What sort of setup would be best for my uses? Not a sport fan - mostly kids cartoons

[Midnight Tboy]

Hi all,

ok so I got redirected here while browsing the cable section.

In the past I've had a dreambox 500c - good box (tho terribly quiet)...but obviously thats all gone now with Nagra 3.

To be honest, I don't really watch much tv. I do like series and episodes, and I love my movies etc, but I tend to just download them as and when (mkvs and suchlike) for playing in my Popcorn player.

The kids however, used to always have channels such as Disney Cinemagic, Playhouse Disney, Nickelodeon etc, and the wife....well she'd have whatever crap on normally that would play on freeview.

I'm not a sports fan, though would be nice to catch some american sports once in a while like american football and basketball.....suppose nice to have too for when friends call over.

HD would of course be the preferred option...partially because it makes life easier wiring it up to my surround receiver with passthrough rather than feeding another wire to the tv mounted on the wall

I am of course trying to search for this information too though its hard to seperate old out of date info from more up to date info...as I've never dabbled in sky/dvb-s related stuff at all

Soooooo....what would be best for me? Motorised or fixed? (not interested in receiving foreign channels nor porn - hdd is already full lol)

PVR facility would of course also be a bonus....I was thinking perhaps of this Black Panther box...which is HD, not prone to glitch problems, and though it has no EPG (I think) I don't mind about that.

Am I right in thinking then that the only way I'd be able to unscramble these channels (mostly the premium kids channels, and discovery HD and suchlike), would be to either a) buy a legit subscription, or b) pay a smaller fee to some cardsharing group somewhere/somehow? Or is there a way to set up so get them all free? Or indeed an alternate satellite that provides those channels unscrambled?

I wouldn't be confident at putting a dish up on the wall outside, but could happily pay someone to do that and everything associated with it.

Hope you guys can point me in the right direction
cheers

 

[oneman]

Re: What sort of setup would be best for my uses? Not a sport fan - mostly kids carto

I am pretty much where you are. Don't care sports, movies and tv shows I get elsewhere. Plus I wanted a second box.

In the end, got an offical sub. So got 3 tuner PVR, HD, on demand, music on demand (which the kids love) and second box and something I know will continue to work.

 

[Superflous]

Re: What sort of setup would be best for my uses? Not a sport fan - mostly kids carto

I'm an enthusiast as in a do this stuff as a hobby. I spend more time messing about with boxes, updating software and looking after CSing etc than is worth the small monthly savings I make on not having an official sub (well I save quite a bit if I include the savings from all the euro cards I don't pay subs for). Couple this with the relatively high set up costs of getting all your own gear and the lack of some really good PVR functions from official subs (such as Series Link and the more user friendly EPG) and it's clear that this is not for everyone. I have a motorised set up and I dare say I'd watch the foreign channels more if I actually knew which ones had the programmes I'm interested in, the problem is that the EPG in my Dream Elite image is not user friendly enough to get me the info I need easily.

I've invested the money and time to go to a motorised set up and there is no going back now. I'll eventually make my money back on the cheaper subs. I was lucky enough to get a non glitching DM800 (although I suspect my investment in a really good dish and a really good LNB is probably the cause of this) and the picture quality is just as good as an official box so I'm happy there.

I do lose some functionality like stated above but I gain access to a lot more (geeky) functionality. I've got my DM800 connected via network to a 1gb NAT external hard drive, so all the shows we record can be watched from any computer through VLC in and out of the house (set my router up so I can access my files outside the house, but I do have 2mb upload which helps) - this functionality will become really useful when I set up my second box next month and I'm able to watch shows I've recorded on either box in either room. I also believe you are able to watch DivX and some HD content on the DM800, though I havent tried this yet, but in theory I should be able to use the bittorrent client in my NAT hard drive to download stuff from the web and watch it through my STB without needing other devices. I've also exposed my DM800 web interface through my router to the web, so I can set my recordings while i'm at work etc or from my iphone (sky do have this functionality as well).

Overall if was in a position whereby I hadn't invested in any equipment yet (and didn't have any existing equipment such as a satellite), and I only wanted UK channels with HD then I might just go for an official sub because of the free sat install, free hd box and no messing about finding shares. If however you have an interest in being a bit of an ethusiast, don't mind investing quite a bit up front to make savings in the long term, and want the best tv set up you possibly can then going down the motorised route is probably for you.

 

[Midnight Tboy]

Re: What sort of setup would be best for my uses? Not a sport fan - mostly kids carto

Thanks for the replies guys.

I must admit - I like to tinker....I've messed around with jtagging the 360, jailbreaking the ps3, more time spent doing it than I do actually playing them, and also messing with cable modems, and cable tv while that was running with a DM500c.

Most of the fun comes from the challenge of getting it set up...admittedly, if its a scenario where have to update it every few days to keep the channels working, then it will become a bit of a chore.

I've looked at the sub prices, but it costs a fair bit more to justify paying a sub for sly...especially for HD.....and the kids would really want Disney Cinemagic, which looks like its only available by purchasing a full movie pack with Sly. so it looks like the cost of full movies, hd, and kids pack would be £45 per month in order to keep cinemagic and HD

The more HD channels the better I say. In a way, sports channels would be good too, as even though I'm not into sport myself (apart from the odd american sport), I like to keep options option for my children incase they get the urge to watch it to let them decide for themselves (they're only very young at moment). So long as I have the ability to remove the porn channels and the likes as an option (or pin protect them)

I don't mind paying out whatever it takes for initial costs of getting some good quality equipment and a decent dish (I'm good technically minded - however useless diy-wise so would pay to get someone to install and wire up the satellite dish professionally. We live in the Teesside area, and have a south facing back garden, which I believe (though could be wrong) is the preferred location for the satellite dish to be housed?

As for divx etc, its not something I'd be using, with me having dedicated NMT's in the house, but PVR playback is a must....EPG less important (though obv nice to have)

So, for some decent (without going overboard) kit, is there any rough ballpark figure of what to expect to pay for dish, installation, wiring etc. It looks like the pvr HD box itself would be around 150-250notes, maybe more if theres a much better box out there I've not yet discovered?

So other than the initial outlay, how much more should I expect to reasonably pay, with these sharing schemes? Is it a case of they have to insist I find something to share with them first (a sub to some random channels perhaps), or just their fees as a contribution to what they're paying out?

Lastly, are the kids channels such as cinemagic and disney available on non-sly dishes? And is there many HD channels on the other satellites also?

 

[Superflous]

Re: What sort of setup would be best for my uses? Not a sport fan - mostly kids carto

A higher quality set up which I feel I have achieved after doing a lot of pre-buying research (feel free to argue over how high quality, but I feel it's a better-than-average set up) includes the following pieces of kit:

Fracarro Penta 85 from High Definition LTD PENTA85-A Penta dish 85cm steel, white with FR logo, individually packed

£57 - 85cm dish that performs close to a 1m dish in tests.

Inverto Black Ultra LNB Inverto Single ULTRA LNB from Aerial Shack by: Inverto - Aerial Shack

£23 - allegidly the best LNB on the market, see here New Inverto Black Ultra single Lnb

£50 - Technomate 2600 H-H DiseqC Motor

And for the box I went for a DM800 with a Ferrari sim. I have had no issues at all with mine but I see some people have had with theirs. I think I'm going to buy another one soon for another room so I certainly haven't been put off. In terms of where to buy I got mine from 61center.com which came very fast but I'm not sure if I'd recommend since he never replied to my last support request (wanted to find good images for it). I'd pay the small amount extra to buy UK rather than China so you can send it back easily if there are issues with it.

So let's say anyway £190 for a DM800

My installer charged me £160 for an install including supplying the bracket to put on the wall and taking down my old (really old) dish.

Grand total of: £480

I'm paying £25 a month for a share which has full HD on *** UK,Italy,Germany as well loads of other packages including Polsat and Tring. £25 is considered steep by many and others appear cheaper but it's the only one I've found stable enough so I'm willing to pay a bit extra.

So in terms of value if I ignore all the other cards I am getting and only concentrate on my UK sub I am therefore saving £40 per month on the full HD sub with movies and sports. So it's going to take me roughly a year of savings to pay for the investment in my system.

In terms of the kid's stuff, I get a quite few Disney Cinemagic HD channels on the foreign sats but you change the language to English. I also get the Family movie channels on the other sats included in HD. I'm thinking of buying BBC Muzzy for the kids and forcing them to watch all Cartoons in Spanish though hah

There are certainly hundreds of HD channels, even all the foreign Discovery and History HD's are available and mostly in English too. I do have a bouquet with all the foreign HD Movie channels it although they mostly show the same movies that are on the Premium UK movie channels, albeit at different times etc.

 

[Midnight Tboy]

Re: What sort of setup would be best for my uses? Not a sport fan - mostly kids carto

thanks Cric2k,

looks like a manual setup is the way to go then.

I still have quite a bit of reading to do I think ...but as you say it'll pay for itself in a reasonable space of time (presuming no big changes occur between that time.

So for comparing to what I'd be wanting with ***, I'd be have been around £40 per month, so obviously would take a bit longer to make back what I've spent once factored in whatever monthly fee I've been paying, hopefully find someone a little cheaper than that - but probably worth it still regardless. At least if I approach it with £25 per month in mind I should be good to go

Can I ask....as for reliability etc.....how often do you tend to have downtime with the c/s going wrong?

Also, would I be right in thinking then that the box must also have an internet connection for receiving the c/s stream?

Lastly, anyone in the teesside area able to do installs on here (for a fee of course)? Will have to scour for local installers and try to get prices for installing

 

[Superflous]

Re: What sort of setup would be best for my uses? Not a sport fan - mostly kids carto

I work a lot off shore so I'm not at home to judge the connection all time, but I'd say my CS has a 99% up time as the missus is the first to phone me to complain when it goes. The bigger problem is the glitchy periods, this usually happens when one server goes down but they have a back up server in place which then gets hit by everyone so the cards behave badly. I'd judge around 5% of the time I get really annoying glitches. It's enough to push me towards doing my own share with family but not as bad as a lot of pay servers.

You do indeed need an internet connection to use these boxes. You can buy wireless adapters for dream boxes (never tested em) or use a Home Plug ethernet network device which work great.

 

[Midnight Tboy]

Re: What sort of setup would be best for my uses? Not a sport fan - mostly kids carto

I've got a few numbers of local shops that do dish installs etc.

Will have to call them tomorrow and try to get quotes to install, also to see if they insist on buying the dishes etc from them or if they'd let me order stuff myself to install for me.

Main pain as I've been looking on a few c/s sites....firstly these c/s sites aren't very easy at all to find way around to begin with while a noob not knowing exactly what looking for etc....and then there's the other thing about getting the channels for 'free' or 'paying someone per month'....which one site (dont know if can mention names of sites) say its against their rules for anyone to try to charge etc and that dont need to pay anything, what with the ccam working something like p2p I think?

So only worry really, would be splash out all the money, and then have problem in the sense of being unable to find anyone willing to give me enough details to at least get the *** channels unlocked (whether pay a fee or not).

I'm just wondering however, presuming I got everything installed etc, with this equipment, would I pick up everything on Freesat (including HD), without having to need any special decoding or tweaking......so at least its usable before I start looking at 'adding extras'

Also....must the boxes be connected to a pc on the network, so the pc has to do some of the work..., or is it ok to just have a connection out to the net (the box would be connected direct to the wireless router which would be sat next to it to get net access), and therefore still work fine etc regardless of pc being off or on

 

[Superflous]

Re: What sort of setup would be best for my uses? Not a sport fan - mostly kids carto

You'll need a freesat from sky card to get 4HD and FiveHD, everything else is FTA. You will only need the Dreambox (or whatever) plugged into your router. No computers need to be plugged into the background or anything like, but if you have internet problems at home you'll lose the share channels.

If you invest all the money and find yourself not able to get a decent share you could always just buy an official card and share it with some others to get other cards or maybe recoup some of the cost of the card with friends and family.