Free Sat and STB

[damon Kris Chris & Stanley]

Hi All

Bon Noel ....

A little technical help ta.

I have a Pace D14000 - N Set Top Box originally supplied by NTL for cABLE tv in London

Can I use the box with a FreeSat card or is the hardware/decoder a different thing.

Also Does anyone know of any convergence of satellite and computer technologies given that I am in ADSL broadband area in Poitou Charente and was thinking that I could use my computer to do all the hard work and decode sat signals in software. i have a TV out card on my machine.

Thanks and regards

[Martin963]

I don't think a cable box will be the slightest good for picking up satellite signals.   Apart from anything else the LNB on the dish needs a power supply and certain other switching signals which a cable box would not provide.   And the videoguard encryption and codes used by Murdoch  on Astra 2 would not be the same as NTL on cable; (I don't know what encryption NTL use but the codes would be different).

I'm not quite sure about your other project.  You say you are in a broadband area but that you want to the computer to decode sat signals.   As far as I know certain broadband operators distribute TV signals (in reality versions of the TPS (and other) satellite offerings) but you pay for these and the computer is fed from the phone line.   As to direct satellite reception onto the computer there were some boxes around a few years ago but they were (AFAIK) all free to air and I don't think they took off.  

I'm an old Luddite here but I can't - personally - see why you want to use the computer when satellite boxes are pretty cheap and work via a TV which has the advantage that it doesn't tie your computer up.  But that's just a personal thing,  I'm getting too old for all this convergence stuff.