Freesat

[david k]

sorry guys, more to questions lol

Just found out that one of my unknown cables in my new house is actually a satellite cable! Plugged it in my new to and it gave me over 400 channels however many do not work, would they work better with a freesat box?

How good is freesat, any advice or links to a good recordable box?

 

[accountantpete]

You need to check what Satellite you are picking up.

Freesat used to pick up a few extra channels which were not on Freeview - not sure how many currently but they are mostly crap.

The HD channels were the last big change so you need a modern Humax HD type receiver with a HDD.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Freesat gives you a few more channels than Freeview, but as the title suggests they are only the free to air channels and most are just crap.

 

[gavintc]

Are you sure it is a sat cable? You state you plugged it in (without the freesat box) and got channels. My limited understanding is that you need the box to get any channels. I would borrow a freesat box and give it a go. We have freesat in our house - 4 TVs attached. It works fine, not sure how much better than free view.

 

[ColinJ]

You probably have Freeview built into the TV, but some TVs also have Freesat receivers built in.

If the cable is a single coax cable with an old type push-in coax connector, then it is probably just a standard TV aerial and you are on Freeview. If you have a pair of cables with screw-in connectors then you probably do have a Freesat setup.

When you switch the TV on it should tell you what you are watching! Mine used to display 'Freeview' but when I bought the Freesat box it started displaying, er ... 'Freesat'!

I have THIS Humax Freesat box with Hard Disk recorder built in. Yes, there are lots of channels, and yes, many are not brilliant, but ... the picture quality is fantastic. HD is brilliant, but even SD looks pretty good when upsampled to HD on Film4, ITV4 etc. (I assume that the Humax does that, though it might be my Samsung TV.)

Life is too short for trawling through hundreds of channels anyway! I whittled them down to 4 pages of favourites and go through the TV guide for the following day just before going to bed. I set the machine to record whatever I like the look of and build up a buffer of viewing. I keep the hard drive 10-20% full of recordings so I always have something good to watch. Enough is enough!

 

[david k]

Are you sure it is a sat cable? You state you plugged it in (without the freesat box) and got channels. My limited understanding is that you need the box to get any channels. I would borrow a freesat box and give it a go. We have freesat in our house - 4 TVs attached. It works fine, not sure how much better than free view.

Yeh it's defo satellite, new to has a connection and has found over 400 channels although they don't work as they are encrypted or something

 

[david k]

You probably have Freeview built into the TV, but some TVs also have Freesat receivers built in.

If the cable is a single coax cable with an old type push-in coax connector, then it is probably just a standard TV aerial and you are on Freeview. If you have a pair of cables with screw-in connectors then you probably do have a Freesat setup.

When you switch the TV on it should tell you what you are watching! Mine used to display 'Freeview' but when I bought the Freesat box it started displaying, er ... 'Freesat'!

I have THIS Humax Freesat box with Hard Disk recorder built in. Yes, there are lots of channels, and yes, many are not brilliant, but ... the picture quality is fantastic. HD is brilliant, but even SD looks pretty good when upsampled to HD on Film4, ITV4 etc. (I assume that the Humax does that, though it might be my Samsung TV.)

Life is too short for trawling through hundreds of channels anyway! I whittled them down to 4 pages of favourites and go through the TV guide for the following day just before going to bed. I set the machine to record whatever I like the look of and build up a buffer of viewing. I keep the hard drive 10-20% full of recordings so I always have something good to watch. Enough is enough!

Thanks really good info

Defo a satellite connection, it's a double connection
Not got freesat built in but has a connection for satellite
Need a box but also got a Arial connection so could have either

Not sure what to do

 

[david k]

You probably have Freeview built into the TV, but some TVs also have Freesat receivers built in.

If the cable is a single coax cable with an old type push-in coax connector, then it is probably just a standard TV aerial and you are on Freeview. If you have a pair of cables with screw-in connectors then you probably do have a Freesat setup.

When you switch the TV on it should tell you what you are watching! Mine used to display 'Freeview' but when I bought the Freesat box it started displaying, er ... 'Freesat'!

I have THIS Humax Freesat box with Hard Disk recorder built in. Yes, there are lots of channels, and yes, many are not brilliant, but ... the picture quality is fantastic. HD is brilliant, but even SD looks pretty good when upsampled to HD on Film4, ITV4 etc. (I assume that the Humax does that, though it might be my Samsung TV.)

Life is too short for trawling through hundreds of channels anyway! I whittled them down to 4 pages of favourites and go through the TV guide for the following day just before going to bed. I set the machine to record whatever I like the look of and build up a buffer of viewing. I keep the hard drive 10-20% full of recordings so I always have something good to watch. Enough is enough!

Been researching freesat boxes as I don't think our aerial is that strong, we have now got BT and don't get any itv channels

The link is very cheap, 1TB and wifi box for £150! That's around £70'cheaper than others, happy with the box?

 

[cyberknight]

Bit of a thread resurrection, i am on sky with the variety pack with sky fibre + phone and i was a bit peed with the price so i was going to cancel an go sky freesat with their £10 to keep recording on the sky box , they offered to discount my whole package by £15 a month , only £5 more than i was going to save by going to freesat so i am happy

 

[ColinJ]

Well, now we are back on the subject ... my Humax Freesat box has been performing extremely well for the past 16 months or so. The only problems I have had have been a couple of times where it played up and needed to be powered down and switched back on again, and another couple of times when I managed to latch up the remote control - I had to power that down by removing the batteries and then reinserting them! There is a newer model of the Humax recorder now, the HDR1100S which is currently available in the 500 GB version for £181 HERE. (About £30 extra will get you the 1 TB version.)