Hi all,

 

The aerial at my Mums house came down the other night in the strong winds and my Dad is on about a satelite that can pick up thousands of channels (that some bloke in a shop is telling him about) for around £200 fitted. I told him to find out what free channels there are cos they don't get much tighter than my Dad lol

 

Anyway, my question is what alternatives are there to normal TV aerials that will supply free channels? Ideally one that could be DIY fitted to a second floor wall as her house as a kitchen extention that I can easily get onto the roof of ;)

 

Cheers

 

Vijay

Freesat:

 

http://www.freesat.co.uk

 

Recieved with either a built in Freesat tuner in the TV (Panasonic for example) or any number of external Freesat

boxes (which connect to the TV via HDMI).

Cheers Andrew. Is Freeview the only one though cos he was told of one that picked up "thousands" of channels????

I dont use a tv aerial, just sky dish, but the only issue with using any dish, is really bad rain will hamper the signal, but its quite rare that it happens and only in serious weather conditions.

 

As Andrew mentioned a freesat box is the way to go, as all the free channels that are available are on it, unlike the sky digibox, some free channels are not available without subscription.

Cheers Andrew. Is Freeview the only one though cos he was told of one that picked up "thousands" of channels????

 

Freesat. I am sure there are "thousands" of channels available with the right equipment (and complexity) Sky is subscription based (is that what the

salesman is referring to?) whilst Freesat is subscription free (no monthly fee, just upfront cost of dish and/or tuner box).

 

In my experience apart from the main Freesat channels, the rest of the subscription free channels are almost entirely low grade tat!

he is probably talking about a dreambox setup, with software based cam cards, and internet based 'shared' sky decryption.

they can be used with multiple parallel lnb's on same dish or control a motorised dish.

 

how many other european languages does your dad speak though....?

because he will need them.. lol

French but I think he's such a tight a*** that his eyes probably lit up to free lol

Without an aerial, you're talking about satellite or IPTV (via your broadband) or Virgin cable.

 

The easy free satellite solution is Freesat as has been pointed out before. Satellite dish with 180 ish channels although there are a lot of niche / filler channels - how many shopping or adult do you actually want? Don't answer that. It does have CBS Action, though, which has reruns of the digitally-remastered Star Trek TOS harrumble.

It also has free HD Channels: BBC 1, 2, 3, 4, CBBC, CBeebies, News, ITV, C4 and a couple of foreign RT HD, NHK HD. If you want more HD than thta, you'll have to pay for it (eg subscription).

 

Some boxes (like Manhattan/It also has a couple of the IP players - BBCiPlayer and ITV Player so if your broadband is up to it, you can get them on your TV like you can on your PC.

 

http://www.youview.com is a terrestrial digital system where you get all the Freeview channels and a lot of the free IP Players and backwards-EPG and stuff. Most of th suppliers are trying to wrap this up with your broadband / phone deal so if you're looking to change that, might be worth looking at. But it's on an aerial so if you don't want to put another one up...

 

For UK satellite subscription, there's really only one choice and that's that nice Mr Murdoch at Sky. If you can get Virgin cable, compare the costs between these.

 

Remember, the "free" boxes have to be paid for somehow so they're tied into / paid within your subs cost.

 

Now things get more complicated. There are thousands of free TV channels out there on satellite but accessing them is not as simple - you have to get more involved, be more technically aware and probably have a bigger, more expensive dish with a motor or multiple LNB. This does include lots of French, btw.

 

The most common satellite positions would probably be (and I'm not as up-to-date on the TV side of satellite as I was) 19.2E Astra, 13E Hot Bird and 28.2 Astra. You can see exactly what they are transmitting by a site like http://www.lyngsat.com/index.html

 

28.2 http://www.lyngsat.com/Eutelsat-28A-and-Astra-1N-2A-2F.html

19.2 http://www.lyngsat.com/Astra-1KR-1L-1M-2C.html

13 http://www.lyngsat.com/Eutelsat-Hot-Bird-13B-13C-13D.html

 

http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/France.html

 

Things to look for are whether it's digital or not (DVB - most are but still some old school analogue - I keep my old Manhattan analogue for watching RTL from Germany as it had free F1 in 2013. Let's hope the same in 2014) and also the Encryption column as it tells you if the channel is free.

 

But even once you've chosen the channels / satellites you want, there are 2 other complexities: tuning and positioning.

1) If you have a Freesat box, the tuning is taken care of by the Freesat EPG (Electonic Program Guide). If they add/delete channels, just rescan and it's done. But even if your box (like my Manhattan HDR-S) can tune non-Freesat channels on the same satellite, it's a manual process and I have to know what I'm looking for then do a lot of favourite channel editing to get rid of the stuff I don't want.

2) Position: you can have a big dish (say 80cm) and multiple LNBs if you have an LNB switch either external or internal to your box. Or a motorised dish with a positioner system either external or internal to your box.

 

But what happens is that the boxes which have internal LNB switches or positioners (so you can switch to the different satellites) tend not to have the Freesat EPG - and the boxes which do have specific EPGs - Freesat boxes and Sky boxes won't usually have LNB switches or positioners because they're intended for use with the Freesat or Sky systems.

 

So if you're happy with a more complex system, there's a lot out there to look at. But if you want to keep it simple, look at the alternatives: Freesat, Sky, Virgin (and YouView, Freeview for terrestrial through an aerial) and stick with them. I don't know enough about IPTV to say if it's stable or practical enough as yet - and it will use a lot of your broadband.

 

If you want more detailed advice for your particular location, make sure you ask a competent installer - I would never get an install for either aerial or dish from anyone other than CAI registered http://www.cai.org.uk http://www.cai.org.uk/members/member-search - or you could give http://www.eurosat.com/branches a call - they're a trade supplier but might now a decent installer in your area.

Gio, you've actually made things very simple for me, either he gets Freesat or I'm not getting involved! lol From what you've written, you have to have to have a bit of knowledge about what you're doing to set up and keep on top of the more complicated satelite systems/channels so I havne't got the time (and I don't care enough about him lol) to bother with it.

 

I really appreciate everyones advice, I'll tell him to go look at Freesat :)

 

Vijay