dreambox newbie questions

[BGonaSTICK]

Hello stilo_jason, welcome to the forum

I've heard of Freesat cards being activated in the Dreambox, but that was a while ago. Pick the right softcam (AKA emulator) or try a whole load of different ones and you might get away with it. If you're worried about it, buy a pre-activated one off eBay, but don't expect the correct regionalisation.

You won't have to worry about serial numbers and box-id's for a Freesat card - they don't have to match or be copied to a config file on the Dreambox. That's only required for the premium Sky packages. It's not even required for the basic '1-6 mix' packages.

You can have your new Freesat card activated in any Sky digibox, but it then becomes 'paired' to that box, and I understand that the previously 'paired' card becomes 'unpaired'. This pairing/unpairing isn't a problem.

The only difference I find is that when I run my Freesat card in the wrong digibox, it displays an onscreen message that says 'Wrong card for digibox' on some encrypted channels as opposed to 'Call Sky to upgrade to this channel'. Channel4, Five, Sky Three etc. all work as you would expect.

I swap my Freesat card and my proper Sky subscription card between two different Sky digiboxes and my Dreambox without any problems or changes.

The Dreambox makes a wonderful PVR, and the picture and sound quality are really superb as far as I'm concerned, and I'm a right fussy bu99er.

STICK

[Jimdefruit]

I may have missed something here, but if you just want fta/ftv channels and a hdd/pvr why dont you just go for a digibox and a hdd/pvr?