[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
george wrote: > Thanks for the input everyone. It all looks very promising, especially for > those of us who have to put up with typical West country reception. > BTW for anyone who is wondering, an LNB is a low noise block which picks up > the signal from the dish, amplifies it and converts to a useable frequency. > > George > As a satellite viewer (8 LMB's for all around the house and a couple of PCs) I was excited by the news of freesat and rushed out to buy a box. I don't regret the decision as eventually I'll be able to use it for HD TV. As to what you get this is what I get and what I understand about satellite. Options 1. Sky digibox, no subscription, but a (out-of-date) Sky viewing card (ie the one that came when you used to have a sub or bought off of e-bay. You get all the free channels (there is a distinction between Free To Air, FTA, and Free To View, FTV, but I can't remember which is which). This includes channel 5 and channel 4 and a bunch of other stuff you probably be better off not knowing existed. All BBC radio also. (If you buy a card off e-bay be quick because they take them down fast. If the card isn't for your area (the cards are to tell sky which set of regional ads to beam at you) you may have to put the card in the slot, turn the box on and leave it going for 24 hours or so before it is updated for your box and works. 2. Sky digibox, no subscription, no card. You get most of the free channels. The ones you might miss are 4 & 5, though these maybe unencrypted later this year. All BBC radio as well. 3. Freesat digibox. Currently you get 80 channels or so (at least I do) though this is supposed to go up to 200 by the end of the year. These include 4 & 5 and all BBC radio stations. It has a nice EPG, which unlike Sky doesn't show 500 channels you can't watch 'cos you ain't paid. There is nothing that you can't receive using a Sky box with no subscription, but that does have a card stuck in the slot. As to watching the stuff I personally wouldn't use mythtv unless I had an entire PC that I wanted to turn into a media centre. For a desktop TV/Radio app it's waaaaay to huge. If you have gnome I would recommend Me-TV (the project leader is from Oz, so it's me TV, me Sheila, me tinny etc). Which has a nice EPG, is easy to install and will build a channel list for you via an auto scan facility. Also for gnome you can use Totem, but you'll need to build a channels.conf file using the command line scan app which is part of the dvb-util package (also you need the starting frequency of you signal source). On KDE use kaffeine. This will also scan and build you a channel list once you tell it which satellite/terristrial etc source you're pointed at. Other options are klear (which needs a channels.conf list), xine and mplayer (if you build it from source with the correct options turned on). OK that's it really. Simon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html