Alex asked

31st March 2013

Please can you help, I've just bought a second hand Thomson DSI8210 Sky Plus box and I'd like to just use it as a Freesat box. I'm currently using a much older Panasonic satellite box for Freesat which works well for this purpose, just looks extremely old and needs a home in a museum. I only have the one cable from the old satellite dish and I've been getting conflicting information about the Thomson Sky+ box, some people have said I need to have two cables running to the dish using both connections at the back of the box, others including Sky have said it should work as a simple Freesat box without both connections.I connected all the cables from the Panasonic to the Thomson, inserted the Sky viewing card and all I got was a continuous glowing light for hours, the remote seems to be doing nothing to it, I've now been told the remote might need a PIN code as it's not had the batteries in for some time. What seemed a good idea at the time, has now become a serious pain! I've tried getting the answers from numerous sites and it just serves to confuse me more, can you help please?

Only one of the tuners inside your Thomson box will work since you only have a single cable connection to your satellite dish but that shouldn't be a barrier to you getting the box working. You shouldn't even need the viewing card as that's a feature of Sky's 'Freesat from Sky' service, regular Freesat operates without an viewing card. If the remote isn't working operate the box using the controls on the front to eliminate that as a source of your problems, once you've got a picture on your TV from the new box you can then get the remote working. You may need to pair it with the Thomson box rather than need to enter a PIN code. Don't assume the box you've bought it working (perfectly), you should see to confirm its operation step by step.

Alastair asked

26th March 2013

I've been looking at Freeview HD tuners for a while now and while you can find standard Freeview boxes for about £10/15 the cheapest HD box I can find is about £50. Are you aware of any that are around £20-30 that simply just decode the HD signal and don't include PVR functionality? I don't watch enough of the right type of Live TV to justify the x5 jump in cost of the standard Freeview box, but would like to have HD if possible.

£50 is more or less what a Freeview HD receiver will cost you. Standard-definition Freeview boxes have been around for more than a decade during which time their cost has fallen by a least an order of magnitude. Freeview HD boxes have only been available for a couple of years at most ,so while their cost has fallen significantly since their introduction, the economies of scale and component integration have yet to mean these boxes are available as cheaply as their predecessors. The cost will fall in time, but it will likely take a few more years to fall to levels you're anticipating.

Kelly asked

14th March 2013

We plan on getting multi-room through Sky for our upstairs television, however we plan to put the box in cupboard downstairs and operate it using a Magic Eye. Will we still be able to have an HD picture upstairs if we do this?

Not with a Magic Eye as it's will only support a standard-definition picture. In order to be able to watch in high-definition you'll need a high-definition capable cable (likely HDMI) to your remote HDTV along with some kind of infra-red extender device for the remote to work.

Donna asked

7th March 2013

My electricity went off and now I haven't got any power to my TV! What could be wrong?

Assuming nothing works after unplugging it for a few minutes and the remote batteries aren't coincidentally flat, it probably needs to be repaired or replaced.

Garry asked

3rd March 2013

I've bought a Panasonic 47 inch HDTV but it has no SCART socket and I have a Freeview box with SCART socket and cable. Is there any way to connect it to the TV with a different cable?

Your HDTV will probably support analogue video in the form of a component video input which will be a set of three phono sockets.

Component video is also carried (along with audio, control and other signals) via SCART so with a cheap passive adaptor you can covert SCART to 5 phono connections, three for the component video and two for left and right audio channels.

Hazel asked

27th February 2013

My friend has a non HD-Ready TV and would like to know if he would be able to use a HD Freeview Recorder, which someone gave him, via RF cables, as there is no HDMI sockets on his older TV.

If the RF output on the recorder contains a modulated output signal then he should have no problems. More likely though is that the RF output is one end of an aerial/RF pass-though and doesn't contain any video output form the recorder you won't be able to watch it that way. You can connect it up and tune the TV to see if you can find the recorder to determine which if it's unclear from the device or its documentation.

If the recorder has a(nother) analogue video output you may be able to use that. SCART and component video are compatible and easily converted between with cheap cables and/or adapters.

Kathleen asked

24th February 2013

I have a SKY Digibox and I bought a Panasonic DMR-PWT420 Recorder. I can record all the Freeview Channels but I cannot record any Sky channels. I was told I needed an HDMI cable which I bought but there is not a slot on the Sky box to put it in.

If you connect your Sky box to your recorder via a SCART connection you may be able to record whatever channel you Sky box is receiving but you won't be able to do anything more than that, and the 'experience' itself won't be that good. You will need to schedule timer recordings on both devices separately and not be able to use your Sky box while recording.

If you really want to record Sky channels you will have a much easier time getting a Sky box with an inbuilt recoding capability.

Barbara asked

24th February 2013

I have a Humax HD+ box and I need to connect this to a separate Toshiba DVD player. I have the Humax connected to my Technika TV at the moment but when I tried to connect both the Humax and Toshiba DVD player via SCART neither worked. I think that I can connect the Humax to the TV via a HDMI but where would the aerial lead go into? I could then use the SCART to connect the DVD Player directly to the TV I presume.

An HDMI connection is the way to go for your Humax box because as a high-definition connection it will give you better picture quality than SCART. You can then use the SCART connection on your HDTV for your DVD player and then both devices should work with you being able to swap between the two using the input/source selection your TV remote. Irrespective of the HDMI and SCART connections you need enure that all your devices that have Freeview tuners inside them are connect to your aerial as that signal isn't carried by either SCART or HDMI, it needs to be a separate connection.