Receiving the free channels on north and south beams

[tojo-mojo]

Morning Forum,

after endless efforts to receive itv1 here in italy and it not being possible due to what we think a card pairing issue, i wanted to know if i could just purchase a freesat from sky card at £20.00 and pair that to my receiver which i will be bringing back to england next month.
Once activated i will then bring it back here after 3 weeks stay. All i really want is the free stuff and itv1. I get everything now except itv1.
Ralph Magno has been brilliant and as advised me to get a basic subscription and that will cure my problems. The problem is, i am struggling to get anyone in england to subscribe for me as they all have sky already, hence the thought was, maybe if i purchase this £20.00 card pair it to my box job done, any thoughts on this.

By the way i cannot receive astra 2d where i am only north and south beams, which gives me channel four, channel 5, fiver, five usa etc.

regards

tony

 

[Lazarus]

I'm not persuaded by this Pairing theory.

As for the £20 Card, that isn't Paired either. Yes, Sky will ask for the Box details when you Activate the Card, but that is purely so that the Activation can be enabled.

After that, FSFS Cards can be used freely in any Box, so until we prove beyond doubt what the root cause of your ITV issue is you may be throwing good money after bad.

And ITV is not a Subscription Channel, so that is a red herring. ITV is FTV (for Regions off 2D), in exactly the same way as Fiver, Five US etc.

 

[tojo-mojo]

ok back to square root none.
should i just try and get a basic subscription then and be done with it???
I don't want to hassle Ralph again as he done a good job at aligning the dish and has been extra kind with info etc.
As for the forum long may it live as you all have been fantastic.
I have tried everything you guys have told me and still no itv. I have also purchased 3 receivers and cards obtaining all the same result, no itv. like you say i do not want to throw anymore good money after bad.
I just thought this freest card may have given me the result i wanted if i paired it up in the uk with my box.

 

[Lazarus]

Paring is not a feature of FSFS Cards.

I donated my own FSFS Card (bona-fide, not ex-subs) to an expat Forum Member who lives very close to you and, as expected, it works perfectly well including ITV.

 

[tojo-mojo]

If you have any other suggestions as what to do i would appreciate it, or have a card you want to sell i would purchase it. Every box and card i find on the dreaded eb@y i ask the question if they could manually tune in the itv frequency in for me to try it works before i purchase, i always get the same response it was working fine before we switched to hd.
Not very helpful at all, but what can i do. I was hoping that buying this card would have answered my problem, doesn't look like it though.

thanks for your time by the way

 

[dxsat]

Free to view cards from Sky are paired to a specific Sky box and you will frequently get the 'wrong card' message when using these FTV cards in another Sky box. This never used to be the case, it changed about a year or so ago.
Just ask a friend in the Uk to order a Freesat from Sky card. Each household is allowed up to four cards regardless of whether they subscribe. Take your box with you, get the card activated. You have at most £20 to lose. If this still doesn't work when you get it back to Italy, then it will be a missing 'stay alive' signal issue and you will need to look at your dish installation.

 

[Lazarus]

Free to view cards from Sky are paired to a specific Sky box and you will frequently get the 'wrong card' message when using these FTV cards in another Sky box. This never used to be the case, it changed about a year or so ago.

Are you 100% sure about that - the FTV Card I referred to at Post #4 was sent to its Italian based recipient a few weeks before Christmas 2010 (ie not very long ago at all) and is doing the job fine.

But in some ways I hope you are right and observed recent experience is a "one-off" as you have provided a glimmer of hope for our friend.

Nothing ever seems straightforward!

 

[Lazarus]

Also, it becomes even more confusing when you bear in mind the OP gets other FTV stuff like Fiver and Five US

qv http://www.satellites.co.uk/forums/...n-tech/188754-problems-receiving-itv-1-a.html


That said, if he accepts the potential loss is limited to £20, then an experiment on the lines snap must be a reasonable way ahead.

 

[Zorba]

I buy digiboxes and freesat cards from uk and have them sent here and I sell them on. The cards come activated and I sell them on to customers (who have no way of getting their own cards) . All cards have worked in other boxes. Cards that I have had out of boxes for more than 4 weeks deactivate and I get the message "this is the wrong card" but putting it in any box for 4 - 24 hours re activates it.
Also I deal with sub cards and sometimes I buy them back if a customer goes back to UK and when the payments stop the card carries on like a freesat card ,and again i sell it on to other boxes and they work fine.
Tojo, can you either borrow a card from someone near you and try in your box ,or go to that person and try your box there with his card and your card in his box ?

 

[Huevos]

ITV is not a Subscription Channel, so that is a red herring. ITV is FTV (for Regions off 2D), in exactly the same way as Fiver, Five US etc.

I don't know what you mean by that. It is not the same entitlement for ITV FTV channels as it is for C4, C5, etc.

Free to view cards from Sky are paired to a specific Sky box and you will frequently get the 'wrong card' message when using these FTV cards in another Sky box. This never used to be the case, it changed about a year or so ago.

That is a standard message since EPG 3.8.8. Even if the card is in the receiver it was originally paired with it still comes up with that message until it updates.