What use is this at this time?
Is there a item that is able to be used to give me more channels?

I know that there was a law made at the start of Digital TV, as all box had to have a slot in them even cable boxes.
Ondigital/ITV Digital.
BskyB.
Telewest.

Absolute and utter rubbish.

A more moderate approach.

I haven't heard that.

The slot is for future use. Which may mean nothing at all.
J

Would the Humax be able to be used as a Sky+ HD PVR if a sky cam was fitted?

There are unofficial CAMs that work with a Sky subscription card but Sky have never produced on official CAM (nor are they likely to). The other issue even aside from decrypting the scrambled channels is that you need to have an EPG that allows you to schedule recordings. The Foxsat HDR supports the Freesat EPG & not the Sky one.

I suspect that the reason there is a CI for a CAM is that in order for Humax to be first to market they have taken a generic DVB-S2 HD PVR designed for Europe & other markets & added the Freesat EPG capability for the UK. None of the other Freesat PVRs has a CI as far as I can see.

The CI slot is for non-Freesat use, it was relatively inexpensive to add and keeps people interested in the multisat side happy.

Bob

I wish they would use it as a top up system.

So you could take the card to a post office or Paypoint Shop and add channels to it that way.

i really wish the CI slot would work - i'd happily pay a bit to watch Eurosport and national Geo on Freesat - just don't want to pay £'s th $ky for channels I won't watch

The Humax PVR CAM slot works perfectly with the (official) MediaGuard CAM and Dutch Canal Digitaal card for watching encoded Dutch and Belgian channels at 19.2/23.5º E. A great compliment to Humax as the Pace HD DS810XE decoder couldn't cope with this even though it was officially sold in Europe. No wonder it didn't last.
I believe that under EU legislation all satellite decoders must be capable of multi-satellite use but am unaware of any ruling that they have to provide a CI slot.

Bob, respect for coming on the forum and chipping in -- but HOW can you say that and then not fix the GAPING flaws in non-freesat operation :
- no recording timers
- enabling motorised dish cripples dual recording

So would these ESPN Cams from Argos work then?

http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/st...&Submit=GO+%3E

No, on satellite they are a sky channel, you need a Sky box or some people have been able to get a sky subscription card working in a HDR with the right CAM - thats unofficial, has a few issues and you need to subscribe to Sky.

Options for ESPN here - http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/channels/espn.html.

Hopefully some of the sport will make it to freesat through the new streaming capability. Won't be free though.

I doubt it. That's a freeview cam

Ive said it before i wont be supriesed somewhere down the line eventualy espn or even picturebox will make an appearence on freesat just like they have on topup tv/freeview.

There was a ruling that all digital boxes had have a cam slot, look at any old Ondigital/Itv digital on the back, even when the card slot was in the front. Also older Telewest boxes had a cam slot, with membership card in the front again.
Also on two of my old Sky boxes have cam slot at the back, with two slot for sky card.

As no company came up with a design to sell a cam to fit another companies box and that ITV Digital was knock out by BskyB, so the BBC jump in to save DTT and named it freeview and keep the cost down for people it made it OK for boxes to come to market without a cam slot.

( The cam could not have worked well as a person would not like the cost to a cam by adding the dish for sky if there had a cable box, or DTT box with cable cost put to the cam, so no company would have pushed to keep the rule/ law.)

There was never any such ruling - the only vaguely similar one was that digital TV's above a certain size have to have a CAM slot.

The slot at the back of a Sky box was for a Firewire interface to feed a digital VCR so you could make digital recordings. In the end Sky never released the Firewire interface (although I have seen one - none working of course, as the Sky boxes were never enabled for it), and digital VCR's died a death anyway.

Is this not such a device?
http://cielplus.com/

Not really, it's not Firewire, and it's not official - plus it only works on a small number of very old receivers.

Nice toy though, I thought about buying one to play with a number of years back.

No. I do have one & it is intriguing although the necessary additional software (TSReader) is a nerds delight is not really useable as a PVR. There are nowadays other solutions that enable one to record the decrypted bit stream without loss of quality.

In the US since 2005 the FCC has required cable companies to provide on their HD digital STBs a Firewire interface for a digital VCR. For some reason this has never been obligatory for satellite receivers.