AndyGranger

I,ve just had sky+ fitted and i want to put my original digital box up stairs so i can watch different channels without them being linked
Where can i get a viewing card for it without having to subscribe to sky for £10 a month?

ECU Monitor Enthusiast

iTrader: (1)

You can get a free to air card from sky for £5. IIRC

This will give you all the FREE channels that do not need any suscription.
Or, buy a freeview box.

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Last I heard cards for "Freesat from Sky" were £20....

Just to clarify, in case anyone reading doesn't know or gets the wrong impression, a Freeview box won't work with a feed from a Sky Dish. Must be connected to a roof aerial

gkandr4ch

I have sky in 4 rooms. I obtained a quad lnb and purchased the sky boxes with cards off of ebay.
You can buy a double lnb then run a second wire to the room where you want to watch it then connect your original box up.

AndyGranger

I,ve got the original digital box but it,s the viewing card i need for it

dojj

iTrader: (3)

which viewing cards are required for this then?
i've got 3 boxes sitting around doing nothing and sky in every room of the both houses

gkandr4ch

I am using the viewing cards that was married up to the boxes. If you use a different card it wont work. You will only be able to get the free channels, but it is still worth it. You can pick up a box with card for a fiver on ebay.
Or you can pay sky the extra dough.

smudge_lad

I work in the freesat dept at sky, so will give you my input to help clear anything up.

Each card will cost you £20, but the only two channels that will give you is channel 4 and channel 5. If you have installed the system correctly, you will pick up all the free channels automatically, without a viewing card.

The reason for this is that it's only channel 4 and channel 5 that still broadcast on an encrypted signal, therefore your satellite box needs the card to decode them for you.

In regards to the e-bay purchases, as long as the cards that you buy with the boxes are Freesat cards, and not old sky cards, they should hopefully be ok, the only problem that will then arise, is that if you have to call freesat to resolve a problem, the cards wont be in your name, they'll be in the name of the person who bought them in the first place, so you probably wont get any help unless you can confirm their name/address/postcode

If you used to subscribe to sky, and still have the viewing card, you may still pick up 4 and 5 for a while, but chances are they will disappear eventually and you'll need to buy a card.

The freesat service from sky is not the same as "Freeview". Freeview is the name used by another company, and they have bought the rights to show channels like E4 etc, which aren't free. When they advertise that E4 is available on Freeview, they mean you have to be using that paricular system. The Freesat service from sky does not include any channels that have to be paid for, if you want them you need to subscribe to Sky.

You can't connect a Freeview box to a sky dish, that'd be like trying to use an X-Box controller with a PS3. You'll need a normal roof aerial for a Freeview box, but will require a digital one as of next year sometime.

You can get a quad or an octo LNB for your dish so you can run up to 8 boxes from the one dish, but there are loads of techy guys on here that'll know other ways to do this, or better set-ups to go for, I only know the simpler sky setup.

So, unless you desperately want channel 4 and channel 5 on your other box, there's maybe not much point paying £20 per card.