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All posts by Neil Bell

Below are all of Neil Bell's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.


Reena You'll need a digital satellite receiver - a standard definition one (not freesat) will do and a scart lead to connect it to your TV. You'll also need to get a dish installed pointing at Astra 1 19.2 East - 80cm should work OK in South East England - you may need a bigger one if you live further North or West - check with the installer. Its perfectly legal - most if not all the German terrestrial channels also transmit on satellite so you can receive them all free. You don't say if you are just visiting Germany or going to live there? High definition is more complicated because the German HD broadcasts on satellite are all encrypted. Then you'd need a high definition satellite receiver with the correct conditional access module (CAM) to take the viewing card which needs to be renewed (for a fee) each year but I don't know the details as I haven't bothered (I find the SD broadcasts are quite good). Its something you could maybe find out more about when you're in Germany. You'd also need an HDMI lead to connect the receiver to your TV.

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Glenda Just a thought has your Samsung TV got an HD freeview tuner? What model number is it?

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Upgrading from Sky to Freesat | Freesat
Thursday 6 January 2011 10:23PM

Pam I'm confused but maybe you are too? With a dish you can only receive freesat (or Sky). If you want to receive freesat you don't need an extra dish but you'll need a double or quad LNB to replace the single or double LNB respectively that you have on your dish now and then you'll need to run an extra cable from the LNB to a freesat box or freesat tv. If you want to receive freeview either with a freeview TV or freeview box then you'll need an aerial.

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Upgrading from Sky to Freesat | Freesat
Thursday 6 January 2011 10:34PM

Marilyn Dolling You may be confused with the last answer but I'm even more confused with your question. If you already have freeview on your TV why do you need freesat? You can certainly receive freesat using your old Sky dish but why bother if you can receive freeview on your roof aerial?

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Upgrading from Sky to Freesat | Freesat
Thursday 6 January 2011 10:51PM

Karen Eadon You don't say if your TV has an HD freeview tuner or just an SD tuner or where you live. If you have an HD freeview tuner in your TV and a roof aerial and you live in an area which has HD freeview signals you should already be receiving HD programmes. On the other hand If you don't have an HD tuner in the TV then you probably have a dual LNB on the sat dish for your Sky + box. If you swap the dual LNB for a quad one you can run an extra cable from the quad LNB to your freesat TV and get HD programmes that way.

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Upgrading from Sky to Freesat | Freesat
Thursday 6 January 2011 11:10PM

Beverley Bagnall If you can't receive TV via an aerial then you can't receive freeview. If you don't want to or can't subscribe to cable or Sky then you'll have to use freesat or free to air satellite transmissions to receive programmes. If you don't want to use a set top box then you'll have to get a freesat TV and connect it to your Sky dish. Otherwise you will HAVE to use a set top box for freesat or free to air satellite transmissions.

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BBC One HD
Sunday 9 January 2011 9:08PM
Ilford

Barry Nicol I live 12 miles from Crystal Palace and have a loft aerial with an amplifier feeding 5 rooms. Everything was fine until I bought a Sony HD freeview TV which was sharing the same aerial feed as my Sony PVR/DVD/HDD. SD channels were fine but all 4 HD channels on the TV won't work if the PVR/DVD/HDD is on at the same time. I simply ran an extra aerial feed from the amplifier to my living room so the HD freeview TV doesn't have to share with the PVR/DVD/HDD & problem solved. I'm sure your situation is completely different to mine but my point is that the tuner in my Sony TV seems to require a stronger signal for HD reception so maybe you need to strengthen the signal by improving the aerial or adding an amplifier if you don't already have one.

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Davyblue, Mark Aberfan Aerials & Briantist Maybe I need to look at updating the firmware again on my Passion and my Passion + but I've always found both sets of software to be very flaky. The Passion has 'Fortec Star' software & the Passion + 'Real' software but apart from different colours they are almost identical - even down to the mispelt 'Remainder' which I think should say 'Reminder' which appears on both as an option when setting a timer event. There is an option (on both) for a UK 7day EPG but I find when I use it, my favourite channels lists revert to the 'all channels' list, which with a couple of thousand channels stored makes navigation very difficult. As Mark says I don't use mine just for British channels but have a motorised dish & watch German, Czech & Polish channels too so my favourite lists are essential. Also I've never got the Passion + to work with a memory stick or external hard drive so I just use my Sony DVD recorder. I have to set each event on both machines seperately but it does work.

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James Get them to install a quad LNB on the dish & run 2 cables to each flat. Then you can each use an HD freesat + box where you can record 1 & watch another channel or your neighbour can just use 1 cable for an SD box.

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Connecting it all up | Installing
Thursday 12 May 2011 3:47PM

Jackie You just need 2 scart leads, 1 from the freeview box to the TV and 1 from the DVD recorder to the TV. You will only see standard definition pictures from HD programmes on the HD box because the old TV can't display HD pictures.

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