Help! FREESAT

[robcarrich]

Hi Ben,
I recently invested in a new “Smart” TV and decided I must have a dish and receiver to go with it.
I went for the “Icecrypt” motorized system, which really wasn't expensive.
the installation was so simply, just nail it up point it south and your in business.
But I find that my new TV has a built in satellite receiver, a fact that is not mentioned in the instructions, and the motorized dish can be controlled with the Samsung remote, so I didn't really need the receiver.
If you have a new Smart TV all you need is a dish ( half the price of a Freesat receiver )

Rob

[Chris Sykes]

As DaveB said, you cannot split the Sat cables/signal like Freeview/digital.
I know this isnt freesat but i run a Windows 7 Media Centre PC (when its fixed!) which has 4 tuners inside, this allows me to do mutliple recordings, watch TV and also using a Media Extender watch TV/recordings in the bedroom. As its PC based this means i can surf the web, watch my digital movie, music and photo collection from any TV connected.
You can slo do the same thing as above with Freesat, you just need the DVB-S/S2 (S2 for HD) tuner cards instead, even some are Quad tuners with 2x DVB-T2 and 2x DVB-S2.

If you do try the freeview first and dont get a great signal try changing your cables also as some older cables dont work to well with Freeview.

Oh and good luck with the move, i did mine just over 3 months ago!

[TSR2]

Just a quick update. All moved now. Initially connected the TV to the aerial socket and got nothing at all, so a quick look in the roof space found they had forgotten to fit the aerial! So a call to customer service and a "spark" came and fitted one in the loft; bloody huge thing that was as big as him. The snag being he hadn't a clue where the transmitter was, let alone the polarisation of it. Lucy and I spent 6 hours trying to position the ruddy thing with limited success. The problem was that the transmitter (Pontop Pike) was directly west of the side of the house, and the side of the house is next to the side of the neighbours house, etc the whole way down the street. This meant I could only get reception on my trusty 4 year old Panasonic TV, which seems to have a much better tuner than the 6 month old Samsung or the brand new YouView box. After much annoyance I got the number of a local TV and Satellite fitter from the DigitalUK website. He certainly seemed to know what he was talking about and quoted a very reasonable £80.
We'll they arrived this morning 5 minutes early and set about fitting an external aerial and mounting pole on the top of the house, re terminated the coax in the loft (the spark had made a mess of it) and tuned in both TV's and the YouView box. Superb job well done, its always good to find a tradesman who does a good (and reasonably priced) job. Ian gave me some advice on Freeview boxes, and although the youview box wasn't rated very highly, the consensus seemed to be that it was basically good hardware and the updates were adding functionality to it all the time, so I took Ian's advice and bought it from John Lewis, really so as there would be no problem returning it if push came to shove. Surprisingly, JL were also £30 less expensive that the usual suspects (Comet / PC world etc) and with infinitely better customer service.

Before we moved house we had a Virgin Media TiVo box, which was pretty good, but had a tendency to pause for thought from time to time, and sometimes the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) would be wrong and the remote control is the most unnatural layout for controlling the box. The YouView box (made by Humax) has possibly the best EPG I've seen on any TV or Freeview box, very easy to use and clear to read. the remote control is intuitive and logically laid out. I cant really comment on the "pausing" other than to say it hasn't "paused" yet. If you have broadband internet, you can connect the YouView box to it and the EPC will combine the information from the TV with information on iPlayer / ITV Player / 4OD etc so that you can actually scroll back to previous days and watch programs from the past that are available on those services. The really clever thing is that it does all of this within the one EPG without having to launch the iPlayer / ITV Player / 4OD etc App and browse for the program within that App. In addition you can record TV using the in built HD tuners, so you get pretty much everything in one box. Even Love Film is due to be added to it within the next few months. So all in all I'm a happy camper. Its probably worth mentioning that an equivilant to the YouView box for FreeSAT users is due to be launched next week. Its called "FreeTime" and this also looks really good.

Thanks all for your help / advise

[DaveB]

Hello Ben

How an engineer can come to fit a sat dish and not know where the satellite is is beyond belief. Unless I've lost something in your post, it has nowt to do with a ground aerial/transmitter.. the freesat signal comes from space. I can't remember the exact location now but I think it's something like 28.5S which put simply means you aim the aerial south (180deg) then back it round to the east by 28.5degs. Elevation in the UK is incredibly low and gets lower the further north you are. An engineer worth his wages will turn up with a sat finder. He'll bolt the dish to the wall with the LNB fitted then point his sat finder in roughly the right direction then tweak the dish to that position. With the right kit, it doesn't take long. Sounds like the chap you had this morning WAS a sat installation bloke who came tooled up and not some erk booted out of the shop to rip you off

Glad you're finally sorted
ATB
DaveB

[speedbird591]

He opted for Freeview in the end, Dave. He sounds happy, whatever he's got!

Ian

[DaveB]

Hi Ian

Rgr that Nowt wrong with Freeview I've seen YouView advertised on the box but lost interest within seconds. I presume it's 'like' freeview and that's my lot Having read Ben's post again, I see that he mentions the engineer tuning in his YouView box. Pity I didn't read that first time
ATB
DaveB

[Nigel H-J]

Just a heads up for any-one with a free TV box especially from Virgin Media - we were given one by Virgin four years ago when we went with them on the internet and were told that it was ours to keep even though we had our own box and did not want it, they told us that we could still keep it!!!

When we finished with Virgin internet and also their phone they then wanted the box back, fortunately we had kept it in the garage for the past four years but had heard from the engineer who came round for it that other customers who were given one and for some reason got rid if it found that they were liable to pay Virgin £200+ as compensation even though the box was not worth that amount after all that time and was also out of date!!

Kind regards
Nigel