Freesat vs Freeview Aerial?.

[Keithmac]

Hello all, after seeing my Virgin Media bill hit £80 per month I decided to take action!.

Downside to this is I think they're going to kill our Tivo box completely.

So I would like options for a Freeview set to box that can record with good program guide etc.

So I'm debating wether to stick with out Aerial or go for a HD Freesat setup.

Other than cost, is there any major differences between the two?. All the Sky dishes around are on the back of the houses so the dish itself isn't an issue.

Can anyone recomend a good set top box?, looking before Humax seem to have a good name?.

I'm hoping VM will just shut down the premium channels (I kept their broadband) and my Tivo will still play freeview but need a plan B if they nuke it.

Any comments appreciated.

Cheers, Keith.

 

[winston1]

You can't get Freeview via Virgin Media, only an aerial. The TiVo box is not yours it is the property of VM. No doubt they will want it back.
Freesat has more channels than Freeview. There are odd channels on Freeview however that are not on Freesat. Ch4 HD and local TV are examples. But for Freesat you will need a separate box for each TV in the house.
Personally I have both to the main TV and Freeview to others in the house.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

You can get modern HD 4K TV's now which include Freeview and Freesat, connect to internet, able to record to a HDD including BBCi (and all the other similar services) - not that expensive for last years model. I bought a new 49" last Christmas fro £260.

 

[Lucid]

To keep cost and complexity down to a sensible level then stick with Freeview.

 

[foxhole]

You can't get Freeview via Virgin Media, only an aerial. The TiVo box is not yours it is the property of VM. No doubt they will want it back.
Freesat has more channels than Freeview. There are odd channels on Freeview however that are not on Freesat. Ch4 HD and local TV are examples. But for Freesat you will need a separate box for each TV in the house.
Personally I have both to the main TV and Freeview to others in the house.

Have same set up after dumping sky, just pay £20 for fibre broadband , nothing on any of the subscribers I can’t download for free.

 

[ericmark]

Terrestrial, or satellite it depends on the TV or box on how well it works, the Toshiba TV I have works well with terrestrial giving a good TV guide, but not very good with satellite specially as when using the guide, if it does not show what program is running on the channel you can't select the channel.

My HD satellite box is better in that it gets a lot more satellite programs, as with TV it receives both terrestrial and satellite but does it far better than the TV, I can arrange programs with full mix and match, so all favourite channels together in the order I want. But still not a very good EPG.

Now the really old Sky box is great for the 7 day guide, but only satellite, without a card it is actually better than the last sky box we got, OK last one uses HDMI and is HD but because it has built in hard drive which if you don't pay stops working, you can't set it to auto swap program at set time.

I am told the Humax boxes are very good and have a good program guide, but never tried one.

So as to broadcast there are more programs on satellite to terrestrial however there are some terrestrial which are free where on satellite you need subscription and also some terrestrial stop at certain times but continue with satellite, ITV 3 is a good example seems to stop at midnight with terrestrial but continues with satellite and if watching ITV 3 + 1 very annoying when program stops half way through.

I was fed up with Freeview, if I connected an aerial my TV was it seems forever requesting a retune, and for a long time I did not have an aerial just a couple of dishes, however it seems they have got there act into gear, or simply because I have moved, and I don't get the requests any more, because the Toshiba satellite is so bad, I use terrestrial as well on that TV, but other than Liverpool TV don't know of any channels today that are free on terrestrial and not satellite, there were loads, but now seems free on satellite too. So I would go for satellite if I had to select just one. Main gain is the dish does not need to be high up, so no worry about electric storms damaging things. And easy to reach does not need long ladders.

But had I not got other boxes, if comparing what the Toshiba does with both, likely would go for terrestrial as it seems to miss out loads of programs when you scan, they are on air as all the other boxes get them the UK series like Yesterday is missing from Toshiba but all other satellite boxes pick them up. So does depend what your going to use, until the Toshiba I thought all satellite boxes picked up the same programs, and only difference was EPG.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I was fed up with Freeview, if I connected an aerial my TV was it seems forever requesting a retune, and for a long time I did not have an aerial just a couple of dishes, however it seems they have got there act into gear, or simply because I have moved, and I don't get the requests any more, because the Toshiba satellite is so bad, I use terrestrial as well on that TV, but other than Liverpool TV don't know of any channels today that are free on terrestrial and not satellite, there were loads, but now seems free on satellite too. So I would go for satellite if I had to select just one. Main gain is the dish does not need to be high up, so no worry about electric storms damaging things. And easy to reach does not need long ladders.

My new LG TV has both sat and terrestrial sockets on the back, so when I got it I retired my old sat system. It has been quiet the past couple of weeks, but prior to that the LG was insisting it needed a terrestrial retune almost daily. Rather annoyingly it seemed sometimes to loose channel 81 and sometimes separately forget which part of the world, county and town it was being used in - needing to be told. Where I am located, I get a strong signal from Yorkshire and a slightly weaker, but still useable signal, from Tyneside.

I have the sat side of the set tuned, but I don't really use it - there is the terrestrial should fail..

 

[Keithmac]

I think I may go for a Satellite STB with hard drive.

In hindsight, getting our roofer to feed the Aerial lead into our sons bedroom 4 months ago was a bit short sighted!.

Still hoping VM won't kill/ collect our Tivo. They're on V6 box now so it's no use to them..

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

In hindsight, getting our roofer to feed the Aerial lead into our sons bedroom 4 months ago was a bit short sighted!.

Could you not extend it, or even install a distribution amplifier to get antenna feeds anywhere you need one?

I have one TV antenna, that plugs via a short lead into a socket in the loft, cable through the roof tiles. The socket takes the cable all the way down to my living room, where I have an 8 way distribution amp. outputs from that, go to most rooms in the house - anywhere where someone might wish to use a TV.

 

[Iamchamps]

Virgin is not like SKY if you ca

I think I may go for a Satellite STB with hard drive.

In hindsight, getting our roofer to feed the Aerial lead into our sons bedroom 4 months ago was a bit short sighted!.

Still hoping VM won't kill/ collect our Tivo. They're on V6 box now so it's no use to them..

It will be turned off you will get channels 1 to 5 with a error message constantly popping up telling you it has no subscription.

 

[Keithmac]

Could you not extend it, or even install a distribution amplifier to get antenna feeds anywhere you need one?

I have one TV antenna, that plugs via a short lead into a socket in the loft, cable through the roof tiles. The socket takes the cable all the way down to my living room, where I have an 8 way distribution amp. outputs from that, go to most rooms in the house - anywhere where someone might wish to use a TV.

I'm going to see what channels he gets upstairs then work out best plan, can have a booster in his room them bring that through to livingroom but it would be a ballache without lifting floorboards etc.

 

[Lucid]

I think I may go for a Satellite STB with hard drive.

In hindsight, getting our roofer to feed the Aerial lead into our sons bedroom 4 months ago was a bit short sighted!.

Still hoping VM won't kill/ collect our Tivo. They're on V6 box now so it's no use to them..

Don't be tempted to make another short-sighted decision.

Unless you know your home has a problem with aerial signal because of trees or other line-of-sight issues, then Freeview via a roof/loft aerial will be simpler for a whole house system and cheaper in the long run.

Freesat (from sat dish pointing at same sat as Sky's service) requires a minimum of one cable to each room per tuner device. i.e. one Freesat TV plus one twin-tuner Freesat recorder requires three cables for full functionality. Freeview can do the same all with a single cable. As a side note, satellite signal cables can't be split or the signal shared between a TV and a recorder as you would with a Freeview signal.

Every TV sold today has a Freeview/ Freeview HD tuner. Not so for Freesat.

TVs without a Freesat tuner will all require a tuner box at an extra cost, plus the space to house it.

If this or any other reply was helpful to you, then do the decent thing and click the T-H-A-N-K-S button. It appears when you hover the mouse pointer near the Quote Multi-quote buttons. This is the proper way to show your thanks for the time and help someone gave you.

 

[Keithmac]

Worste case I could split the Aerial feed in sons bedroom and send feed downstairs.

To be fair we only watch TV in living room, kids use Xbox's or Sonos for music. Might pull the lead back out or get roofer to lay it down the back of house instead!.

 

[nauseous]

Could anyone tell me if there's any table tennis on freesat?

 

[JP_]

I've a Humax Freesat box, but hardly use it now. I watch Freeview on the TV and never record anything now - just use iPlayer, Netflix and Amazon for streaming, all via the TV apps. The TV can record if I plug a USB into it, but not bothered trying yet.