Which Freesat channels need cards?
Viewing card - Freesat
A true Freesat receiver shows Freesat channels, it is possible to see other channels that are not Freesat, but you won't see them with a standard set up of the receiver.
What they all said.
Plus.....,
Remember that what the dish can see (in terms of looking upwards) isn? ?t what you might think.
Intuitively you?d think the wok has to point at the bird, but it ac tually ?looks? at a much higher angle.
Also, do consider a pre loved sky digital box. These get a slightly differe nt range of channels from a Freesat box, but they are roughly equivalent.
The non plus models will work fine without paying anything to Sky or even s peaking to them (they will work without any Sky Card, but if you want local news to be accessible in the easiest possible way, then a local Sky Card t hat?s no longer paying subscriptions will work. I have such a box available I?d part with for not a lot of beer tok ens, else there are doubtless plenty in the bay of the flea. (If you are in terested in mine, say so here initially and we?ll figure out a way to take the discussion off line).
I don?t know if you can use a Sky Plus box (I?m sure it wou ldn?t record if you did).
Oh, make sure you use good quality cable in an unbroken run direct from LNB to STB.
Cheers
Snap, I drove a 120 miles there and back to collect one. Mine worked absolutely fine, though it was very difficult to tweak it spot on to follow the satellite arc in the sky. As there were quite a few obstructions around at low levels, I ended up struggling to mount it on a scaffold pole, to get it above them.
It sort of worked well, until there was a local big lightning strike, which knocked the LNB out, plus the receiver and a few other electronic items, phones and even tracked back into the local exchange.
I'm not sure what your living arrangements are but if you want satellite telly in more than one room it may be worth planning for it now as you can't just spur off an additional cable for an extra telly.
For two rooms, we had a dual LNB fitted with two runs of cable and use two satellite recievers although there are other solutions.
A dish will fit anywhere but has to have direct line of sight to the right bit of sky. B-) Which for the Freesat constellation of birds is where the sun is at 0940 UTC around the equinoxes. At this time of year the sun will be above that position but the azimuth at around
1040 BST will be right. So a place that is sun lit at that time with plenty of space around the sun, particulary below, should be OK.A meter that you can use at the dish makes alignment less painful. Box/TV signal strength indicators are slugged and you have to be able to see it. Having some one relay the the TV screen with all the lag makes for frustration.
The normal smallish oval "Sky" dishes are offset, the LNB looks at the dish at angle so the bit of sky it is actually seeing is higher than the line at right angles to the dish. As a rough the dish is almost vertical.
Use self amalgamating tape around any cable connections/joints outside. If you do get a quad LNB either cap and tape up any unused outputs or as you are running a cable already run the other three as well.
Thanks to all for the excellent and helpful advice. On checking more closely, my first choice location is blocked by a tree but I still have other good options. Will certainly go for a dual or quad LNB in these, for future proofing!
Go for a Quad (not Quattro). There are four groups of signals making up a complete "sattelite signal". The reciever selects which it gets from the LNB by adjusting the voltage feed and switching a tone on/off.
A Quattro LNB lacks this control and has four dedicated outputs.
Cheers.
Bill
The dishes I have fitted had scales pressed into the metal to set most of it and only the azimuth was needed for initial alignment.
Azimuth is easy these days you just plot it on google and point it where the line points. You don't need a compass any more.
The last one I did I used a TV and watched the signal strength while it was on the lawn, many years ago though.
You will will probably find a quad cheaper as it is more popular.
Another feature of the
Move the green blob with your mouse to the fixing location of the dish. In the corner of the map image page there is a tick box option "show obstacle (line of site checker)". This will put a red blob on the line to the satellite. Drag this red blob with your mouse to the position of a building or tree and it will give you an indication on how high it has to be to block the signal.
As others have said. Plus You must have a satellite meter to line the dish up. The dish position is hypersensitive. The meter is the size of a match box and goes in series with the dish, remo ved when setting up completed. You have no chance without it. Easy with it.
Actually freesat is only 5 channels or so. But sky make free to air channels avaialable on freeview part of their package and you dont need a card or a subscription to see them
Present company excepted of course.
That's a very confused and fundamentally incorrect statement. The Freeview lineup has 200 channels if you include the part time ones.
Bill
Thank you. Bill
If it says you have a good signal but there's no reception do a re-tune. From the channels you then get you will be able to work out what satellite you've picked up (use Lyngsat) and from that which way you need to move the dish.
Four egg sample. Standing behind the dish and looking towards the satellites, if you get 13E Hotbird or 19E you need to move it to the left and down a little bit.
Don't forget to set polarisation offset last of all.
Bill
Well it might be where you are. I get the same set of channels as on Freeview, give or take one or two.
yeah. thats not what I meant.
there are some muxes directly managed by freesat but the majority seem to be sky muxes.
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