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M.Blackmore wrote: > > On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 08:32 +0100, george wrote: >> I've been reviewing my TV aerial requirements to get the best digital >> reception and I noticed the blurb on free-sat TV. > We too have very poor reception of digital TV and (more importantly for > me) even worse for radio on the Freeview channels (which have a superior > bit rate to digital radio, almost twice as much I think, and as an avid > Radio 3 user who STILL heres above 20kHz at 53 years old, find > compression horrid with classical and acoustic music). > > We do, however, have a Sky dish attached to the side of the house by the > previous owners, obviously trained at the Sky satellite wherever that is > (apart from somewhere south and a bit to the east given its position on > the side of the house). It's had to be mounted below the roof line. > > Does this freesat - which I'd never heard about - use Sky dishes, i.e. > are satellite dishes "generic", thus saving us the cost of buying a > dish? We've still got the old sky receiver as well, tho' never used it. > > How would the system work with a Topfield hard disk recorder, does the > box put out a signal carrying all stations that the Topfield could be > tuned to, or are we scuppered with the box being the point at which > viewing channels are chosen for sending to the viewing device? > as I mentioned in my previous mail if you have a sky digibox you can get all the freesat channels, but not the freesat electronic programme guide. This means you have to scroll through loads of channels you can't actually view, but all the channels plus a few more are there. A few more channels become watchable if you have a sky viewing card, even if you have no subscription. But most of these will be on freesat by the end of 2008. You could also get a satellite card for your PC, like the skystar2 (about £50). This will pick up everything a skybox will get without a viewing card (Channel 5 is the only notable channel you can't get, maybe 4 as well though this will change when it goes freesat and becomes unencrypted). Some of the more expensive cards have "CAMs" which will enable you to use viewing cards with them, though not a sky one. Apparently some services on Astra and other satellites like some Dutch TV services show lots of recent movies/TV series in English. The easiest way to install a card is to reinstall your distro which will then include all the needed modules etc. Ubuntu, PClinuxOS, Mandriva and Fedora will do this. 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