Old sky box- any use?

[mycatoscar]

We have had delivered a new sky plus hd box for the living room and I now have a spare white sky plus box. Dh seems to think we can somehow use it to get free to air channels, so sort of like a free view box.

Anyone know if this is possible? We don't have a proper aerial for normal tv so would be rather useful. We only have the one sky card now so I'm not convinced.

Yes. We have it. Sky do their own Freesat service here if you have the equipment you just need to ring sky and buy the viewing card which is £25

No idea if you'd need a second dish to recieve a separate signal though

I think you'd probably either need another dish or another cable running from your existing dish to wherever you want the box.

Can you ring Sky and ask them? They might offer to set it up for you if you take out a multiroom or something?

I only pay £2.50 a month for my multiroom, and it's an HD box so needed 2 cables!

when we first got HD we used our old Sky+ box in another room, but they had to come out & fit a new cable to the dish.

I don't think you'd have to get Sky to do it though, someone local probably could

Tequila, I've just cancelled our multiroom, we were paying £10.25!!!

We use an old box for freesat, we did already have an extra cable upstairs.

Yes my concern was whether we can have 2 different viewing cards running of the same dish and same supply.

Tequila - really £2.50 a month for multiroom??? I thought it was more than that. If that's all it will cost I am happy to pay monthly. Trouble is, dh is the main account holder and they wont speak to me.

We do have an extension of the sky already in the other sitting room, which is where we would want to put the old box. But at the moment, that is just a magic eye thing, so not proper multiroom, only suitable for watching what is on the main TV.

looking on the sky website, it s £10.25 for multiroom, although an ordinary sky box wont cost me to buy.

It should be £10.25 a month but I paid £50 for another HD box so they did me a deal on the multiroom!

I could've had the new box for free but I wouldve had to pay £10.25 a month multiroom.

If you ring them just ask if they have any offers. Tell them you already have a box but just need it connecting up. Be nice and flirty friendly

Shame that however friendly I may be, I might not come over at all flirty :)

I found the dish at the front is already a Quad LNB (has 4 sockets for 4 cables) and while I could have bought an 8 LNB "end" (bit for the end of the arm), I bought a Freesat HD box from Tesco for 90 quid and that included a dish being installed. I will change the single LNB to a quad LNB sometime and can then buy separate SD or HD Freesat boxes for use in other rooms.

Out of interest Pascha - any idea if the box will still record when you have the Freesat from Sky card in, please ? I just tried asking Sky via web chat but they gave me an 0844 number to ring. After commenting on how I only ring 01/02/03 numbers from my mobile, they gave me an e-mail address of help (at) skycustomersupport.com for my query.

I have 2 HD boxes running with different cards, and a sky+ box in DS's room on another card. I have just used an old HD box in the playroom, connected up with just the aeriel lead, no viewing card, but it is sufficient to get the freeview channels.

I'm wondering if I got the Sky freesat card whether I would get anymore channels, anyone know? I don't really need to record anything, it might be useful for some children's channels though. Thanks!

They only give the FTA (Free To Air) channels on Freesat. Might be a few differences on radio (a while ago, only Sky carried WRN, though radio isn't exactly stressed by any retailer, so only geeks enthusiasts might care).

FreeSat currently has 24 HD channels for the Olympic sports, so one can channel hop without needing to use the 'red button' menu, and HD is free, of course, on FreeSat HD boxes. The Manhattan HD box I bought was 90 quid, and one I previously bought from Argos 4+ months ago, a bit more, but they are as low as 65 from some firms.

Recording boxes are still above 200 as far as I know. Didn't have the spare cash, to get one, and anyway the Manhattan HD from Tesco had a dish installation deal for free, so I was using it for a second dish to be added, and cable direct into one of the bedrooms. Next few cables will go into the loft so the other bedrooms can be kitted out.

alibeenherealongtime ... At the bottom of the front page of *> Freesat.co.uk

Networkguy, thank you for that link, most helpful!

NWG assuming you are talking about sky+, I suspect not as all the sky info I see says you need a subscription to access the "+" facilities. I have no real idea however, as my box is, like the OPs, an old white non +, non HD box with and old blue remote. We record via a separate PVR.

No idea about difference in channels from Sky freesat or Freesat. Sky does have many more channels than Freeview though, going by the options available on my kitchen telly.

Pascha - presumably you're using something to record from SCART (?)

Just curious as I've seen hardly anything suitable for separate recording since the demise of my old VHS VCR, so would appreciate any info. I must admit I've not been looking closely at what's about for use as a PVR (since some TVs will record to USB sticks, and I have mostly looked at receiver boxes for Freeview / FreeSat, to date).

ali - you will need to double check with Sky about it, I think, just in case they don't supply any channels...

ahem - sub /any/ with /all/ - they might not supply ALL FreeSat channels - I can imagine there might have been some stations that went independent of Sky to only take transponder capacity on the satellites supplying the FreeSat service.

A panasonic PVR, NWG. Its not perfect, its only a single tuner, but it does us as we very rarely record much anyway.

So is that taking RF output and recording it, please?

Scart. I could put coaxials on but scary works fine.

Ah, SCARY, that's good.

Maybe you could give the model number of the Panasonic then, please.
(no point going to PMs now, and it might help someone else one day!)

Thanks for the info.

Incidentally, SCART should be better quality as there won't be conversion to/from UHF and relatively poor quality RF transmission being used.