vainhedgepig
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2017
- Messages
- 1
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- Points
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- Age
- 46
- My Satellite Setup
- Satellite novice - bought a house with a former Sky dish and now want to use it for free to air channels
- My Location
- Devon
Firsly apologies for the total newbie nature of this post - I’m generally highly tech-savvy but I’ve only ever had Freeview/Virgin Media/ onDigital (!) before.
The house I’ve just moved into has appalling Freeview reception over the aerial connection. When I eventually remembered that the house also has a satellite dish (formerly Sky, according to the print on the cables, but I don’t have the box) I thought I’d have a go with that. I plugged one of the two satellite aerial cables in and got my TV (Philips 43PUS6262) to search for channels. It found over 1000 (lots of duplicates) and arranged them in alphabetical order. Tedious! The problem is most channels I would expect to be free come up with a ‘channel scrambled’ message each time I select them. There are a few exceptions including all the Quest channels, Challenge, Pick, CNN and various community and religious channels. Those are coming through beautifully so I’m assuming they’re on an unencrypted MUX or whatever the satellite equivalent is.
From the research I’ve done so far it’s looking like I might need to get a CAM to go in the TV’s CI slot (if so, any recommendations?) and then get Sky’s £25 FTV card. Is that correct or is there any way to get the FTA channels without a card? I’d prefer not to have any set top boxes if I can possibly help it.
Bonus points if you can tell me how to wrangle the channel list into a more manageable format!
Many thanks for any help you can offer!
The house I’ve just moved into has appalling Freeview reception over the aerial connection. When I eventually remembered that the house also has a satellite dish (formerly Sky, according to the print on the cables, but I don’t have the box) I thought I’d have a go with that. I plugged one of the two satellite aerial cables in and got my TV (Philips 43PUS6262) to search for channels. It found over 1000 (lots of duplicates) and arranged them in alphabetical order. Tedious! The problem is most channels I would expect to be free come up with a ‘channel scrambled’ message each time I select them. There are a few exceptions including all the Quest channels, Challenge, Pick, CNN and various community and religious channels. Those are coming through beautifully so I’m assuming they’re on an unencrypted MUX or whatever the satellite equivalent is.
From the research I’ve done so far it’s looking like I might need to get a CAM to go in the TV’s CI slot (if so, any recommendations?) and then get Sky’s £25 FTV card. Is that correct or is there any way to get the FTA channels without a card? I’d prefer not to have any set top boxes if I can possibly help it.
Bonus points if you can tell me how to wrangle the channel list into a more manageable format!
Many thanks for any help you can offer!