Thetownend.com

After over 10 years loyal service, my Sky digibox has finally died.

I've been thinking about ditching Sky for quite some time, I pay the best part of £60 a month and the wife mostly watches BBC stuff anyway. So I've borrowed a cheapo Freesat box and it works fine.

I'd like to get one of the Freesat + HD boxes, but I'm not sure it's going to work with my set up.

I currently have a single LNB on the dish with only one cable. Changing the LNB to a dual or quad wouldn't be a problem, but the cabling is really inaccessible. We're planning on moving later this year, so I don't really want to put myself through the grief that would be entailed by running new cable through.

Does anyone know how much functionality I'd get from a Freesat + box running with only the one input? I couldn't really give a toss about recording one thing whist watching another, but would like to be able to record stuff when I'm out and pausing what I'm watching.

Cheers.

Ring up sky, tell them you want to leave unless they give you a sky plus hd box.  They will offer it to you for like £50, but just keep on saying you wil leave unless you get a free box.  They will cave it and give it to you.  I have sky and multiroom and managed to upgrade both sky boxes using this tactic
 

you might be able to record the channel you are watching but that will be it.

there is a high chance you wont be able to do that either and possibly will just be able to watch without the recorder working at all.sky+ boxes wont record without 2 inputs from a dish

Sky+Hd boxes will.

My Sky+HD box records with only 1 input, however you can't watch anything else at the same time so kind of defeats the purpose.

i see.
apparantly humax recordable freesat boxes do too.
dunno about any of the other brands

flog your satellite dish and get freeview hd.

I'd probably go with freeview if I didn't live in Calne. As we are officially the arse end of knowhere, we don't have line of site to a main transmitter and have to tune to a booster, which means we only get 18 of the Freeview channels.

Ahh. bit of a pain. Have you checked with your neighbours that they have the same problem? Might just be a case of getting on teh roof and turning the ariel around.

They're increasing the power of the freeview transmitions as they turn off analogue too, so worth keeping an eye on.

No chance Ben. We've suffered this for years. We got Channel 4 about 5 years after the rest of the UK and couldn't pick up freeview at all until the analogue signal was switched off.

Sounds like the Humax recorder would suit my needs.

As you have a sat feed, you could run that into a freesat or freesat HD box and get more than freeview. Don't think that freeview HD or freesat HD give you all channels in HD though, it's only BBC 1 HD, BBC HD, ITV HD and Channel 4 HD, so barely worth it. (Especially as I don't really think the difference between HD and SD through Sky/Satellite is that much better anyway. I certainly won't ever pay Sky for the "privilege".)

have a look on av forums.
look for a thread about it, or join and start one yourself

Been looking at very other places this morning Arriba, including the AV forums and it appears that the Humax recorder has a little work round that involves linking the LNB1 output cable to the LNB2 input. This allows you to watch one channel whilst recording another as long as both channels are broadcasting on the same band/polarity. Apparently it can cause some issues with firmware updates to the second tuner.

If anyone knows any different, or has a similar set up it would be good to hear about it.

Other than that, ta for the help.

Having been a Sky call centre monkey for a while, StefPol has it right, you're well out of your minimum contract period and a higher end customer so just whinge at Customer Relations for a bit and you'll get a free box.

Thing is DMR, I don't want to carry on paying a monthly sub. I rarely watch the movies since we got Lovefilm. If I'm going to watch a game on the telly, I go to the pub.  The only thing I'll miss is Bravo.

The wife does most of the TV watching in our house, and that is almost exclusively stuff thats on BBC, ITV or Channel 4.

The kids not having the Disney channels is the biggest negative overall and in fact I'd rather they watched less TV anyway.

i have a bush freesat box which was given to me set up in my sons room.
obviously doesn't record, but does everything else well enough off a standard single lnb feed.
has a good hd picture

I blagged sky a few weeks ago by threatening to leave and got a free HD box with 6 months HD subs free

Tell me about it.........suite life of Zack and Cody...Hannah Montana....Wizards of Waverly Place...Sonny with a chance....Nuke em all!!!