OT: Sky+ Digital Recorder Satellite Receiver 80gb hard drive

[Wesley]

Does anybody know if these will work as freesat boxes - i.e. without a subscription to Sky and without a Sky card?

[Bash]

They certainly will, but regional BBC1 and ITV channels will be London and Central resp.

BBC regional channels are available.

The SKY card will not function without a sub so no card needed.

ITV will have to be programmed as an additional channel using the remote . They are not available on the EPG.

No recording of course.

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[Andy Burns]

Some of the "Five" channels and Dave will be missing, perhaps others too

The sky card would give the missing FTV (not FTA) channels mentioned above, even without a subscription.

[Wesley]

NO RECORDING!!!! That was my main reason for getting one.

Why is this?

Have Sky set the box up so that you can only record if you use one of their cards?

[Simon Taylor]

The PVR function is tied into the Sky card, so you must have a current subscription in order to record and playback on the Sky+.

So, if you cancel your subscription not also can you not record, but you will also no longer be able to watch the programs already recorded on there.

Best bet, get a freesat PVR box.

[Wesley]

The greedy bast***s.

Thanks for the advice re Freeview!

[Simon Taylor]

EXACTLY!

My SKY subscription used to only be £20 a month for multi-channels and movies, now its £20 just for the multi-channels. They kept jacking the subscriptions up and up until I could no longer afford the movie channels.

On the old analogue system you could get clone cards so you could have a separate SKY box in the bedroom and only need the one card and subscription. Now you have to pay SKY extra for a multi-room subscription if you want to be able to watch multiple channels in more than one room. If you want HD that's extra still.

How anyone is able to stay subscribed to them in the current economic climate defies belief.

You can get freesat and freeview Hard disc recorders (or PVRs if you will), might be the better option.

[Wesley]

and can get the free satellite channels with this without having to pay anything to Rupert.

The reason I wanted a satellite PVR is that there are some channels available on satellite which are not available on Freeview. I'm surprised you can't get cloned digital cards. It can't be that hard, can it?

[Dave Liquorice]

without a

It will work as in receive and decode the Free To Air channels (all BBC and ITV plus Ch4 now I think but without a Sky card it will be a right PITA to use. You won't get the correct regional variations in the low numbered channels 101 103 etc. 104 and 105 might be missing. The EPG will still show all the subscription channels that you can no longer receive but no indication of that.

It will function as a Free To View card, which will enable Five and other few FTV channels to appear. It will also put the correct regional variations into 101 103 etc. This is the =A320 one off, "Freesat from Sky" service.

Without a sub I don't think the recording side will work, even on the FTA and FTV channels.

Get a dual Freesat tuner(*) PVR it'll be *a lot* easier to use and the EPG is full of stuff you can't receive.

(*) So you can record one thing and watch another unless your TV has Freesat as well.

[Man at B&Q]

Hint: benefit payments.

MBQ

[Appelation Controlee]

A bit like having to pay a subscription to Ford to allow petrol from your car's fuel tank through to the engine.

[Steve Walker]

Unfortunately neither Freesat or Freeview have the kids channels that we want. I did try to transfer to talktalk TV which does have them, but talktalk managed to put me on the talktalk network rather than the tiscali one and they've not managed to get talktalk tv to work on it yet despite numerous promises. In fact I think that they've given up pending the introduction of project canvas (or Youview or whatever they're calling it now).

SteveW