Be Excellent To Each Other

Can I reuse my old sky box as a freesat box.

If so what do I need to to do?

Yes.

Nothing.

You won't be able to record anything though (at least that's my understanding).

Malc

Thanks

More than that, I don't think you get an EPG at all. You're back to looking in the Radio Times and selecting a channel at a certain time when a show you want to see is being broadcast. It's like some sort of Chinny-esque 80s TV simulator.

Sky isn't actually a TV distribution service; it's an encryption standard (on some channels) and a TV guide service. Many of the TV signals themselves are broadcast in the clear, like all the channels on Freeview, and hence publicly accessible if you know the frequency. If you take those and wrap a new (free) channel guide around them, you get Freesat -- the actual TV signals themselves are the exact same as Sky use.

Ah, you can get an EPG by using Freesat from Sky. I forgot about that. Confusingly, I think that's actually the free-to-air channels married to the Sky EPG service, so isn't actually "Freesat" at all. Hurrah for open markets.

When I moved from Sky to Virgin (probably about 10 years ago, after I moved 7 years ago I got Sky again) I could still see the free to air channels on the skyguide. Things might well have changed sice then, but I thought it operated on the principle it does when you don't have sky movies (or whatever) where you can see the channel in the listings, but not what's on. But if you look at the EPG for the channels you do have it would be there.

Ah, I remember now, you need to get a freesat card to put in the box instead of the sky one

http://www.sky.com/shop/freesat/home/faq/#3



Malc

New Kern Hall came with a dish attached. As I've never had a decent ITV/C4 signal out in the depths of the Shire, a while back I bought a Freesat recorder. Very happy with it, even if the non-main channel selection is a bit random, and More4 isn't available in HD.

Sky never collected my receiver 10 years ago so we are still using it to watch the freeview channels.
I don't have a card so use a mobile tv app to check on listings.

Although expect Sky to try and retain you with a too good to be true offer. Also expect constant marketing and offers for Sky to be thrown at you.

The person who used to own our house had Sky. The fuckers will just not relent sending me their shit.

Sky can't possibly be worse for it than Virgin. The amount of crap Virgin send through that you can't even stop (mail addressed to 'The Householder' doesn't count as junk mail, apparently).

I agree with this I am with Virgin & they still send me so much junk mail asking to join them?!

I get endless shit from Virgin (like 2 or 3 mailshots a week) and I'm with the fuckers. I wonder what their per-household monthly target spend is? It must be more than £53!

I get Virgin guff though the door and we can't even get Virgin at the house.

+ BT Sport who think I want to tie up my measly 2 meg internet connection with a blocky picture. What makes it worse is that it's BT's lack of investment that restricts me to 2 meg so to see them spaffing millions on football is a sore point.

I too get a load of shit from Virgin and it goes straight in the bin. I'm amazed that it's a cost effective way to attract new customers... Especially since I'm already a customer.

It just worked and the planner works too..

Cheers chaps...

We get a Virgin thing pretty much every day, even on days we don't get another half dozen bits of crap. As I found out the other week though you can tell Royal Mail to not deliver walksorted shit. They send you a form, you send it back, then at some point within 6 weeks the volume goes down. Until two years later when you have to do it again.

If they send the form that is - ours hasn't arrived yet. Or was well-hidden inside the stuff we don't want and went straight in the recycling.

Edit: actually, I may have never sent the email (though I definitely did the MPS signup). Doh.