Total new boy totally lost!

Dreamofgilgamesh

Dear group, i'm totally new to this so i'd best start by explaining what help i need.
I hope to be moving house soon and my family want all these Freeview channels that the beeb keep on advertising. Now i did think of just getting the freeview box thingy but then a friend of mine showed me his satellite setup that he has in his mobile home and that really impressed me!

So basically what i'm after is advice for this scenario.

I want all the BBC Freeview channels. I want all the channels i currently get I.E. BBC 1&2 ITV CH4&5

Plus, if i could also get the european channels that my Mobile Home chum gets that would be great!

Is such a thing possible chaps, and what would i need to achieve this.

Many Thanks

Mick21367

Mmm - probably not. To get Ch's 4 and 5 via satellite you would need a S*y Box with a Freesat card - (it picks up the other BBC and ITV channels as well, but you don't need a card for those ) - the trouble with the S*y Box is it isn't much cop at picking up other sats - no motor control, the EPG won't work, and you have to add channels through the 'other channels' menu, which usually forgets them after about ten minutes - so you would have to manually swing your dish between the satellite positions - possible, but not easy.
Other receivers are available which will happily pick up other satellites, run motorised dishes or can handle multiple dishes - but none of them (as far as I know) can pick up Ch's 4 and 5 (because they're encrypted in S*y proprietery system) - they will happily pick up all the BBC and ITV stations though - most of these have simple channel guides with 'now and next' programming, rather than a full EPG, but that's not really a great loss anyway IMHO.
Not all of the channels available on Freeview are available on satellite, or are only available with a subscription.
If it's of any interest though, I'm happily running one of the cheap Lidl receivers I have through a DiSeqc switch, picking up FTA TV from three sats, including BBC, ITV, some Spanish, German and French channels - there's no time to miss Ch 's 4 and 5 with that lot!

spiney

Dear Dreamo:

It all depends exactly what you want, and also what you can do, so this reply is complicated (!), but .......

By far the easiest way of getting free UK digital TV (inc. ALL BBC) is a Freeview box, available £25 upwards, but you have to be "in range of" a Freeview transmitter. For further info , see my Freeview guide in FAQs sections below.

If you can't easily get Freeview, then SKy also has many free channels (inc ALL BBC, and a few not on Freeview, but NOT E4/more4/TMF/FTN/UK History, which all need a monthly subscription!).

The easiest way to get Sky "Freesat" is phone them, and for £150 an installer will come and fit the entire system working (a card comes through the post for ch4/5, and also gives access Sky box office pay per view movies).

Or, you can buy a used Sky digibox (see www.dcsat.com ), a minidish with lnb fitted (zone 2 if for north england / scotland), and satellite cable, then you have to fit the whole thing yourself, and get the £20 card direct form Sky. Doable, but tedious, and you won't save much money!

There's also lots of free European channels, for which really you need a different non-SKy type of receiver (ie, NOT a digibox!). However, not that much free in English (apart from CNBC tonight and late night shows, both very entertaining, and French Arte shows some films with English soundtrack!).

Unfortunately, Sky and non SKy don't easily "mix", and many people who get both effectively have 2 completely separate satellite systems!

Otherwise, yes, you can get all available FTA channels on just one receiver, including free SKy (but NOT ch4/5!), but note:
a) Receiver should be a "blind scan" type, because the Sky channel frequnecies change quite often, so without that you'll need to manually update fairly often!
b) To get all the "big 3" satellites, Astra1, Astra2 (Sky), Hotbird, you need either a large dish and 3 lnbs on a bracket, or else a motorised dish (which needs setting up!).

So, your BEST OPTIONS (without getting too complicated!) are:

1) If "in range" for Freeview, get that! Then, if desired, also get a cheapish FTA non SKy type receiver for the free non-English European channels. A 60cm dish and "monobloc" type lnb will get Hotbird/Astra1 down a single cable from a fixed dish, but you do have to "find" the satellites!.

2) If you can't get Freeview, then go for Sky Freesat, and consider a separate dish/receiver system for non Sky channels.