Bailing out of Sky and moving to Freesat

[cmuzik]

I'm seriously thinking of cancelling my £45 Sky subscription and moving to Freesat. This has probably been asked 1000+ times before but is my current Sky minidish suitable for receiving Freesat HDTV or do I need to change the LNB. Any help would be most appreciated.
Regards
Colin

 

[Analoguesat]

The dish will be fine. Unplug the skybox, unscrew the fplug from the back of the skybox, connect up the fplug to the Freesat box and power up.

 

[satelliteman]

As mentioned above, the standard Zone 1 dishes (43CM) are fine for Freesat now without problems but.........

Information received from the trade industry body C*I is that a 60cm is preferred and will be standard across the whole country. A 60cm is the Freesat recommended dish size so they are told and with HD you need that little better performance.

Within a year or two there may probably be 20 or so HD channels on Freesat so today's performance is not necessarily what you will get later, so correct dish size good alignment and measurement is required.

an interesting topic

 

[Analoguesat]

Zone 1's (43cm) are used in MILLIONS of installations up and down the UK - about a third of the installs here in the Borders use them. Seeing as Freesat are using the same satellites as Sky UK I cant see any real reason why there are concerns

Zone 2's give better rain fade protection,and the downlink strengths are starting to drop off by the time you reach Scotland, but they work fine.

 

[satelliteman]

Totally agree It's information picked up from the Confederation of aerial industries here the trade body for the satellite and aerial industry.

 

[aba]

and if you get a munual a b switch cost about £ 5 you can switch between boxs ruperts and freesat with out haveing to change lnb and coax because even if you cancell sky there is still plenty to watch that is free

 

[satellite eye]

dont spend any money changing to a 60cm,the minidish at least in the south is fine in all weathers' i have encountered if fitted correctly.
i have seen them called cloud detectors this is rubbish as any dish will attenuate to a degree in bad weather and with freesat i have been reading some will not sell unless a new install is ordered also.

these dishes' are easy to fit as a diy install with plugs and screw bolts a 10mm drill bit and a budget meter will be fine for the job if you thinking of replacing.

 

[dicky button]

I have just had freesat installed.
I have a Humax Foxsat receiver and the dish was installed by Comet. It is, however, a 43cm dish. The BBC HD transmissions appear excellent. I did notice yesterday though, (when the weather was none too good) that the picture quality on HD had deteriorated somewhat. Will this be due to the dish size and if so can I insist that Comet install a larger more appropriate dish ?

 

[satelliteman]

It is possible to have a Zone 2 which provide you with better rain fade attenuation although a Zone 1 should really be ok.

Unless of course your installer hasn't aligned the dish correctly....