Sat Advice for newbie

Auld Jim Halpin

Hello All,

I will be moving home in the coming weeks and will be dropping paid TV service for a FreeSat/Saorview setup. I have a number of questions and maybe someone here can help. The new house has an existing dish (I think an old Sky dish) and has sat cable running from a quad LNB to different locations in the house, which is handy. I connected an old Sat tuner box and an old LED TV and was able to get a signal and some working channels.

I will be buying a new TV soon and whatever hardware is needed to achieve the above, I don't mind cables or extra boxes or whatever as long as I have the best possible setup, so my questions:

1 - Should I buy a TV with a built in Sat Tuner?

2 - Should I buy a TV with dual Sat Tuner if I wish to record/series link etc?

3 - Would it be better to skip TV with Sat Tuner and just buy a Sat Tuner box instead?

4 - Is is beneficial to have the TV do all this as per points 1 and 2, with one remote and one EPG, in theory, or better in the long term to use solo Sat boxes?

5 - Any recommendations for TV with Sat tuner built in, I have seen Walker, Nordmende, LG and Toshiba with this function, but I am also wary that you can't upgrade the sat hardware if needed to and the finer details of the Sat hardware in the TV is difficult to determine from the specs, I also saw mention of some TV's combine the saorview and sat channels into one list, any recommendations to achieve that?

6 -Any Sat tuners that have the Saorview function built in?

7 -Do Sat tuners that record need two Sat connections or can some do it with one?

8 - For recording TV, any thoughts on using high capacity USB stick or USB SATA drive, or can you do either?

9 - For a Sat Tuner box, any recommendations on what is best one(s), I work in IT so I don't mind complexity if it works better?

10 - What specs should a Sat Tuner box have at a minimum, eg DVB-S/S2 / DVB-T/T2, what is the best current standards?

11 - Should a Sat Tuner box (or TV) be "FreeSat" compatible or branded to get the best result, are these even available in Ireland?

12 - Do any Sat Tuner manufacturers have "good" remote controls too, I have seen some not so great remote controls on Sat boxes?

Thanks for reading and if you can help I would appreciate it, quote point number to make it easier to reply if you wish, or post a relevant link and I will research.

Many Thanks,

Jim.

🙂

DopeTech

A Zgemma h7s would suit your needs and be the best bang for your buck. Big thread on here regarding it.