Canal Digital & Freesat on same PVR box?

M

morgypa2002

Member
My Satellite Setup
Canaldigitaal+ Astra 1 on 19.2
My Location
Mallorca Spain
Hi, This is my first post so I hope I have placed it in the correct forum.

First a bit of background, I live in Calvia, SW Mallorca in an apartment. The building has a shared dish for UK expats wishing to receive $ky/Freesat. My girlfriend is Dutch and we currently have a personal dish for receiving Canal Digitaal using an aged Strong SRT8000. We are considering upgrading the box to a PVR which must be compatible with Canal Digitaal. Their website gives a list of such boxes, for example Arion AF-9280PVR, Phillips DSR 8121/8122.

My question is, as these PVR's all have two inputs so you can record one channel while watching another, I was wondering if we could use one input for Canal Digitaal and run a new cable in from the community $ky/Freesat dish to the second input. Would that give us a choice of channels from both dishes and does anybody know if there is any reason why the Canal Digitaal compatible boxes would not be able to receive Freesat?

many thanks, Paul
 
Yes, they have 2 inputs because they have 2 tuners. That means you can record one channel and watch another. To get the most out of your box you need a Duo LNB (19.2E & 23.5E monoblock) with 2 outputs (one for each tuner). They are a proprietary receiver though, made specifically for Canal Digitaal, and I'm not sure they can be used for 28E.
 
Unless you buy a Freesat certified box (such as the Humax HDR) you won't get the nice 7 day EPG. On the other hand the HDR is more restricted in the way the two inputs can be used, LNB2 in is only active in Freesat mode.

How many feeds in do you have? Ideally you need two from 28E (for Freesat) and one for the other satellite. You would also need a DiSeqc switch for the HDR.
 
PaulR said:
Unless you buy a Freesat certified box (such as the Humax HDR) you won't get the nice 7 day EPG. On the other hand the HDR is more restricted in the way the two inputs can be used, LNB2 in is only active in Freesat mode.

How many feeds in do you have? Ideally you need two from 28E (for Freesat) and one for the other satellite. You would also need a DiSeqc switch for the HDR.
Click to expand...
He could use a Linux box and get it to read the Freesat and Canal Digitaal EPG. Not sure that card will work in 3rd party boxes though.

Canal Digitaal already uses the Duo LNB (monoblock) so has a DiSEqC 1.0 switch built in, so he'd need to do a re-think on the LNBs and the 4º separation if he wants to switch to a system that uses 3 LNBs (19E, 23E, 28E) and a committed switch, rather than the monoblock.
 
Mmmmm, it's a moot point whether recommending a Linux box is doing someone a favour without finding out first what the level of expertise is.

It could put a person off satellites as a hobby forever!
 
Hello and thank you for the replies.
I don't know much :-) but what I do know is that a Freesat certified box won't work with Canal Digitaal, and the list of certified boxes for Canal Digitaal doesn't include any Linus boxes.

It sounds like that even if we get a new PVR box for Canal Digitaal and it can receive Freesat from an input from 28e it still won't have the EPG for Freesat which I would find quite annoying..............so unless anyone has another solution, it looks like I might need a separate PVR for the Freesat input from 28e and a new PVR for the Canal Digitaal input from 19e/23e. (We already have a DuoLNB but it only has one output so I would need to change that also for 2 outputs for the Canal Digitaal PVR)

cheers, Paul
 
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