All posts by Neil Bell
Below are all of Neil Bell's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Suzi Probably yes - provided there isn't a great big tree roughly south south east and immediately in front of your satellite dish!
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Teodora If you look on the Lyngsat website it shows most RAI channels on Hotbird 6 (except RAI News) are encrypted but on Hotbird 9 it shows them as free which is odd but at least you could check if the frequencies of the RAI channels you have found are on Hotbird 6 or 9. I'm not at home in the UK just now so can't check but I know when I do a scan on my sat box it gives me the option to search for scrambled, for free or for both free & scrambled at the same time. I'm just clutching at straws here but could you have been searching only for scrambled channels by mistake?
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Graham: I don't think Sky have moved and Freesat uses the same satellite group as Sky so you shouldn't need to realign the dish. You will probably need a new LNB but you could try the existing cable first and only change it if you have problems or if its very easy to replace
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douglas: I don't think you can. Only channel 5 is on Freesat the others are on Sky
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Bryan Wensley I have a Fortec Star Passion Plus HD free to air satellite receiver which has one HDMI output and I have been using this with a Sony RDR HXD 870 DVD/Hard Drive Recorder but this has no HDMI input so I can only use SCART leads (or phono inputs on the front panel).
I think that this absence of HDMI inputs is fairly typical on recording equipment although I'd like to hear from someone in the know if I've got this wrong. E.g. I have more recently bought a Panasonic DMR-BWT700 Blu-ray Recorder and was disappointed to find that it too has no HDMI inputs so can only record in true HD by using the internal freeview HD tuner.
However I have found that the quality is much better when I record HD programmes on the DVD recorder from satellite than when recording SD programmes despite using a SCART lead. On the odd occassion that I have watched an HD programme on TV connected by HDMI lead and recorded it at the same time on the DVD recorder I haven't noticed any degredation in quality when I've played it back later (although this may be the subjective judgement of my 64 year old eyes!) I've yet to try recording an HD programme from satellite on the Blu Ray recorder but almost certainly will when I'm home over Christmas.
So in brief you should be able to record HD programmes on a hard drive recorder but you will probably have to use a SCART lead. If the hard drive recorder has an HDMI output you should of course connect it to your TV using an HDMI lead.
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Alan Nicholson I too have got a Panasonic DMR BWT700 Bluray Recorder and an SD Virgin Media STB and I just tried a short recording and the sound worked OK although it was intermittent on 1 channel at first due to a loose connection (I've got it wired through two switch boxes - just don't ask why! - but the final cable is a scart to AV2) I also tried (while recording) to use the BBC iplayer on the VM box and it (correctly) wouldn't let me record a copy protected programme but the BWT700 flagged this up so you'd know.
I'd double check the scart lead is fully home 1st and then try a different scart lead. The diagram in the BWT700 says you need a 21 pin scart lead and as you say it also says you need a 21 pin adaptor but I can't work out what is meant by that either.
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Steve Hole I've no idea why they sell these splitters but satellite receivers control the polarity of the LNB to suit the channel you are watching so connecting two receivers to a single LNB won't work. What you need is a twin LNB (or a quad LNB if your existing Sky set up uses a twin) so you can run a separate cable to the freesat tv which will allow it to switch the polarity independently.
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George I found the Daewoo manual on the Daewoo site & it is just a DVD recorder with no HDMI output so you will have to use a SCART cable to connect the "TV" output to the TV.
I couldn't find any online support for Techwood but it should be obvious where the SCART input (maybe marked "AV") is
Once recorded you can play the DVDs back on the recorder or the TVs own player - I suppose the bonus of the former is that you can record something new while watching an earlier recorder. Neil
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George Just ignore me - jb38 is correct - this recorder does not have a digital tuner so you will have to use the tuner in the TV or a separate STB post analogue switch off Neil
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Thursday 12 May 2011 3:47PM
Jackie You just need 2 scart leads, 1 from the freeview box to the TV and 1 from the DVD recorder to the TV. You will only see standard definition pictures from HD programmes on the HD box because the old TV can't display HD pictures.