Now that we've had a completely new Sky installation I find myself with a brand new dish and a working Sony VTX S750U receiver going spare. Anything interesting that can be done with them apart from selling, sculpture or wierd perversions? Should I set-to pointing it at a furrin satellite wot has English stuff on it or something similar?
Also, is the old viewing card of any use?
Si
In article , Mungo "Two Sheds" Toadfoot scribeth thus
No .. Sell it on ebay or loot or freecycle...
No..
Or rather yes. It will function as a freesatfromsky card to reception of C4/E4/M4/Five/FiveUS/FiveLife on a skybox.
The full KOBs (Rx, Wok, LNB, card) should realise about =A350 on ebay. T= here is an awful lot of other stuff from other birds about but don't know if = a Skybox is crippled in respect of receiving other birds. It might be a right pig to use via the "other channels" menu rather than the EPG.
If it's a "yellow house" one it can be used as a "Freesat from Sky" card= to watch the FTV channels such as Channel 4 and five on any Sky box. It =
will be tied to the orginal postcode so the regional variations might be= wrong. I don't know if Sky will adjust the region if you rang 'em up, it= must be possible as people move house...
I could use another card.
One did presume that it would remain with the Skybox or else that won't be a lot of cop without it;!..
Thanks all - ebay it is then.
Si
"Dave Liquorice" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@srv1.howhill.net:
snipped for brevity
Yes, Sky boxes are crippled and are almost useless for receiving anything other than what is on the Sky EPG.
Do those Channels have regional variations ? Not so I have noticed .
snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com formulated the question :
Usually no, but BBC 1 and ITV are regional.
On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:44:49 -0000 someone who may be "Mungo \"Two Sheds\" Toadfoot" wrote this:-
Any Sky branded receiver will be a pain to use with real satellite television, due to the crippled ("easy to use") menu system. Better to buy a new receiver and use it with the "brand new dish".
On the mainland you could go into a supermarket and buy a receiver. The Sky near monopoly of the UK market prevents this in the UK, though sometimes there are sensibly priced receivers on offer in shops based on the mainland like Lidl and Aldi. Alternatively various suppliers do a range, one of the better known suppliers is Maplin who offer them from £35 upwards
If your dish remains pointed at the Astra 2 set of satellites then you won't get any more stations than can be found in the recesses of the Sky menu system, though it will be easier to use them. However, your "brand new dish" could be pointed at Hotbird or Astra for more channels, though not that many are in English. You could experiment by watching the Astra channels for a week and then the Hotbird ones. There are other satellites, which can be found out about on the Interweb thingy, but these are the main two for most people.
It is possible to make a dish point at Hotbird and Astra without moving the dish, by installing a dual LNB. This assumes that the dish takes standard LNBs (in other words it is not most of the Sky branded dishes) and also that the receiver can control a dual LNB (in other words not a Sky branded receiver). A larger dish is useful for such tricks, though in the south I am told that smaller dishes work reasonably well.
If you want to watch encrypted channels, for example on Hotbird or Astra, then you will need a receiver with slots for standard viewing cards (in other words not Sky branded viewing cards). The cheapest receivers don't generally have such slots, more expensive ones have one or two slots. The cards are purchased (usually for 6+months) and fit into a holder called a CAM. None of this monthly subscription crap. The whole ensemble then fits into a slot and allows viewing. CAMs provide particular forms of decryption, the card provides access (a very simplified description). Some channels come in more then one flavour of encryption, ensure the card and CAM are both using one form of encryption and this matches one of the forms of encryption the channel is in, otherwise it won't work. If you have two cards of the same sort then they can be swapped in the CAM. This is easier to do than describe.
If you can wait a little then the BBC/ITV will releasing high definition services officially any time soon. This will be under a brand name, I forget what it is but it is something like Freesat. The BBC are already transmitting in HD and the sound/vision is a dramatic improvement on ordinary television (provided you have a HD television and home cinema set up properly). The new service will have a different (to Sky) Electronic Programme Guide. I have no idea if it will use the standard format for such things (in other words the Sky one) or whether it will use yet another standard. Ideally it will use the standard format, so that standard receivers can get more than the now and next guide. However, in many ways the BBC/ITV service is more about marketing hype and making things "easy to use" so they may well take the stuff the rest approach of Sky.
On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:53:19 +0000 someone who may be David Hansen wrote this:-
I forgot to add, there are suppliers of all sorts of satellite bits and bobs. One example is
In article , David Hansen scribeth thus
Nope.. not many at all but there is some bl**dy good radio from "over there" listening to Bayern Klassik 4 at the moment from Germany a classical music station as it ought be. France Musique is good to and there are a few Jazz stations:):)..
Not a dual LNB .. a Monoblock LNB..
I wouldn't like to set up one of those on a Sky dish as their quite frankly not big enough, a 90 cms dish is much more like it. The Sky region one dish is designed to receive Sky and sod all else can't think quite why;!..
Lets hope its worth the wait;)...
Ch 4 has national variations (aside from S4C...) and five regional but mainly only for the adverts.
Also they have limited symbol rates and FEC settings.
On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:18:33 +0000 someone who may be tony sayer wrote this:-
I forgot to add that the ones that there are tend to be "rolling news" stations. However there are stations for most tastes and only watching programmes in English is very 20th Century.
Indeed. It is good to hear NPR from the USA and realise that there is intelligence in the USA. Not everyone is as stupid as Mr Bush and his cronies.
Obviously I missed the not there should be in the brackets.
I'm not sure a fancy EPG will be worth the wait. If it uses some non-standard format, so that it is only by buying another box with yet another EPG system that one can view it, then it will not be worth the wait. However, the programmes themselves will certainly be worth the wait, as the current BBC HD service (and the other ones on ISTR Astra) already demonstrate.
However the new service is designed to be "easy", like Sky, but without the subscription. It is largely hype, the only really new bit being the EPG, aimed at the mass consumer market rather than the sort of people who do things themselves. In essence the aim is to be almost as easy to set up and use as Freeview, with a dish being only a little bit more difficult to install and align than an aerial. Many people get someone else to install an aerial and many people will get someone else to install/modify a satellite dish for this new service.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Liquorice" saying something like:
It is, indeed, a right pig. Not impossible, but just a totally awkward bugger.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.