hproductions
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- Mar 9, 2005
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- Age
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- My Satellite Setup
-
Skystar 2
Pentium 4 -3.0Ghz
80Gb Internal Drive
80Gb External USB2 Drive
1Gb Ram
Nvidia 128Mb Graphics Card
Hi,
My main question is what can I expect to get free with a setup that combines my exisitng (standard size) Sky Digital satellite dish with a SkyStar 2 PCI card?
I'm wondering a few things - firstly, what satellites can a standard Sky Digital dish based in the North of England pick up? And of these what channels can be viewed? I'm aware that Sky have an encryption to their channels using 'Videocrypt' and it would appear noone can contract this off them to provide subscription without a Digibox. I'm wondering though if there are other channels broadcast from the satellite that Sky use (is it Astra?) that can be picked up with a DVB-S card? Also, what if any free data is available to pick up from the satellites my dish will be pointing at? I guess these are probably VERY dumb questions to those of you familiar to the whole deal but I'm fascinated by this whole thing and it seems very cheap to get into.
With regards audio, does a card like the skystar 2 have the ability to receive/decode multichannel signals (Dolby Digital/AC3 etc..)?
One final question - is there an upgrade (I'm inferring from posts I've read that I can add 'LNB's' to my exisitng dish?) that can take place to pick up other satellites - or is it particularly complicated/advantageous to add an additional dish or increase the size of my exisitng one?
If you would recommend another direction to point my dish from it's exisitng (pre-empting the people who'll say don't bother wih Sky's satellite as there's bugger all available) direction - please no rude answers, I'm new to this!
Very very grateful to anyone who takes the time to answer any part of my ramblings.....
Howard.
My main question is what can I expect to get free with a setup that combines my exisitng (standard size) Sky Digital satellite dish with a SkyStar 2 PCI card?
I'm wondering a few things - firstly, what satellites can a standard Sky Digital dish based in the North of England pick up? And of these what channels can be viewed? I'm aware that Sky have an encryption to their channels using 'Videocrypt' and it would appear noone can contract this off them to provide subscription without a Digibox. I'm wondering though if there are other channels broadcast from the satellite that Sky use (is it Astra?) that can be picked up with a DVB-S card? Also, what if any free data is available to pick up from the satellites my dish will be pointing at? I guess these are probably VERY dumb questions to those of you familiar to the whole deal but I'm fascinated by this whole thing and it seems very cheap to get into.
With regards audio, does a card like the skystar 2 have the ability to receive/decode multichannel signals (Dolby Digital/AC3 etc..)?
One final question - is there an upgrade (I'm inferring from posts I've read that I can add 'LNB's' to my exisitng dish?) that can take place to pick up other satellites - or is it particularly complicated/advantageous to add an additional dish or increase the size of my exisitng one?
If you would recommend another direction to point my dish from it's exisitng (pre-empting the people who'll say don't bother wih Sky's satellite as there's bugger all available) direction - please no rude answers, I'm new to this!
Very very grateful to anyone who takes the time to answer any part of my ramblings.....
Howard.