Switching from cable and just need a bit of help

[cheeseslice]

Hi,

I have a number of eurovox and dbox running well for the past couple of years but unfortunately I have moved to a cable free zone and I need a bit of advice on getting myself up and running with satellite.

Just a small bit of info, when I say only moved, it has been over a year. We had sky installed at the beginning, sky+ downstairs with a normal sky box upstairs with their multiroom package. Last month I had the multiroom taken off and the upstairs box just changed to the fta channels as we weren't really making the most of it.

So my problem is that the upstairs box seems to be dead, can't get a signal at all and I think it might be time to buy some decent equipment, I have read a lot on here before but I find satellite so much more complicated than cable and I was wondering if anyone could help me with a few questions.

Is the sky minidish useless if I wanted to get signals from other satellites, if not what size would you recommend?

I understand the idea of the motorised dish but I have also read that people just use quad lnb's, I thought that the lnb's all pointed in the same direction? maplin have some offers on at the moment for motorised kits which is what got me thinking about all this again.

Is it possible to get HD transmissions for football etc, I'm aware I will be paying for them, just wondering how hard it would be and roughly what it would cost?

The other question, and I don't know if this is allowed on the forum or not is about cardsharing. I only want to share the card with myself so I would have multiroom. Is this possible? I read about thetm6900-super but they are £300 a box, bit steep if I was going to have to buy two.

Sorry for such a long post, thanks for any advice.

Meant to say, I don't want to cancel sky subscription, just add to it or get free channels.

Thanks

[Rick]

Hi, in answer to your questions,

1) This mini dish isn't useless, you could get 13e or 19e with it but there isn't much open worth having on either of these at the mo. If you got a motorised setup you could leave the minidish as for a constant feed on 28e for your sky plus box.

2) A quad lnb will give you 4 feeds from whichever sat the dish is pointed at. The motor points the dish in differant directions to get differant satellites. See lyngsat.com for an idea of whats available.

3) Yes you can get HD, the only thing differant that you need is a HD reciever. The dish etc is the same.

4) No its not allowed on this forum.

Hope that helps

[cheeseslice]

Originally Posted by rick1980

Hi, in answer to your questions,

1) This mini dish isn't useless, you could get 13e or 19e with it but there isn't much open worth having on either of these at the mo. If you got a motorised setup you could leave the minidish as for a constant feed on 28e for your sky plus box.

2) A quad lnb will give you 4 feeds from whichever sat the dish is pointed at. The motor points the dish in differant directions to get differant satellites. See lyngsat.com for an idea of whats available.

3) Yes you can get HD, the only thing differant that you need is a HD reciever. The dish etc is the same.

4) No its not allowed on this forum.

Hope that helps

Thanks for the reply.

1)would it be worthwhile just replacing the sky minidish completely, there is no way I'll be allowed to put two dishes on the house!!

2) is it possible to run a quad lnb from the sky minidish if I decided to just keep it?

3) with the HD, I didn't explain myself properly. I was hoping to be able to get HD football on Saturdays by buying a card other than sky, not that I know which card it is that I need to buy. Was just wondering if this was possible.

I don't suppose you could recommend a decent HD pvr receiver, one that can be use like sky+.

I thought the cardsharing might be a dodgy topic and I won't be asking any more about it on here but I have been doing a bit of reading and I think there are legitmate uses for it.

Thanks again

[Rick]

I had just a motorised dish for a while (well 2 weeks) and it is possible to have a sky box as well as another reciever. The sky box won't be able to move the dish though you would have to use the other reciever to point the dish at 28e to watch or record sky. It can be a real PITA though as the sky box will have to reaload the epg if you are looking at other channels for any length of time.

If you have had Sky multiroom you will already have a quad on the minidish.

You could always think about mounting the motorised dish in the garden, it's not a tv ariel that has to be high up, just as long as the dish can see the satellite, you could always look in the gallery for some inspiration, dishpointer.com can help in deciding where to place your dish. Or put the minidish in the garden, a fixed dish is much easier to hide.

I've been looking for a HD reciever for a friend of mine but haven't made any decisions myslef yet. You could try talking to southern satellite re recievers, equipment and subs cards