Hi,

I currently have standard freeview, but have a HD ready TV so am looking at getting HD TV, and have a couple of options.

1. Freesat HD+ Box

If I go for a Freesat HD+ box (the hummax box for around £270) do I just get a standard satellite dish with a dual LNB and hook that up to it?

If I can do this, will I be able to get a quad LNB and also hook up a Sky+ box and watch the FTA SD channels using the same satellite dish?


2. Sky HD+ box

If I go for this, what is the minimum package I can have? The £10 subscription will get me the HD on top of the £16.50 a month, but if I cancel the HD subscription after a year, will I still be able to watch FTA HD channels?

I there much of a difference in channels available through the Sky and Freesat boxes?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Yes


Yes


Yes


I assume you mean apart from the pay TV channels. Sky gives you some FTV channels such as C4 HD, Fiver, and Five US.

The Humax is better with ITV HD - you can set recordings for that via the EPG which you can't do on the Sky box.

You can - but a bit pointless getting a Sky+ box just to watch the FTA channels. As without a subscription you can't do any recording - so you'd do better getting a standard Sky box for a fiver on ebay rather than a Sky+ box for fifty quid or so.

Yah, that's the killer at the moment.

None subscribers often criticise Sky for that recording fee but if it were removed it'd be interesting to see what affect it had on Freesat. At present I don't see many people preferring access to ITV HD over C4HD.

True, but at least with a Sky HD box you can tune in before the programme starts and not miss the beginning.

The 'red button' ITV HD service via Freesat boxes has been far from perfect, even after a year of transmitting.

Don't pay £276, Amazon have the Foxsat humax HDR for £246.

Annoyingly I noticed this to late as I relied upon a page which used to show the best deals for Foxsat.

I have Dixons at £244. Perhaps they're playing leapfrog