
don't be taken in by what?
the ebayer who's trying to con you, perhaps?
tim
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