Sky in the motorhome (1 Viewer)

[Edenside]

Advice please. We have an Oyster 85cm dish and a 12v tv with inbuilt sat receiver which works fine. We are considering getting Sky tv at home to enable us to watch the Formula 1 live. The advice we need is - the sky box that SKY will provide for home use will have 2 cables to enable us to watch and record, it may also be a HD box. Can I then put this box into the motorhome to use through an inverter and will it work with my one cable coming from my dish or do I need to have 2 cables, I am not interested in recording in the van just viewing. Alternatively if I purchase a pace 12v Sky box is it possible to pair the card to the new box and what happens if some of the channels I want to watch are only in HD. Lastly can I pick up the premium channels in Spain with an 85cm dish, I know I cannot get the BBC etc channels.
Here's hoping someone very knowledgeable can help me.

 

[scotjimland]

The @Satandpcguy is the satellite TV Oracle..

 

[Deleted member 29692]

We take our HD box from home with us. It works just fine with a single cable.

You're correct in that you only need 2 cables connected if you want to record and watch separate channels simultaneously.

The 12v boxes are discontinued now so it will be a case of tracking down either some old stock or a 2nd hand one from eBay. I thought about doing that but then decided it's no great hardship to take the box from home with us and has the added benefit of having anything recorded or downloaded to the planner available as well.

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[Edenside]

Thank you NickNic. Will probably get Sky at home and take the box with us as you said it will work with the one cable just for viewing.
If anyone is interested Plusat.com are selling 12v Pace Sky Minibox/Javelin tel. 01423788900, I have no connection with this firm just found it on the Internet.

 

[Bailey58]

Shoot me if I'm wrong but I don't think you can watch pre-recorded progs on the planner with only the one cable coming in. I added a second cable to the Oyster on my old van mainly for this reason but so we could also enjoy the recording facilities whilst we were away from the van.

 

[Deleted member 29692]

@Edenside the downside of the Pace boxes, as you've already mentioned, is that they can't receive HD channels.

@Bailey58 Dunno. You may be right, I've never tried it. We've got 2 cables from the dish so it won't matter either way. At the moment we've got one permanently connected to the TV for freesat and the other sitting spare for the Sky box when we take it so if necessary I could connect 2 to the Sky box.

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[Satandpcguy]

A Sky+HD box will work fine with one or two cables.
You only need to cable feeds to be able to watch one channel, and record another, or record two channels, at the same time.

But if using a single cable, then you MUST put the Sky+HD box into Single Feed Mode, otherwise, it may try to use the unconnected feed, and result in "no signal" messages.

If you pair a HD enabled card, to a SD box, then you get allocated the SD channels on the relevant channel numbers. ie on 106 you will have Sky One, and not Sky One HD, as Sky One HD simply does not exist on a SD box. But if pairing this via calling Sky, it may raise a flag as to why you are wanting to pair a HD card to a non HD box....

At the moment I don't think there are ANY HD only channels, they all currently have SD counterparts.... (but this may change as I understand Sky Movies will be offered in HD to all without the additional Premium HD subscription - which could be their first move to get everyone onto HD boxes...especially since they stopped supporting SD boxes many years ago now. Also starting to hear thet they are starting to stop people from pairing up to SD boxes now, saying "Get a new HD box instead".)

Most Sky pay channels can be picked up over most of Spain on an 85cm dish. But some are actually on the Uk beam (the same beam as the BBC ITV etc), so may not be available to you

Shoot me if I'm wrong but I don't think you can watch pre-recorded progs on the planner with only the one cable coming in.

Bang.
You can.
What you cannot do is watch things on a planner if you are getting NO signal at all. The boxes need access to the "Sky EPG" signal to load up the programme guide and planner data and check your sky card entitlements before you can start to use it. No signal, no guide or planner.