Best satellite receiver for the Costa del Sol?

landsker

I live on the western Costa del Sol, about 25 KM from Gibraltar and receice SKY via our community system. Other users, particularly our next door neighbours, have a higher signal strength, but a lower signal quality than us, but have not mentioned any problems.
My Pace 2600C is showing good signal strength & quality, but for the last few weeks I have been getting breakup on ITV Yorks, BBC1 Yorks and have completely lost SKY 3 & ITV3. More4 and E4 are almost unwatchable.
BBC1 London is slightly better, as is ITV London, but I am wondering if these symptoms are signs of possible tuner failure. (I have checked all connections).
If this is so a replacement is on the cards.(I have a SKY card - no subscription, as C5 & its offspring are much viewed by me, but it would be nice to give the one fingered salute to Murdoch & his crew!)
A couple of questions... What is the best Freesat box for this fringe area ? I have read good reports of the Humax range. Is this borne out in real life?
Is Freesat HD worth paying the extra hardware cost? (I have an HD ready TV).
When will the C5 group be available without encryption?
Oops - a bit more than a "couple" of questions, but, for us, it will be a big investment & I want to get it right.
Ta ever so.

Tivù

Well of the Freesat HD Boxes, the Humax is undoubtedly best. It also has the choice of non-PVR and PVR Versions.

Whether or not to "upgrade" to HD is a matter of perception, I suppose.

I did and am very happy with it. But others claim not to see any difference as compared to SD as displayed by their HD-Ready Tellies.

I would counsel against a Freesat SD Box however, as they were already cheap and nasty at launch and the second generation are no better. Plus they have limited "connectivity".

Of course, there is only BBC HD and ITV HD (if you don't count Luxe!) on 28E - but the Humax has multi-Satellite capability, if that is likely to be of any use to you.

woborny

may be it is worth checking your box at a neighbours house....or a neighbours box at your house before you buy anything...this will eliminate the possibility of it being the box or the community system!

in my experience here in Valencia the Humax Freesats do perform better than the Pace 2600 - but not by much. And dont forget taht Sky and \Freesat boxes get their signals from the same satellites - so if you are loosing BBC1 London on a Sky box then you may also loose it on the Freesat box also - there are no seperate signals for the two boxes.

Huevos

I'd check out your incoming signal before blaming the tuner. Look at alignment, faulty LNB and dodgy co-ax.