I know nothing of Freesat.
A house we're buying has a dish, and in one room there are two coax cables appearing through the wall with those nasty cheap coax connectors which use the inner wire as a pin.
I'm not there at the moment, so can't investigate further.
Do I just buy a Freesat box, connect the coax and plug it in to the TV with HDMI or whatever? Why would there be two cables?
Yes and Yes.
There are two cables because there are two (or more) RXs in the sat dish.
With your Humax Sat box, this means that you'll be able to record on one channel whilst watching another, or alternately record on two channels.
Our sat dish has three RXs.
Two feeds to my wife's sat box, and one feed to my sat box at the other end of the room (Yes, we do talk to each other :-) )
one for tv, one for recorder?
F connector.
Should be OK. My son moved into a flat with the same layout, although his TV was satellite ready so no box needed.
Two cables for two LNBs. One will be FreeSat, the other is probably Sky. Trial and error unless they've been labelled in some way.
The recorder needs two.
Bill
That is not a low quality connector - it is a standard F connector used in millions of homes
A lot of PVRs come with 2 tuners so that you can record and watch different programs at the same time. My PVR allows recoding of maybe 8 programs at the same time whilst watching live TV (limited to certain limitations).
Generally you cannot split a satellite signal in the same way as you can for a signal from an aerial so one cable for each tuner. (A Unicable LNB feed can be split but I doubt very much that is what is fitted to your satellite dish). A Sky Q LNB also requires two cables.
In your case it really depends on which LNB is fitted to your dish. If it is a universal twin or quad LNB then just buy a box and plug it in. If it's a Sky Q wideband LNB then possibly this will not work - but I believe some Freesat PVR/STB may now support this type of LNB.
Bollocks. The two are identical in function*. Freesat and Sky use the same transmissions. There are two feeds because recorders have a number of tuners.
Bill
No. It could be a Sky Q LNB requiring 2 cables which may not be compatible with Freesat boxes. It may be two cables from a twin or quad universal LNB is which case both will work with Freesat. I have a Enigma2 box with a quad universal LNB and I can either receive Freesat or Sky Free to Air channels. It's the same cluster of satellites and the same signals.
Pretty much, I don't know if there's any "new" freesat kit in the shops that expects wideband LNBs like SkyQ does, but if so stay away unless you want to replace the dish.
Either for one connection to TV and one connection to STB, or more likely for connection to two tuners in STB (to watch one live, record another) because you can't just "split" a single cable like you can with TV aerial, the TV sends signals up the cable that control the LNB.
Do Freesat recorders *always* need two cables, even if you only intended to record one programme (or multiple programmes from the same multiplex) at a time? Couldn't you get away with connecting just one cable, and using the other for a satellite-capable TV?
Much like any other sat service - different EPG provider.
You mean F connectors? - cheap yes, but far from nasty, they actually do the job they are designed for very well.
To support a sat PVR with multiple tuners, so you can watch one program and record another etc.
Sat boxes can't work in quite the same way as a terrestrial TV by just splitting the output from the aerial to multiple receivers.
This is because the front end of the receiver is actually part of the LNB[1] on the dish, and not built into the sat box itself. The LNB is an active device that needs to be instructed by the receiver to select the required band and polarisation. That in effect means each receiver needs its "own"[2] LNB since it can't rely on the same settings being needed for the currently selected combination of channels.
[1] Low Noise Block down converter - it does the first stage of tuning and "steps down" the satellite downlink frequency into an "Intermediate Frequency" range that it can send to the back end of the receiver through co-ax (satellite downlink frequency is too high for transmission through a co-ax for a useable distance). It also responds to a voltage level on its output to select the polarisation, and the presence of a 22kHz tone to select "high" band. [2] LNBs are sold in a number of different forms. They can typically have between 1 and 8 actual converters built into one unit that mounts on the arm of the dish. So one dish can support more than one receiver. For systems with a large number of receivers you typically install a multi-switch fed from a a "quatro" LNB. This is a 4 output device where it presents all of the 4 possible combinations of band and polarisation on a separate feed - without needing to be instructed by the sat box. That way the switch only needs to respond to the controls from the satellite box by patching it through to the LNB output that matches the required settings.
Are yours not identical in function? :-)
On my PVR I can configure each tuner to be enabled or not. With just one tuner the functionally is just limited but it still works.
Check your TV, some TVs already take satellite input as standard, in addition to a normal ariel. (LG TVs used to)
Clive Arthur was thinking very hard :
Those are f-plugs, they are not cheap and nasty, they are the standard now. They are much better than Belling-Lee and are often now used on normal TV coax cables, especially to amps and distribution systems.
Yes, you can just buy a FreeSat receiver and plug in, the two are to enable two separate receivers to run simultaineously - watch one, record another channel.
Caution needed here because the power for the LNB is provided by the sat box, so splitting a cable will cause problems with wiring two voltage sources together
<snip>
Thanks all, that explains it.
I've read that some Sky Q LNBs auto detect (perhaps based on the presence of a 22kHz tone ?) and will switch from 'Wideband' to 'Universal' mode for older boxes ?
I've got a 2+4 LNB, (2 Wideband and 4 Universal) but the Wideband LNBs certainly don't switch down.
Of course, these new fangled Wideband LNBs are not unique to Sky Q boxes, there's a Freesat box that uses them too I think ?
At one time (and not to long ago) it was safe to assume that if you had Sky that you could just buy a Freesat branded or another free to air box and just plug it in to the existing downleads.
The problem that the OP has at the moment is that he doesn't know if the installation was originally for older sky, freesat or sky Q. The latter will require a box that supports the sky Q LNB (or a change in the LNB) . Many other boxes not branded Sky or Freesat do support many different LNBs but not necessarily a sky Q LNB, possibly the number that do support a SkyQ lnb is closer to zero.. While Sky has gone down their route with LNBs the rest of the industry appear to be supporting Unicable LNBs where a single cable from the LNB can be connected to up to 32 tuners either in 32 different receivers or in boxes that contain multiple tuners (perhaps 16 tuners in the same box).
Many multi-switches can also use standard quad or octo LNBs. Mine does, as I changed from two receivers with UHF coax output to and remote extenders in, each room, to individual pairs of satellite cables to each room.
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