Does anyone have a Digital Satellite TV Card (in the UK)?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Daniel Conroy
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Daniel Conroy

Hi,
Does anyone have experience of using a Digital Satellite TV card, such as
the Pinnacle PCTV SAT, or the Hauppauge Nexus-S cards?

I am hoping to build a media PC - partly for fun/experience of doing it, and
partly for it's usefulness.
I have looked at Digital Terrestrial cards but there aren't really any
channels that interest me - so I would never have anything that I want to
record to Hard Disk/DVD anyway.

I do have Sky Digital - and thought a satellite TV card would be more useful
to me - but from one review I found of the pinnacle card, it seems you
cannot actually recieve many sky digital channels, because Sky use some
special scrambling technique which one of these cards cannot descramble.

Please - if anyone has one of these cards, or any reliable info/websites
could you let me know? I need to know exactly what I would be able to
recieve - ie. which channels I would get.

I am mainly looking to get non-pay channels such as Paramount comedy and
E4 - which are not available on terrestrial, but according to the review I
read it said that even ITV and Channel5 are scrambled on sky digital.

Thanks,
Daniel.
 
Daniel said:
Hi,
Does anyone have experience of using a Digital Satellite TV card,
such as the Pinnacle PCTV SAT, or the Hauppauge Nexus-S cards?

I am hoping to build a media PC - partly for fun/experience of doing
it, and partly for it's usefulness.
I have looked at Digital Terrestrial cards but there aren't really any
channels that interest me - so I would never have anything that I
want to record to Hard Disk/DVD anyway.

I do have Sky Digital - and thought a satellite TV card would be more
useful to me - but from one review I found of the pinnacle card, it
seems you cannot actually recieve many sky digital channels, because
Sky use some special scrambling technique which one of these cards
cannot descramble.

Please - if anyone has one of these cards, or any reliable
info/websites could you let me know? I need to know exactly what I
would be able to recieve - ie. which channels I would get.

I am mainly looking to get non-pay channels such as Paramount comedy
and
E4 - which are not available on terrestrial, but according to the
review I read it said that even ITV and Channel5 are scrambled on sky
digital.

Thanks,
Daniel.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean by "non-pay" - neither of the channels you
mention are 'free' - they're not even available via Freeview. Freeview
channels are listed below: -

BBC One BBC Two ITV Channel 4
Five BBC Three ITV 2 Sky Travel
UK Bright Ideas BBC Four FTN - Full On Entertainment QVC
Bid-Up TV TV Travel Shop The Music Factory The Hits
BBCi BBC Parliament Community Channel Teletext
Free2Play BBC News 24 ITV News Sky News
Sky Sports News CBBC CBeebies S4C
S4C2 UK History 19 Radio Channels


Maybe the above can be received via a satellite card, I don't know. You
certainly would have to pay for E4 and Paramount, though! Please be aware
that, unlike Sky+ (if that's what you thought you could emulate) you
/cannot/ watch one channel whilst recording another, as that would require
twin tuners and there are no cards, that I am aware of, with that
functionality.

Yes, Sky scrambles many of its channels - including Sky Sports, its Movie
channels, Box Office, documentary channels - even Sky One may be scrambled.
IOW, your idea appears to be pointless - especially if you already pay for a
subscription.
 
by non pay, i meant not box office/pay-per-view sports events, or any other
channel you have to pay extra for specifically...

What I want to do is similar to a sky+ box - I could watch one channel on
the old sky box, while I record one on the PC.

The main reason for the "project" is to combine a hifi, dvd player, hard
disk recorder all into 1 box... and for fun..
 
Daniel said:
by non pay, i meant not box office/pay-per-view sports events, or any
other channel you have to pay extra for specifically...

What I want to do is similar to a sky+ box - I could watch one
channel on the old sky box, while I record one on the PC.

The main reason for the "project" is to combine a hifi, dvd player,
hard disk recorder all into 1 box... and for fun..
Click to expand...

That wouldn't work - as soon as you changed the channel, either on the
computer or the box, they'd both change. I was a beta tester for XP Media
Centre, so I know. You would need to connect the card to the box (for which
you might have to pay extra for a specially adapted SCART cable) and this
would 'join' the tuners into one single tuner, so it wouldn't work. Now if
you already /had/ a Sky+ box, and just wanted the extra space (I believe it
only has a 20GB hard drive) then, yes, it would probably work as there'd be
two dedicated tuners.

You're better off spending £249 on a Sky+ box.
 
Daniel Conroy said:
Hi,
Does anyone have experience of using a Digital Satellite TV card, such as
the Pinnacle PCTV SAT, or the Hauppauge Nexus-S cards?

I am hoping to build a media PC - partly for fun/experience of doing it, and
partly for it's usefulness.
I have looked at Digital Terrestrial cards but there aren't really any
channels that interest me - so I would never have anything that I want to
record to Hard Disk/DVD anyway.

I do have Sky Digital - and thought a satellite TV card would be more useful
to me - but from one review I found of the pinnacle card, it seems you
cannot actually recieve many sky digital channels, because Sky use some
special scrambling technique which one of these cards cannot descramble.

Please - if anyone has one of these cards, or any reliable info/websites
could you let me know? I need to know exactly what I would be able to
recieve - ie. which channels I would get.

I am mainly looking to get non-pay channels such as Paramount comedy and
E4 - which are not available on terrestrial, but according to the review I
read it said that even ITV and Channel5 are scrambled on sky digital.
Click to expand...

There are 2 types of free channels on Sky satellite: FTA - free to air - any
digital satellite receiver can receive those and FTV - free to view - a
special decoding card is required.
http://www.vowles-home.demon.co.uk/Sat/SkyFTA.htm
http://www.vowles-home.demon.co.uk/Sat/SkyFTV.htm
 
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