Freesat

[northan]

I've convinced my father-in-law to go completly digital at last.
Unfortunatley he gets a poor freeview signal, so after a lot of sit down and explain sessions we decided that a whole house freesat/sky setup was best.

He has 6 rooms that he wants a satalite signal to go into, so we bought a 8 lnb for $40 to fit on his original dish.
100m of fine quality coaxial.
All the bits and bobs too.
Shocking for me though was he agreed to have the house wired up for network too at the same time.
Every room is to get a network socket in, just in case he want's to do something like bt vision in the future.
This will be a fine install as he has an easy to work in loft and basement all under the house.

Now that SD freesat boxes have come down in price, it's a much better option in my opinion than freeview, none of that darn pixilation going on.

Whilst I'm here has anyone seen or heard about the venture bbc are taking with the set top boxes there building, code name canvas?
A few big names are starting to sign up to the service, looks like a good alternative again.

[tonyc]

Out of interest, can you let me know how much he paid to network the house too? I would like the job to be done right to be fair and wondered if he had an outside company do this for him and roughly the costs involved.

There are some posts on Digital Spy regarding Project Canvas and apparently Virgin Media are not happy about it. Also, there is another rival on the cards to Freesat (name currently escapes me). They have a website etc stating that it will launch by the end of the year, but lots of people are sceptical about this. Their co-partners for this are Rapture TV of all people, but some know of the issues their MD had with Sky and the court case a couple of years ago.

EDIT - realdigitaltv.com are the alternatives to Freesat - if it aver gets off the ground !

[northan]

Umm well the cheeky thing about the network is... well it's almost going to be free for him.
Last year (after I wired my house) I found 100m reel of cat5e cable down the dump, we paid £2 for it. I took it home and checked the continuity and it was fine. No idea why it was chucked
I have 100s of spare plugs and a crimp-er, so really he has no real cost except time and wall sockets if he wants them.
As said in a previous post we will do all the wiring and it's going to be doddle with loft and basement access.

When I did mine I found I probably spent around £60 for materials to do it. Bear in mind I did not have any plaster work to do, it was all chased within the cavities.

Absolutely love my network, even now I find that my wireless n is good but not perfect sometimes it hangs or looses connection

I would hate to think the cost of someone doing it. I never done the work before, so I researched it lots and had a go and it really was not that hard.

I see that sky movies is under fire from Ofcom.
They seem to have this crazy thought that sky might be dominating the market.: How long did it take them to figure that out?

[elootos]

I thought Freesat was the going to be the absolute nuts for TV. However it seems to have been forgotten about a little; more HD channels are due for Freeview and ITV are signing up to supply HD to Sky. So who knows it future.

As for signal and ease-of-setup it can't be beaten.

[northan]

I bought a freesat card for an old sky box the other day.
It cost me £25 for the card only, then they told me that the card is only useable for 5 years.
It doesn't matter what you do, sky always manages to pry open your wallet time and time again.

I'm going to get rid of my sky system, there charging for basic £25 a month, thats £300 a year.
£300 could buy me a decent freesat box, with a bigger hard drive, access to HD and whats more no more monthly running cost.

[elootos]

(08-06-2010 08:53 AM)northan Wrote:  I bought a freesat card for an old sky box the other day.
It cost me £25 for the card only, then they told me that the card is only useable for 5 years.
It doesn't matter what you do, sky always manages to pry open your wallet time and time again.

I'm going to get rid of my sky system, there charging for basic £25 a month, thats £300 a year.
£300 could buy me a decent freesat box, with a bigger hard drive, access to HD and whats more no more monthly running cost.

Yeah, I am definately all for free-to-air TV. I could understand if by paying for Sky it removed adverts.

I was just a bit annoyed that when Freesat launched last year; I thought all the main broadcasters would start offering HD material, but only BBC and now just ITV are bothering. I think Channel4 are still contracted to Sky and now it seems it gobbling the others up as well.

I wish Sky would piss off and leave the main channels alone and just keep with their own stuff.