Freesat HD through Communal Satellite

[navier_stokes]

Just had a letter through from sky saying my new build block of flats now has a communal dish installed. Now I don't want sky but would be very interested in freesat HD - is it worth it?

Mainly though, will my freesat HD box work through the communal sky satellite? Will I still need to get an engineer round to connect the satellite to my particular flat connection or is it just a case of plugging my HD box in?

And lastly, which is the best freesat HD box around?

Many thanks!

[telecat]

HUMAX boxes are the best at the moment. The boxes can be "tweaked" to allow you access to the non "Freesat" channels transmitted on the satellites used. Quality is also somewhat better than the other boxes. HUMAX also do the FREESAT recorder which given how good the FREEVIEW PVR's are should be a nice bit of kit.

[Roop]

navier_stokes said:

Mainly though, will my freesat HD box work through the communal sky satellite? Will I still need to get an engineer round to connect the satellite to my particular flat connection or is it just a case of plugging my HD box in?

Provided the communal dish has an LNB configured to receive the Astra 2 series of satellites at 28.2°E then yes, you can just plug in and go. The PVR system that Telecat mentions may have twin tuners (record one channel whilst watching or recording a second) in which case you will possibly need dual sockets on the wall (although there may be some DiSeq(?) or similar trickery that gets round this, I don't know).

[FlossyThePig]

Sky and Freesat take their signals from the same satellite(s). For a Freesat box to work you need to connect to an LNB on the dish. The HUMAX PVR requires two seperate feeds from the dish. Not all communal systems provide dual feeds.