Splitting feed From Dish to watch SKY+

S

saabu

Member
My Satellite Setup
Sky Standard
My Location
UK
Greetings my friends,

I am planning to purchase a PACE TDS470N PVR3 in order to watch SKY+. I already have a subscription with SKY for a package costing £ 21.00 per month.

My question to the learned members of this forum is as follows:-
1. Can I use a splitter to get two outputs from the single feed in order to connect to the digibox and record programs? [i.e without using a dual or quad LNB for which I will have to get on the roof to fix it to the dish]. I thought that this is technically possible but having looked at the forum I did not find any pointers to this.:-DOH!
2. Is it compulsory that I have to shell out an additional £ 10.00 to SKY to be able to watch SKY+ or can I continue with the same package and use the facilities of the new digibox as long as I have a dual input?:confused:
3. Do I have to inform SKY that I have changed my digibox?:rolleyes:

Look forward to read your comments.

With regards,

Saabu.
 
1. that wont work you will need a quad lnb so you can have two inputs for the sky plus

2. yes you will have to pay the 10 pound per month, if you dont subscribe to sports or movie channels. if you do then sky + sub is free

3. yes you will as sky will need to enable the sky + features so you can record etc
 
to expand:
You do need a dual- or quad-LNB. There are options to use a "Stacker" to then funnel two cables into one high-quality cable into your home and then "De-Stack" the signal but YMMV with this. Purists would say this will lose quality.

Sky need to know about the new box so that you can view your Premium channels - ie. movies and sport. Sounds like you have neither so you could get away with it but then why have the + machine? ;)

You would be best to look at the most efficient way to have two premium channels and thus avoid the £10 "+" charge - why not pay the same amount and actually get more for it? ;)

If you're in the UK, it's more likely worth calling Sky and seeing what you can get with regards to upgrades....and if you find it's too much, start perhaps with the fact that you wanted to upgrade as your current box is slow and you thought you'd like more functionality - but not at that price.

You'd be made to pay full price for any of it ;) And they'll get on your roof ;)
 
The feed cannot be split, you need a dual (or quad) output lnb.

It's all explained - at length - in my multiswitch guide, see FAQs section below.
(that's at: www.satellites.co.uk/php-bin/forum/showthread.php?t=41947 ).

You also need two satellite tuners to watch two channels at once, that's what the Sky+ box effectively is!
 
There must be somthing out there that can help the thousands upon thousands of people in my position?

I libe in a converted warehouse and we all have one sat feed per apartment.

My sky plus requires two inpits. How do I get around this?

THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY OF GETTING AS SECOND FEED INSTALLED FROM TEH COMUNAL DISH.

I need a split / localised multi switch solution.

After researching, I know the answer is probably negitive, if so would splitting the single feed with a "smart switch" (where one feed controls the Polarity at least allow me to program the plus box to record without having to place the reciever on the channel I want recorded in advance?
 
If you have only one feed, then you will get horribly confused as the tuners fight for dominance. An lnb is controlled by voltage switching for the horizontal / vertical polarization, (14/18 volts switching) and a tone burst for high band low band.

An lnb has 4 possible states:

tone on / voltage low.
tone on / voltage high.
tone off / voltage low.
tone off / voltage high.

Voltage high (horizntal?) will always override voltage low channels (vertical?) and tone on will always override tone off. So if you are watching a channel that happens to be voltage high, tone on, then no matter what the second tuner is trying to do, you cannot watch any channel in any other state apart from another channel v high, tone on. Unless you keep a list of all channel states, you will get most frustrated when you cannot watch 75% of the other channels.


THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY OF GETTING AS SECOND FEED INSTALLED FROM TEH COMUNAL DISH.
Click to expand...

Either do without or move house.
 
Many thanks for the info however...

I'm not bothered about watching one channel while recording another. All i want it to d is to record a program i have told it to without me having to place the receiver on that channel prior to it starting.

Eg: at 9pm I program in BBC news at 10pm to be recorded then turn the box off. However I forget to place the receiver on 101 and it fails because of it only having one feed on the box being on 106.

Would splitting the feed into the two inputs via a 'smart switch' (which has a control priority on one feed) on to the two plus box inputs alleviate this?

They are just a tenner at maplin and time is running out before my return to Tenerife so I might just buy one and try anyway.
 
There is no possible way to "properly run" a sky+ from a single lnb output! No matter how clever a "splitter" gadget you use!

For why, see my multiswitch guide, in FAQs below (or via link just above), and try to carefully follow the explanation under "general principles", going through it slowly.

If you do use a splitter, then, there's only a 1 in 4 chance that both inputs "require" the same polarity, so if recording 2 things at once, 3/4 of the time you'll get the wrong channel on one or other input!

If only using 1 input all the time, for just 1 recording, you could do that, leave the other one unplugged, but I don't know if Sky+ allows you to specify this?
 
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