So as the last person in the world to change to sky+, I need to put a new cable in to get the twin feeds for the sky+ box. This bit I can do (as I’m putting in new carpets which I routed all my cabling under because I’m a sad cable tidying geek!), however does the dish need to be upgraded as well? How do I know if the dish would do it just by looking at it? Additionally, if I wanted to take another feed off the dish, what wold I do? Can one dish provide 3 feeds so I can have freeview satelite in another room?

Not sure about the second bit, but when we went from Sky + to Sky HD the installer asked how old our dish was. ie if it was a pre Sky + dish then it wouldnt work for HD.

Why are Sky not installing it anyhow??

Also surely you can talk to Sky and get an HD box for next to nothing. I paid £5 for 6 months and got full HD for a year and now have the box to get ‘Freesat HD’ when the year is up.

I have a splitter which takes the dish input and splits this to 4 coax outputs

The receiver point of the dish will need changed if it’s your original dish.

You’ll need at least twin cable and a dual LNB [thing on the end of the dish]
so if there’s more than one output on the dish, you’ll be OK

The dish has a receiver thing (the box in front of the dish shaped bit) which is what gathers up all them waves into purdy pictures. If you want to watch (or record) more than one channel at once you need that box to contain more than one receiver, ie. 1 per ‘channel’ you want to watch at a time. At least thats how i understood it, happy to be corrected, NZcol’s comment suggests it can be done otherwise???

Sky only do +hd now so I was looking at doing it without spending loads on new HD package. Might end up the cheapest option once I price it up!

NZcol’s comment suggests it can be done otherwise???

It can’t [unless you spend ooodles]

You can combine the high and low frequencies OK but not the opposite polarities

It’s an extra £10.25 per month but you get £50 M&S vouchers and they supply the box, cable and will change the LNB as well as do all the work. You could always cancel the HD part after a year.

Other option is to ring them up say you want to cancel as your box is old and is struggling and you can’t afford to pay for HD. They may give you a deal or they may just cancel.

Stato / Jota – that was my thinking. I guess I need to have a quick look at the dish to check outputs.
NZCol – can you actually recieve 4 different channels that way?

NZCol – can you actually recieve 4 different channels that way?

If it is one in – 4 out, he’ll be able to have 4 different channels as long as they’re all the same polarity
As the H signal needs 18V compared to 13V for the V, the 18V would obviously prevail and switch the LNB to H

Well my dish has 2 outputs that come into a metal,splitter in my special server cupboard aka the data centre. These are than cabled into 4 rooms. To be fair I only run two my sky’s so dunno what else would work. I could try the musky off another output if you want ?

Musky = my sky. iPad.

If it is one in – 4 out, he’ll be able to have 4 different channels as long as they’re all the same polarity
As the H signal needs 18V compared to 13V for the V, the 18V would obviously prevail and switch the LNB to H

And now try saying that in english…

Gargh!

Brains fizzing!

I think, that when you look at it, £120 for the whole package including the box, spread over a year is a pretty good price

http://www.sky.com/shop/high-definition/home/upgrade-to-sky-hd/

That’s the deal there.

You need a quad LNB
http://www.weseller.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=5720&zenid=ah0brkc5t96nkbpvbtl48255a7
The LNB is the part in the centre of the dish that the cable attaches to.
For Sky+ HD recording and viewing you will only use 2 of the 4 LNB connections. The others are for additional decoders.
I am using one of these with my original mid 90’s, large Sky dish. I tried it with the later smaller dish but I got more consistent signal strength and quality with the large dish.
I did my own Sky+ HD installation with shotgun cable and a signal meter from Maplins. I did a Sky+ install for a friend using his existing dish. Once installed you need to ring Sky to get everything set up on your box.

I upgraded myself a couple of years ago. I bought a quad LNB (the bit that sits on the end of the arm in front of the dish) for about £10 and just swapped it over. This gives you up to 4 lines. So 2 for your Sky+ box and a spare 2. I then ran an extra cable from the dish into the lounge for the Sky+ box. I bought my Sky+ box off eBay and got a free Sky+ card from Sky for it. Not sure about HD but my old dish works fine for Sky+.

I’ve put the old Sky box in the bedroom with a Sky freeview card in it (£10 one off payment, no monthly) to get the regular and freeview channels. We don’t have freeview in our area (or cable) so it’s either Sky or nothing for us.

Other option is to ring them up say you want to cancel as your box is old and is struggling and you can’t afford to pay for HD. They may give you a deal or they may just cancel.

I posted on here the other day regarding sky. I bought a new hd tv and our old box in the living room is the basic no sky+, no hd type. There’s an hd box upstairs so that was our ‘free’ one used up.

Called them and the first response was ‘its going to cost £259 and you can’t get another deal’ – thats £199 for the box and £60 installation. Called back 5 minutes later to the ‘how do I cancel my sky’ number and I got the box free. I’m paying £60 installation whihc is fine.

Well my dish has 2 outputs that come into a metal,splitter in my special server cupboard aka the data centre

that’s 2 in and 4 out then
It’ll work fine

Your op sort of suggested just the one input

If it is one in – 4 out, he’ll be able to have 4 different channels as long as they’re all the same polarity
As the H signal needs 18V compared to 13V for the V, the 18V would obviously prevail and switch the LNB to H

And now try saying that in english…

sorry 🙂

The channels are split into horizontally [H] and vertically [V] polarized signals
Instead of have to physically move the antenna though 90 degrees every time you want to change from a V to a H channel [or vice versa] it’s done magnetically by means of an electrical charge.
In essence, the receiver box constantly puts out 13V to power the LNB on the dish, when you select a V channel, it increases it to 18V

If your dish is in physically good order ie.no dents,rust etc then it should be fine,
Does the Lnb (box on the end of the dish arm) have only a single connection on the end? If so you will need to replace it with at least a dual LNB or preferably a quad LNB.
This is where you may have problems depending on the age/ model of dish.
Some of the older dishes have very thin boom arms that the more modern lnb’s will not fit.
Adaptors for the lnb’s are available but only for certain size boom arms.
If you are local to the Stockport/ Manchester area I will happily take a look for you (sky engineer by trade) email in profile.

Quidco is doing an offer if your quick they’ve upped the cash back and voucher price.

http://www.quidco.com/sky-digital-tv-and-broadband/?utm_source=SilverpopSales&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WK20120227%20(1)&utm_content=not%20hotmail%20active%20users