Migrating from Freeview to Freesat

Up here in the Calder Valley, TV reception is challenging with three UHF TV relays around Todmorden alone, two of them in Walsden where I reside. Our transmitter keeps on breaking down and, 48 hours ago, we lost most of our channels leaving only a few HD channels. I can’t even see ITV Calendar any more.

A multitude of phone calls to Freeview, accompanied by terse Twitter messages has failed to resolve the problem, despite several retunes. Denials of there being a fault was contradicted by the BBC who, when I contacted them, said there was a fault which has now been fixed. I still can’t get back the channels I lost though! My neighbours are experiencing the same problems.

Finally, I have lost my patience and we are having Freesat installed, with the new PVR including Netflix and Britbox which we can’t get on our old Humax. Has anyone else made this transition and how did it go? What is the audio quality like on Freesat?

I have freesat only and the channel choice is very large in fact much larger than freeview including the freeview channels. SQ is quite good with a good dac but especially on channels like NHK which is also full HD and this being the best PQ also. To my eyes freesat hd channels are better as i think theyre transmitted in a higher bit raye but cant be sure. They are also transmitted progressively in 50 or 60p whereas the freeview is broadcast interlaced unless this has changed recently. Anyways been watching the giro bike race live most afternoons on S4C a welsh channel. I live in Greetland.

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On my Humax box the YouTube app finally Stopped working - YouTube have intentionally made this happen as far as I can tell.

Many users on the Humax forum report similar problems going back months and years.

I also have now a problem with my satellite coax cable not connecting to the Humax - still trying to mend that…

When you say you had Freesat installed - do you mean it works on a different satellite dish, or from a different STB?

He probably didn’t have a satellite dish at all previously as he is talking about Freeview failing, not Sky! And maybe a Freesat STB as well, although some TVs have Freesat built in. Our recently bought Samsung TV is an example of that.

You can use a spare LNB on a Sky installation for Freesat of course. Our Skybox needs two LNBs and the dish we have has four, so I use one of those for Freesat. I haven’t noticed the sound or video quality being any different with Freesat, but I haven’t really compared critically.

Best

David

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I haven’t had Freesat installed yet. We’ve been contemplating making this change for some time now. We are generally dissatisfied with Freeview and have been since we moved North as the range of channels has shrunk, giving less choice. The Humax box is no longer good enough for our purposes, as even iplayer no longer works.

Worth pointing out that the current Freesat STB is a 4K capable product whereas the previous versions are not should that be of use.
The Freesat Muxes are actually the Sky ones but they use a NIT proxy to identify them as Freesat and map the program metadata accordingly.
Google/YouTube eventually end of life support for older products that use YouTube based on their performance requirements and ongoing support for new services or content types. The AV1 codec will become increasingly important in the coming years for streaming services, this is only just starting to be commercially available.

iPlayer still works fine on my Humax box.

I just get the message: “We are aware of an issue affecting the playback of content on your device. We are working with Humax to restore service as soon as possible.”

This has been going on for two weeks now.

Sounds better on my system with toslink into nDAC/555DR etc. In fact it is really good.

Phil

Ah - that’s interesting.

So last weekend I started trying to wire in the second of the 2 cables that are joined together.

I was doing this so that I could watch one channel and record another at the same time.

But then the whole Humax box stopped working altogether.

(So when I said above that iPlayer is working on the Humax, I meant in general, not since last w/e).

I have been wondering whether I had shorted the 2 inner and outer parts of one of the halves of the satellite cable?

But maybe my wiring attempt into a (I think they’re called) ‘f’ connector happened to coincide with the system going down??

The BBC iPlayer app delivers content over IP not DVB-S, as long as you have an Internet connection and it’s supported on your particular set top box it’ll work whether the satellite connection is there or not.

You only need more than 1 physical connection to the dish LNB if you have a PVR capability in your set top box. You can watch TV with a single cable between your dish and receiver.
The current Sky Q box requires a wide band LNB and two physical coaxial cables as its multiple tuners will utilise seperate vertical and horizontal polarisation connections on seperate cables whereas older Sky boxes and Freesat boxes can lock to an LNB tuner resource on either vertical or horitzonal polarisations from 1 of the 4 tuners available typically (Quad LNB)

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