Satellite dishes / UK freeview

[Oboulez]

We have moved area & it seems that our internet bandwidth here is insufficient to get our TV via it. Orange say that we need a satellite dish, & will give us a €100 voucher to assist with the installation costs - the catch being that it needs to be with one of their approved installers (cue inflated bill me thinks). We are thinking of taking this opportunity to buy a UK freeview box. The question is - firstly - can you get 'double headed' satellite receivers, one that tunes into Orange, the other to UK freeview. Secondly, not knowing anything about freeview - is this possible, and also, does anybody have any recommendations re what freeview option to buy. We have visitors coming over in a couple of weeks, so if feasible I would want them to bring over one of the special olympic offers on the go at the moment.

[Boiling a frog]

First of all Freeview works thro an aerial so will not work in France.

You will need either a freesat box

http://www.freesat.co.uk/

or

a Sky box

I doubt if you can pick up UK sat transmissions on Astra 2(28.2) and Orange fr(Astra 1 19.1) )transmissions on the same dish, even with a 2 head LNB ,too far apart.

But I stand to be corrected.

[HoneySuckleDreams]

you can buy a special bracket to hold the LNB's pointing to the separate satellites

a Humax box will give you Freesat, and with a Diseqc switch you can tune both using the same box

 

http://foxsat.wikispaces.com/Setting+up+DiSEqC

[Danny]

[quote user="HoneySuckleDreams"]you can buy a special bracket to hold the LNB's pointing to the separate satellites[/quote]

I have this bracket on one dish with good reception of both UK channels from Astra 2 satellite and French and German channels on Astra 1 satellite too.

It is a little bit more fussy to set up but works well.

[quote user="HoneySuckleDreams"]a Humax box will give you Freesat, and with a Diseqc switch you can tune both using the same box[/quote]

Some difficulties with this suggestion...

The present Orange satellite decoder does not handle Diseqc and the card will only work in the Orange box. So both boxes would need to be used with separate feeds.

There is a new decoder out soon for Orange satellite TV but it is early days and its features/capabilties are not really known/developed yet.

Danny

[Jako]

You can use a torodial dish instead of a normal dish to receive satellites in 40 degrees distance. I currently use a Wavefrontier T55 to receive Astra1, 2,3 , Hotbird and the French satellite at 5 west at the same time. Such a dish is neither big (57*63 cm) nor expensive (€55,-) but hard to get in France.(pic)

The biggest problem  investing in a dish right now is that we don not know the required dish size next year when the new Astra2 satellites become active, especially for the southern part of France

[Oboulez]

Thanks for the responses. The freesat link is very useful - again - any recomendations? A quick check on the prices quoted on the site suggests that they are competitive compaired to Amazon or Argos. I take it from Jacko's response that there might be a problem next year with ALL satellite dishes - or is it just ones which are tuned to particular satellites which transmit particular channels?

[Jako]

UK freesat only, not Sky subscription channels nor any other satellite.

[Martin963]

Perhaps we should clarify by saying that although Sky subscription channels (as Jako says) won't be affected,   folk with Sky boxes may lose the BBC/ITV etc channels IF their dishes aren't big enough and IF the drop in signal actually happens.

In other words,  just because you pay Sky doesn't mean that you're "safe" as far as the BBC/ITV etc changes are concerned.

[Chancer]

[quote user="Boiling a frog"]First of all Freeview works thro an aerial so will not work in France.  But I stand to be corrected.[/quote]

In which case I must either correct you or make a precision.

Freeview works fine for me in France via an aerial on a 75 quid Tesco television, it picks up all the French free TNT channels.

I think what you wanted to say was, if you want to recieve the UK freeview channels in France you will not be able to do so via an aerial.

In fact this is one that I would love to be corrected on [:D]

[Boiling a frog]

[quote user="Chancer"]

[quote user="Boiling a frog"]First of all Freeview works thro an aerial so will not work in France.  But I stand to be corrected.[/quote]

In which case I must either correct you or make a precision.

Freeview works fine for me in France via an aerial on a 75 quid Tesco television, it picks up all the French free TNT channels.

I think what you wanted to say was, if you want to recieve the UK freeview channels in France you will not be able to do so via an aerial.

In fact this is one that I would love to be corrected on [:D]

[/quote]

As "Freeview" is a brand name for a service, not a description of free TNT channels ,I believe I was correct in saying that "Freeview" the brand will not give the Freeview service in France.

[crabtree]

Why will it not affect $ky subscription channels?

[andyh4]

Because Astra 2 is actually a set of different satellites all at roughly the same point in the sky.

 

The unencrypted channels come from one satellite and this is being replaced by another one that is quoted as having a much narrower beam (in other words the signal will be more tightly directed at the UK).  The encrypted channels from SKY come from other satellites where the beam width is not being changed (for now at least).

 

At this stage no one knows just how tight the new tight beam will be.

[crabtree]

OK thanks.

Has there not been some talk about those older Astra 2 birds being replaced anyway?

[cooperlola]

I'm assuming that the Lords' proposals/ideas wouldn't affect satellite broadcasts?  It's hard to tell from this report whether the suggestion is to replace ALLpresent broadcasts with internet, or just those via a conventional aerial.  Interesting times.

[Quillan]

Sounds very similar to what Orange offer at the moment. Shame I don' have the broadband speed to use it. [:(]