Hi, I am thinking of going the Freesat route as Sky are pissing me off at the moment and I reckon a Freesat+ box would give me almost as much as I get from Sky but for no monthly charge. There seems to be a lot of info to take in here so I was wondering if anyone had any quick tips on what sort of box to get, what to look out for and what sort of problems I can expect (there always seem to be some no matter what platform you are using). Are the boxes generally good/easy to use/quiet or noisy etc. Obviously I'll have a good root around here as well, but any advice would be welcome too.

Cheers.

There's only one box at the moment, the Foxsat.

There is a long list of niggles but most of them are very minor.

I think it would be fair to say that the majority of people here are very happy with the box despite niggles.

There should be a software update at some point this year which we are hoping is going to sort a lot of the problems out (they've been working on it for six months so we are expecting something pretty good).

Provided you are upgrading from Sky+ then it's just a matter of disconnecting the Sky box and connecting the Foxsat.

I would echo this. I however, have had no problems at all. My box is only a month old. The switch couldn't be easier.

What does take time, is getting used to the menus after, Sky+. Particulaly if you use non freesat channels. It also took me a while to suss out how to record simply and also delete. The manual is useless.

There are however loads of useful tips on here.

Yeah, I'd be coming from Sky+ HD, which has been screwed up by poor quality Thomson boxes and a bodged EPG upgrade. And all this after 5 years of flawless performance from my Pace Sky+ box. It only had a 40GB hard drive though and I wanted a bigger one plus HD capability. We do watch the footy on Sky but I could do without that if I have to, and I could do without the crap Thomson boxes that we keep getting dished out to us. At this moment in time, a Freesat box with HD at least on 2 channels (i.e. the ones we watch most), a 320GB hard drive and no monthly sub is quite an attractive option. I will miss the Sky+ remote though. Ah well, decisions, decisions.

P.S. Is the Foxsat reasonably quiet? Getting bugged by the noise of the Thomson Sky+ HD boxes, or is this something I have to expect. My old Pace Sky+ box was dead quiet.

Yeah, I think it would be a bit of a culture change for me, but the benefits would be worth it I reckon.

Yes Very quiet

Its 100% silent for me, I only hear the clicking when it turns on or off. No fan noise at all.

You guys are persuading me.

How does it work with getting the channels? Do you need a viewing card or does it just get all the FTA channels etc and no card needed? Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question.

Timey

Best thing to do is answer , what channels do you watch the most and which would you really miss if they were not available to you , before you think about jumping ship , moving from the full Sky World to Freesat is quite a leap .

And you are tied to a 12 month contract with Hd , you said it was fitted in August 2008 so 3 months till you can cancel

No card is required everything is FTA

I don't want to put you off, but you should know what to expect. One of those two channels (ITV HD) only has occasional programming at present. This week's schedule will give you an idea as to what to expect. You can get it here. Other than that, I too echo the previous comments - rather a lot of niggles that hopefully will be (mostly) sorted soon and a useless manual, but in spite of that well worth having and very quiet.

Edit: I've just had a look at the ITV HD schedule and, at the time of writing, it is somewhat sparser than I expected it to be. Normally there's been a couple of additional programmes, and least, and until recently there's been some football on most weeks, but I suppose it's the time of year.

I watch BBC most, to be honest. The only other thing is the footy, but really I pay around £30 extra per month just to get that, plus £10 a month for HD. This way, I would get all that for NO MONTHLY CHARGE. Sure, I might miss a couple of channels, but most of our viewing is BBC and Channel 4, with ITV now and then.

Oh, one more question for the Freesat folks, Do you get "other region" BBC and ITV on Freesat? (This could swing it. )

And re the three months left, I will cancel the package and pay the HD sub. Cut my losses.

Yep, I'm aware that ITV doesn't have much. TBH I'm not too bothered about that anyway. The Beeb is what I watch most. I just want tired of Sky now, I'm totally fed up with them. I guess I'll have to pay my HD sub up to the end of the minimum contract but after that it's bye bye to subs, hopefully.

BBC - yes, ITV - sort of.

When you install the box, you enter a postcode for the region that you want (normally your own postcode). That puts BBC1, BBC2 and ITV for your region on channels 101, 102 and 103. You can also customise BBC1 and BBC2 by chosing a postcode for the ITV region you want and then customising 101 and 102 to a different BBC region. All the BBC regions and ITV London are also on 9xx channel numbers. If you ever want a different region on 101 to 103, you can change the postcode at any time.

Sounds good to me.

On the freesat epg you get all the BBC regions, your local ITV region (if it's fta otherwise the nearest match) and ITV london (so you can get ITV HD if you use a non ITV area postcode).
The free to air ITV regions can be viewed in non freesat mode.

Before you make the decision remember apart from recording, all the freesat channels are available free on your Sky box when your sky subscription lapses using your old card you can also view CH4 HD currently not available on freesat and a few other SD channels like fiver, and Five US. . If you have the latest sky epg you can also watch ITV HD using add channels. That's without buying new equipment.
Really swapping a non suscribed sky HD box for a freesat HD box only makes sense if you want to record for free (foxsat-hdr). (To record on a Sky+ stb costs £10.00 a month)

Forgot to say that you can tune in any channel transmitted free-to-air from Astra 2 or Eurobird in non-freesat mode (rather like Sky's "Other channels"). That will give you all ITV main regions and most of the sub-regions. However, there are some severe limitations in non-freesat mode. Only manual recordings are possible and it will not record scheduled freesat recordings when in non-freesat mode. Making any changes in non-freesat mode (adding, deleting, renaming, moving) will result in your freesat recording schedule being erased (existing recordings are OK) - just one of the many niggles.

Yeah, well it's the box that's the problem, so that's not an option really.

if you still have a basic ( or redundant sky+ )sky box you can feed it from the output from LNB1 OUT at the rear of freesat box.
that`s what I use and it is useful to get the channels on sky that are not available on freesat.
the only snag is that the foxsat takes over if it is recording as you want to watch sky.

It will make freesat recordings in non-freesat mode provided the scheduled recording is at least 15min away when you go into non freesat mode. It puts a warning up on the screen and a few seconds later switches to freesat mode to make the recording. If you forget to switch modes and turn off in non freesat the same thing happens, it will still record.