Stu8

i havn't tried with a sky dish but the sky dish is very efficient so why not try it .incidently the satellite you require for the french channels is atlantic bird at 5 deg east ,your sat receiver will most likely be pre tuned for the national channels as the first 6 channels,so just position the dish whilst tuned to channel 1 .

you still have not replied to the query re if you recieve ch4 & 5. if you receive these channels but not itv it may be simply a case of adjusting the lnb skew, in which case try rotating the lnb clockwise viewed from thefront of the dish about 10 degrees. 

should not be a problem provided the card is the dark blue with yellow house type.just switch on machine with card in place and it should re boot wihin 24 hours,some channels re activate before others.having been off for so long may give anomolies with the interactive facility (when you use the red button) due to your software being out of date but this can be rectifiede by updating by a forced download details of which have been posted many times .

I note that you have rebooted and the fault re occurs when you press the red botton,a common occurance when the software is out of date.Try a software download,switch to stand by then unplug for say 30s then whilst pressing backup on the receiver(dont touch the remote)plug in and wait for a message to say that the software is being updated,you can then release the backup button.when finished the receiver will go back to stand by and when you switch on software should be version 3.2.11 best of luck.