I am totally fed up paying £40 per month for Sky rubbish and repeats, so I am looking to go independant with Free to View satellite TV.

Would like to be able to recieve HD TV and wondered if anyone had some good advice on systems etc.

Thanks for any help.

Choose from over 6,000 digital instant download products at www.MyClickBank.co.uk.

Guests - this sponsored link will vanish when you log-in. Click here to register for free.

You'll miss having a good TV guide and easy to follow listings. Freeview is of course dead cheap, but it's also clunky and limited.

Try BT Vision instead. They have a box similar to Sky plus which you pay for them to install then it's free. I have Sky but a mate of mine's got BT Vision and goes on about it to everybody. Says it's superb and he saves a lot using them for phone and broadband too.

Cheers,

Simon

hmmmm at the moment HD is pretty new so nowhere will you get free HD transmissions ,i suggest buying "what satellite" and go through the receivers at the back of the mag.
there will ofcourse be a premium on HD receivable machines whether or not you can find a source of HD signals.
we have a couple of boxes on a motorised system and can get thousands of channels ,trouble is 95% are foreign.
HD will slowley creep in over the years but Freeview (the aerial set top box things) will never get it! the gov flogged off the extra bandwidth needed to transmit it.

remember you need HD throughout your system to get HD on your telly ,at the moment the real HD tv's are now showing !those being sold of cheap are very low spec versions.
1080p or 1080i are the best HD tv's at the moment but like everything else a better higher quality one will be along on the next bus.The crap thats been on sale in most shops is little more than normal tellies with more pixels horizontally but only 720 odd vertically so only a 100 more pixels than the old 625 lines we have now ,the 1080 versions double it.

HD capable sat receivers cannot make non HD transmissions HD just as "HD" tv's cannot make non HD transmissions HD as i have explained before.

i'm waiting until everything settles down before i delve into HD at the moment theres no regulated laws to say what HD is!

the "p" and "i" ratings are confusing ,ones interlaced ones progressive (the way the images are displayed on the TV screen ,i would plump for "p" but look here for details and judge yourself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definiti...lay_Resolutions

as i say nothing is written in law so a tv can be advertised as "p" or "I" but not display it

"generally" the more pixels displayed the more detail you get but ofcourse if a tv company only transmit XX pixels a XXX tv can only show XX pixels on the screen and make up the missing info to fill it by blending the pixels shown to fill in the gaps.

even the transmissions arn't real HD ,"HD" cameras should record every "frame" on every pixel but this make HUGE quantities of data far to much to transmit so software cleverly records anything moving but misses frames that dont (back grounds etc) but still the data is vast so too big to transmit or record on a HD DVD so you end up with nothing more than "idea" of the original scene not anything else ,fine for your TV you have to look close to see the blurring but not in my mind HD or anything close!
once every frame caught on every pixel (and ofcourse the camera should have millions of pixels) and remains unchanged until it is transmitted on the digital stream to your tv then you will have HD ,at the moment its just a con and TV's far to inferior to display it if it were ,higher definition yes (compared to 625 lines)full HD not for a few years yet!

This post has been edited by chesters1: May 7 2008, 05:40 PM

This any good?

http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/forums/Sky-Pay...ch-t132288.html

Perhaps my terminology was at fault; by free view I ment recieving of channels without charge which would include BBC and ITV channels and some of these programs are in HD.

What I want to avoid is purchasing a setup which will have limited ability.

Sorry Elton Sky has had to much of my money already.

I have been looking at various motorised dishes and systems on Maplin but having a limited knowledge and trying to avoid being stitched up need some help.



Aready have BT Vision type deal with a Freeview box via standard aerial and it is very limited, plus because we are so close to the mast the signal is cr*p.



This post has been edited by Ken Davison South Wales: May 7 2008, 05:32 PM

keep away from maplins ,over priced at the best of time ,they as most non specific retailers miss out on the real details you need to know to ensure you get the kit you want ,theres a whole lot of details and technology out there ,videocrypt slots ,cam slots etc etc.
videocrypt slots are where you poke sky cards and freesat cards ,you may not need them but in the future you may.
cam slots is where you chuck other bits of gear to allow your sat box to use non standard encryption modules ,you will like those
then ofcourse theres the motorised side ,what system does it use to interface with its dish motor ,upgradeable software so it can find new satellites automatically ,theres a minefield out there never trust a snotty nosed 16 year old salesman to sell anything ,just like Tandy they fell over on hard questions or just lied to get you out the shop.
how big a dish? ,that depends on what you want to receive ,will your shiny new motor have the oompth to move it ,can the satellite box provide the amps to use a bigger motor ,its getting difficult isnt it!!!
theres a way round everything ofcourse but the wiring gets complicated

we can get only a limited amount of satellites up there ,our 80cm dish is to small ,the 1.8mtr one we had on the analogue set up got far more but the reciever is now obselete ,our motor cannot move a 1.8mtr dish ,our best receiver cannot supply enough power for a larger motor ,we decided on a lower spec receiver mainly because having a 1.8mtr dish in the front garden a little attention seeking (not to mention problems with the council in a SSi and protected area) .
and ofcourse lastly you need direct point of veiw of the clarke belt to get anything at all ,the wider the vista the more you get!! the bigger the dish the more you get!! the more you get the longer it takes to find things to watch

how easy is it for your receiver to crack channels not normally seen? (ours is so so) theres readily available "hot" machines out there if you want ,money opens the sky as well as everything else.

normal retailers of white goods miss out details ,just as pc world adverts show you the latest "high" spec lap top they miss out the real details like what is the graphic card ,just what is the crippled cpu they have chucked in it etc ,sainsbury show a loverly lot of HD tv's but you have to look hard to see they are crummy 720p ones not full HD ,will those satisfied customers struggling out the shop with their "bargain" priced 42" tv be so happy when they realise its just obselete crap they have spent their hard earned on? like most whitegoods the packaging costs more than the contents when the markets flooded with old technology sold of by the ship load to unqualified buyers for retailers because the price looks good!
not only is the uk paying far more for their whitegoods they are paying it for crap that otherwise would fill chinese landfill sites ,probably in japan were considered as quaint cavemen in technology circles ,in america as medieval users and probably the lower class tiawanese use stuff were not seeing for years ,if you have technology fit for lanfill send it to us we will pay to take it off your hands and the premium we pay lets you sell the latest technology to everyone else at cut down prices
why do we get ripped off? mostly because some people want "stuff" thats crap and they dont understand why it is ,they get caught up in the clamour for stuff they "think" they need but dont understand how it works in reality,they stand their hanging on the "hot" words coming out a salesmans mouth but cant ask the important things that salesman does his best to hide because they don't research it!!,refuse to pay over the top prices and watch its price tumble ,refuse to buy obselete stuff and to make money the companies will ship newer stuff.all the time we're a technological dustbin we will get rubbish ,except we will pay far over the odds to throw it in our dustbin not be paid to take it off their hands.pigs in pokes
i feel sorry for those that sit in front of their 720p "HD" telly under the impression they are watching HD ,research ,research first before handing over money ,those with "full" HD tv's that cost an arm and leg are only just getting stuff on their TV they thought they were seeing when they bought it but now its getting cheaper should they have waited?
once we completely switch to digital transmissions HD will become free just to get veiwers in the increased market ,once that happens cautious me may invest

This post has been edited by chesters1: May 7 2008, 07:27 PM

So where do I go ????

And what should I look for?????

buy What satellite (a magazine) and have a browse of the boxes in the back ,they have a comparison section of the latest .
then decide just how far you want to get involved ,IE if you just want to get stuff of Astra 28E (where sky lives) then you wont need a motorised dish and could get away with a smaller one (80cm is good).if you want HD in the future then you will need an HD capable reciever etc
it gets far more technical the bigger the set up and motorising etc
no free HD yet as far as i know but if the BBC is going to use it you will have to research if its free to air or encrypted and buy a box with the correct card slot!.
you can get most stuff on "free sat" free anyway ,no sky one or sky anything and no Chan 4 or 5 as yet but everything else is seen without a card.

lidl do a very competitively priced free sat box (not the kit thats for camping) VERY easy to use but no slots for cards but if its free to air you can see it ,along with a dish you can start ,its also clever enough to put a motor on and plumb in more sats BUT no card slots remember so you cant get anything thats scrambled! its NOT HD though but could be used to get used to it then it could be used in a bedroom and an HD version on your main telly ,with a dual LNB both recievers can be used on the same dish (so long as you both are looking at the same satellite)
you can look at two different satellites at the same time without moving the dish but it gets a little more techie to do it.

make a list of what you want to do then research how to do it ,stay away from any WWW sites with cards for sale (it will blow your mind with technology) and research the more basic sites first.

you must site your dish facing south ish so thats the biggest consideration ,you CAN use your existing sky box to see free stuff but its difficult to set it up (deliberately so) and you can plumb a better receiver into the existing mini dish but its limited because of its size.If a tree or building is in direct line of a satellite you aint going to receive anything whatever size your dish is ,digital is strictly line of sight unlike analogue.
sky is small fry and theres thousands of free channels up there (over a 1000 just on astra 28E) but at the moment there isnt a plug in language decoder on the market so the foreign ones stay foreign in your ears
motorising a dish brings you all the arab orientated porn that arabs accuse us of corrupting society with on 13degE and many more but few English language ones i'm afraid ,some though have the original sountracks on audio sidebands so are watchable.
trouble is the more you get the longer it is to scan through them and at the end of a session you realise you havnt watched anything at all
as the planet is full of pretty the much same spec receivers all the bells and whistles you used to pay for get chucked in free to make them sell so even a basic reciever is pretty good nowadays ,theres still DREAM machines but they are for those that want their setup to do things most arnt set up to do ,cam slots bring different scrambling methods to your box just as they always have but were seperate boxes at one time you plugged into your receiver,OH those hard core porn on 1w were a delight back in analogue days

This post has been edited by chesters1: May 7 2008, 08:09 PM

Ken - if the UK is anything like the US, folks who routinely travel and holiday in RVs (motor homes, caravans, etc. but mobile) tend to be pretty well up on this sort of thing and can even offer advice about home systems since they almost all have a regular house as well.

This one looks fairly active and worth joining just to ask a question or two. UK based even though they use a .com domain.

http://www.motorhomefacts.com/modules.php?name=Forums

Also a possibility is this US forum. Active UK members and one of the admins is from the UK although living now in the States. We are a friendly group so if you explain your situation, you could get some advice. We do have some experts and one member who sells SAT systems.

http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php#1

heres one but be warned it does get techie
http://www.techwatch.co.uk/forums/satellit...-beginners.html

our better box came from these chaps but ours is now old in the technology stakes

http://www.technomate.com/products2.php
despite their fairly good kit their site is appallingly backward .
note though their HD versions do not seem to support 1080P resolutions ,as i said you need to look at the techi stuff first before your wallet

This post has been edited by chesters1: May 7 2008, 08:32 PM