How to set up a satellite dish

This article was originally published in Active Home magazine in 2007, and has been updated for GoneDigital

Many people think that setting up a satellite dish is a tricky task, and something that has to be left to the professionals, but that’s not really the case. If you’re confident with a bit of DIY, you can buy a receiver and dish, install them yourself, and you’ll be able to watch Freesat with its fairly wide range of channels – and if you have a Panasonic TV set with Freesat built in, that will also give you access to the BBC iPlayer as well, which might be sufficient reason to connect up a dish for some.

Freesat satellites

It’s worth mentioning that if you have a dish that was set up for Sky, you can use it for Freesat anyway – it points at the same satellite, and indeed most of broadcasts are the same for each system. The ‘orbital position’ of the satellite is 28.2 degrees east, which actually means that it’s 28.2 degrees east of due south.

Freesat also has some channels, and some important network information, on the Eurobird satellite, at 28.5 east. With a normal dish, you’ll get a signal from both at the same time, as they’re so close together. But if when you try to tune in the receiver, you find that a Freesat box claims it can’t find the signal, you might need to nudge the dish a fraction, as the likely cause will be that it’s not receiving the information from Eurobird that’s vital for setup, such as the list of channels and the postcode data that ensure you see the correct regions.

Pick your receiver

If you’re installing a standard set top box, then you just need a single cable from the satellite dish to the receiver. However, if it’s a recorder you’re installing, most of them have twin tuners, so you can record two channels, or record one while watching another. And, unlike with a Freeview system, for satellite, you need one cable per tuner (for the technical reasons, see this article).

If you’re buying everything from scratch, I’d recommend that you buy a multi-output LNB – each output feeds a single tuner – so you can add another receiver or upgrade to a recorder later, without having to readjust the dish. The LNB is the actual receiver bit on the end of the satellite dish arm – the dish just focuses the satellite signal on the LNB, which does the actual work.

Step by step installation

First, choose your satellite receiver or recorder – the Humax Foxsat HDR is a good Freesat recorder, and will need two connections to the dish. You can pick up a dish, LNB and cable from suppliers like Maplin or Turbosat.

Satellite F connectors are very easy to fit, but practice makes perfect

Preparing the cable

You’ll need to run a new cable from the satellite receiver to your dish – unless you already have a Sky minidish that you can use. You need satellite grade cable, and the plugs on each end are called F connectors. Strip the outer insulation back about 1.5cm, and trim about 1cm off the inner white insulation. Fold the copper braid back over the outer insulation, and then fix the connector by simply pushing it over the end of the cable and screwing it on, so that it grips properly. For now, just put a connector on the end nearest the receiver – you’ll need to get the other end outside before you can put the plug on.

Connect to the receiver

Make sure the satellite receiver is turned off before you connect the cable. Push the connector onto the LNB in socket (on a recorder, they may be labelled LNB 1 and LNB 2; some boxes have an ‘LNB out’ for a second receiver, which you can ignore), and rotate the end of it clockwise to lock it in place.

Dish it up

Now, follow the instructions to assemble your satellite dish; you’ll need to fit the LNB to the arm. Normally the connectors will face directly downwards. We’ve chosen an 80cm dish, and a universal LNB, which will enable us to set the system up to receive other satellites too. If you’re in the south of England, a 60cm dish will be ok for the Astra 2 satellite; for extra satellites, or if you’re further north, a bigger dish may be needed. Local satellite stores can give you advice.

Make sure the bracket is straight on your wall, or dish alignment will be much harder

Hinge and bracket

Now, you need to mount the fixing bracket on your wall; 28.2 degrees east means the satellite is that far east of due south, so you need to find a wall that will allow you to fix the dish, and move it sufficiently from side to side. Our chosen bracket keeps the dish quite close to the wall; choose one that puts the dish further out if you need more space to rotate it, or opt for a garden or patio stand – a dish doesn’t have to be high up on the wall; it just needs to be able to see the right part of the sky. Remember to make sure the bracket is lined up vertically, otherwise it will be hard to find the satellite. If you live in a conservation area, or rent your home, remember to check whether or not you are allowed to install a dish.

After fixing the mounting bracket to the wall, or whatever else you’re using, adjust the pole to ensure that it’s vertical – check with a spirit level on at least two sides. When you have the pole straight, make sure any bolts and screws are done up tightly – you don’t want the dish to move in high winds. Now you need to find out roughly what latitude and longitude you are at. The quickest way is to go to www.streetmap.co.uk, and type in your postcode. Click Go and right at the bottom of the page, click the link in the phrase “Click here to convert coordinates.”

Where to point the dish

Make a note of your latitude and longitude; for our example, it’s 51.5 North and 0 East. At Satellite Signals there’s a calculator that will tell you where to point your dish. Enter 28.2 in the ‘Satellite orbit’ box, and your latitude and longitude in the next two, then click the button to calculate the results.  The important information is the ‘Dish azimuth relative to magnetic north’ which tells you how far to rotate the dish left and right, and the ‘Dish elevation’ which is how far up in the air to point the dish.

The elevation setting on your dish points it at the satellites above the equator

Elevate!

Mount the dish on the pole and tighten to bolts enough so that it doesn’t move on its own, but you can still move it from side to side with a little pressure. Now you need to set the elevation; the dish is designed so you can read the value from a scale when it’s mounted vertically – on our dish, in fact, the scale is marked in latitude, rather than elevation, so we set it to around 51; other dishes have the elevation marked on the scale. We’ll do the fine adjustments later.

All points

Now you need a compass, like the ones sold by outdoor stores – this one cost around £7. Rotate the numbered dial so that the azimuth value you found earlier is by the black marker. Then – making sure you’re not near large metal objects that could affect the reading – rotate the compass so that the arrow pointing north is between the two luminous dots.

A compass like this makes pointing the dish much simpler

When it is, the mark on the dial, and the luminous line at the end of the compass will show the direction in which you have to point your dish. Holding the compass below the arm of the dish may help you line it up.

Connecting

The dish is now roughly aligned, so now we can connect it to the receiver. You’ll need to drill through a wall or window frame to route the cable outside to the dish. When you’re drilling through the wall of a house, always remember to do it at an angle, so that the outside is lower than the inside; this stops water running into the hole. You can also get a cover to protect the outlet, too. Feed the cable through the hole from the inside. Cut off a short piece – around two meters long – and fit a connector to each end of it, and then fit a connector to the piece that leads back to the receiver.

A cheap satellite meter will help you align the dish to the satellite - but won't tell you if it's the right satellite

Find the satellite

This is a satellite finder, and costs about £15; it makes a high pitched whistle when it’s receiving a signal from the LNB. Connect the receiver to the labelled socket, and use the short cable you made to link from the LNB to the other one. Turn on the receiver, and then adjust the knob on the satellite finder so the dial reads about 5. Now, slowly move the dish until you find the strongest signal.

When you’ve done that, hopefully everything should be lined up. Now you can go into the setup screens on the receiver, and try to tune it in. If all is well, the Freesat box will tell that it’s found the satellite, and then proceed to set itself up.

However, if it doesn’t, a Freesat receiver can be a bit fiddly; if you have a friend with a dish, you could plug your receiver into their dish first, and set it up. Then, plug it in to yours, and select a channel like BBC1, and as well as the indication from the meter, you’ll also see the picture appear on the TV screen.

What if I can’t tune in?

If no channels are found, the dish is not aligned correctly, so go back and check everything carefully. Positioning is crucial – budget satellite finders like the one we used will find any satellite, not just Astra 2, so if you’re a long way off, you could be pointing at a different one – there’s a satellite at 23.5, for example, too. More expensive meters will confirm the name of the satellite on the display, but since you’ll probably only be doing this once, I don’t think it’s worth spending the extra cash.

This may all seem like a chore, but as long as you’re careful, it’s actually surprisingly easy to align the dish.

After you’ve finished, remember to make sure all the bolts are tightly done up – without nudging the dish as you do so – so that it can’t be blown out of alignment by the wind.

Unicable and the Foxsat HDR

Originally posted as an update to the PCW Blog

After a little more playing around – the full review of the HDR will appear in the March 2009 issue, out next month – it’s time for some more comments on the Unicable side of things, which is one of the more interesting technical aspects of the Humax.

Unfortunately, we have to report that we didn’t have a lot of success; while the box proved quite stable when testing with a standard dual-LNB and twin cable setup, we had many more problems with the Unicable. This included poor performance, problems with dual recording, and complete lock-ups requiring a power off to recover. Now, this could be a problem with the LNB – we only had one available to test – but our gut feeling is that the Unicable support in the box isn’t fully working.

Perhaps that shouldn’t be a massive surprise, as it’s not a mode of operation that the standard setup procedure will even allow, but it will be disappointing to anyone who wants to avoid running extra cables. Humax tells us that they may revisit this area of the firmware in future.

If you’ve tried Unicable, please let us know; it is, unfortunately, a bit fiddly; as well as having to access a hidden menu to activate it on the HDR, most satellite finders – especially cheap ones – don’t support Unicable LNBs either, so you need to line up the dish with a standard one, and make sure there’s no accidental movement when you swap LNBs.

It’s also worth pointing out that one frustrating aspect of the Humax in this regard is that the diagnostic screen makes it very hard to check that you have a good signal on both tuners. Although it shows the tuned transponder on each tuner, with strength and quality, it shows the same one for both. You can’t access the menu while recording, so you can’t force each one onto a different channel and then check, which would have been helpful in trying to troubleshoot our Unicable setup.

So, a regretful thumbs down for Unicable support at the moment – but do remember that that’s just one part of the HDR, and not something that the vast majority of users will have any issues with.

Humax Foxsat HDR First Look

Originally published on the PCW blog

Humax Foxsat HDR – a first look

The Humax Foxsat HDR is one of the first Freesat+ devices, and we’ll be publishing a review in the March issue of PCW, when we’ve finished our testing. Meanwhile, we’re going to share some of the inside information, and our first impressions of the device.

First, if you’re not sure what Freesat’s all about, read this introduction. Freesat+ is the brand name that’s being used for PVRs on the platform, which allows you to record and play back, without a subscription, including the HD content that’s broadcast, though admittedly that’s fairly limited at the moment.

The Humax box is a sleek piece of kit, with a front panel that sports just a power switch and an LCD display; round the back you’ll find optical audio output, HDMI and SCART sockets, ethernet – for future use, including a version of the BBC iPlayer – and a USB port. The front panel drops down to reveal another USB port, and a few extra buttons to allow you to navigate the menus or change channel without the remote.

The remote itself is a fairly large affair, which can also control other devices; it works ok, though we’ve found it to be fairly directional – in our test rig, the HDR is at the side of the room, and we need to point the remote at it for reliable results.

Installation is pretty straightforward – like any twin tuner satellite box, you’ll usually need two connections from your dish; we’ll have more on that later. A wizard detects your satellite LNB, asks for your postcode, and sets the regional versions of some channels for you; if you’re in Scotland or Ireland, you might want to pick an English postcode so that you get ITV HD, though.

Picture quality looks pretty good, for both HD and SD channels, connected via HDMI to our display, though it’s worth noting that we didn’t get a picture when using our HDMI switch box, something we’ll investigate further.

Some interface issues
When you call up the EPG, the picture disappears briefly as the box fetches the data from the Freesat EPG transponder, but then it reappears behind the guide; there’s no annoying music, as found on Sky’s kit. Recording is a simple matter of highlighting a programme in the guide and pressing the Rec button on the remote – but if you do, you won’t be asked if you want to record a series. For that, you need to press OK, choose if you want to watch or record the program, then press OK, choose SD or HD if both are available, and then on the next press of OK you’ll be asked if you want to record the whole series. We’d like an option to do all that in one press, frankly.

Some other bits of the interface need a few too many presses, like deleting files, for example. And there’s still the bonkers Freesat genre screen that forces an extra press to get into the EPG, though Humax has wisely provided an option to turn that off.

Overall, our first impressions are of a pretty good box, good picture quality, and easy to get to grips with, though with some niggles; we’ll be doing more testing over the next week or so, before our full review.

Under the hood
Meanwhile, a little bit about the technical aspects; the HDR is powered by a Broadcom 7403 chip; it’s one of the first to use this brand new system-on-a-chip – the earlier Humax iCord uses the 7401. The use of such a new part helps explain the £300 price tag – but it should ensure it’s going to keep up with developments on Freesat.

It also supports Single Cable Distribution (SCD), otherwise known as Unicable. Right now, we’re testing with a Unicable LNB from Inverto. This allows up to four compatible receivers to be connected using a single cable, rather than requiring one cable per tuner. A normal LNB shifts the satellite signals to an intermediate frequency; with Unicable, there can be up to four of those intermediate frequencies, and each tuner is assigned one, which it uses to talk to the LNB, which contains four independent LNB units and the electronics to handle the signalling between them and the receivers. So if you don’t want to run extra cables Unicable could be a solution – as long as all your kit’s compatible, and you don’t mind paying around £70 for the LNB – we got ours from Germany, including shipping. Buy in the UK and pay around £80.

However, we’re still testing this aspect of the HDR, and we’ll report more on that via the blog; it’s also not a configuration that appears to be detected by the install wizard; instead you have to access a hidden menu to enable it, so probably not one for the casual user just yet.

Satellite basics

Originally published in Personal Computer World as a part of the article All about Freesat

All about Freesat

Originally published in Personal Computer World.

All about Freesat

For many years, satellite television in the UK has been synonymous with one company – Rupert Murdoch’s Sky. Thanks to encryption contracts and proprietary software, anyone hoping to be able to record programmes on a media centre PC has been out of luck, with major channels like Channel 4 locked up using Sky’s encryption system.

But all that changed in May with the launch of Freesat, a new service backed by the BBC and ITV, promising free channels – including all five of the terrestrial services – free high definition and easy to use features like an electronic programme guide.

But, beyond all the fanfare that surrounded Sky’s first ‘free to air’ competition, what has really changed with the launch of Freesat and – more importantly for PCW readers – does the new service mean that, finally, satellite reception on the PC is a more practical proposition than it has been in the past?

In this feature, we’ll be looking at what Freesat really is, and finding out whether and how it’s changed, not just standard TV viewing, but also the landscape for PC owners who are thinking about using their computers to record and watch digital television.

What is Freesat?

Amidst all the publicity that Freesat received when it launched, there’s also been a certain amount of confusion – one PC satellite tuner company claimed compatibility, only to see Freesat state the opposite; some stores have been caught refusing to sell equipment without installation – so it’s worth explaining exactly what it is, before looking at the technical side of things, and what it means for PC users.

First, there aren’t any new satellites; none of the broadcasters owns their own satellites. The most popular satellite broadcaster in the UK, Sky, rents its transponders from SES Astra, and all the channels you can receive on a Sky box are broadcast from Astra’s cluster of satellites at 28.2 degrees East of due south; the cluster is collectively known as Astra 2.

Freesat not only uses the same cluster, but actually uses the same transmissions – with a couple of exceptions. There’s no ‘Freesat satellite’ or ‘Sky satellite’ – just Astra 2. And that means that if you have a dish that’s presently set up for Sky, it will receive Freesat too. So, what’s actually different? And what’s the point?

Throwing off the shackles

One of the main reasons for the creation of Freesat – and the approval of the idea by the BBC Trust – is to ensure that, after digital switchover, the core BBC and ITV channels are still available, even in those areas that won’t have Freeview coverage. Doesn’t Sky do that already? Well, yes – but Sky’s “Freesat from Sky” option isn’t guaranteed to last forever, and it relies on the proprietary Sky box, and the issuing of cards. By running their own service, on a non-profit basis, the idea is that the main terrestrial broadcasters won’t be entirely in the hands of a competitor – and they’ll be able to launch new services more easily.

That includes services to take advantage of the Ethernet connector that’s mandatory on every Freesat box, and which can be used for a return path on interactive services, and delivering video content via the internet. So, for example, your broadband link could be used for voting in competitions, and to deliver BBC iPlayer content to your TV, via a Freesat box – something that should be available later this year.

It’s the desire to offer features such as that – plus a few other useful extras, like fixed channel numbers, beloved of broadcasters – that means Freesat had to create a box specification of its own, rather than just tell people to use standard ‘free to air’ satellite receivers, which are popular in many other countries. For more about the technical side of the system, check out ‘Inside Freesat’ and for a guide to the basics of wiring up a dish, see ‘Satellite Basics’.

Freesat and your PC

Obviously, what’s appeared in the shops so far is Freesat receivers, but the new service also has some potential implications for people who want to receive satellite TV on their PCs.

One of the most significant is simply the lack of encryption; all the channels on Freesat are broadcast in the clear, and that includes Channel 4 and – from sometime later this year – Channel 5; see www.freesat.co.uk for the full list. Previously, both these channels relied on Sky to provide encryption and regionalisation, and though there were free in the sense that you could use a Sky box with a £20 one-off ‘Freesat from Sky’ card to receive them, a standard PC satellite card wouldn’t be any use (though some Linux-based PVR software could emulate the necessary Sky decryption software, with a card reader). Channel 4 is already broadcasting on Freesat, along with E4 ,More 4 and Film4, and with five coming soon, those who can’t get Freeview but want to build their own PC-based video recorder will find things a lot simpler.

Eagle eyed readers of PCW’s web site will recall Hauppage claiming their satellite product was suitable for receiving Freesat, only for Freesat to claim otherwise. So, what’s the real story?

It’s actually a little in-between. Freesat has a logo, and a specification for their receivers, and a licensing programme. You can’t put the Freesat logo on something, or call it a Freesat receiver, unless it meets their specs – and as explained in the box ‘Inside Freesat’, that includes some elements, like the interactive MHEG software, or software that understands the Freesat broadcast EPG, that you don’t get in the box with a PC tuner.

But, if you put a satellite card in your PC, since all the channels are transmitted as standard DVB free to air broadcasts, you’ll be able to tune into them. You won’t get the red button interactive stuff, and you won’t – usually – get a programme guide, either. But you’ll still be able to watch. It’s not true, as some web sites have claimed, that only Freesat receivers will receive the programmes.

There are a few things to watch out for; for example, at the moment, ITV HD is broadcast as an interactive data stream, rather than a standard channel, so most software may skip past it when you tell it to scan for channels. And since some software comes with tools to grab an EPG from the internet, you won’t need the one that Freesat broadcasts.

At the moment, all you need is a tuner card or USB module that supports the DVB-S (Digital Video Broadcasting – Satellite) standard, but we recommend that you opt for one that can handle DVB-S2 instead, as channels including BBC HD have indicated that they may move to this in the future, since it’s a more efficient way of broadcasting.

And, if you’re prepared to forgo Windows in favour of the Linux-based MythTV media centre package, work’s already underway – thanks to some clever reverse engineering – to decode the Freesat EPG data. It’s also possible to decode some of the interactive elements too – which means that, if the BBC iPlayer on Freesat is delivered as a ‘red button’ MHEG application, it might be possible to make it work on MythTV too. But before you run out an install Myth, it’s important to realise that it’s still very much experimental. According to David Matthews, who created the EPG patches, there’s still quite a lot of work to be done, and there are a lot of rough edges.

High definition

Besides the basic free to air channels, one of the other selling points for Freesat is High Definition, without a subscription. Technically, you could receive BBC HD already, with a standard HD satellite receiver, a PC card (see Satellite TV on your PC), or a subscription-free Sky HD box – but with the latter being fairly expensive outside a contract, the majority of people viewing HD in the UK so far have tended to be Sky subscribers. And that’s one thing that Freesat hopes to change.

That said, so far, the HD offerings are limited to BBC HD (which should have increased from its four hours a day to around nine by the end of the year), and ITV HD which launched with the start of Euro 2008, planning to show selected films and sports events over the summer. Like BBC HD, it uses the H.264 codec, so you’ll need a reasonably powerful PC, or a graphics card with H.264 support to get the best of it.

So far, that’s it as far as HD goes – channel 4’s HD service is still tied to Sky’s encryption, but may appear later, though both broadcasters and Freesat are being cagey about what channels will appear and when, beyond confirming channel five, and that there should be around 200 channels by Christmas. The bulk of those will most likely be ones that you can already pick up with a PC card, simply added to the EPG – the need to co-ordinate some work with Sky means that it can’t be done overnight.

What next?

So far, there aren’t any firm plans for a licensed PC solution for Freesat, but it’s not been ruled out, either. In the meantime, unless you decide to buy one of their official receivers, the most important change that Freesat has brought about for PCW readers is that it’s finally possible to buy a cheap satellite card for your PC, and record all the main five channels, as well as most of their digital spin-offs.

With a little effort and some Linux software like MythTV, it’ll even be possible make your own satellite PVR (see PCW October 2007, pcw.co.uk/2197364), and use an internet EPG to schedule recordings. For those who have to pay Sky £10 a month to record on a subscription free Sky+ box, it’s potentially very attractive. And it’s likely too that at least one of the Freesat PVRs – the Humax, due this autumn – will allow you to transfer standard definition programmes to your PC.

Even if you don’t plan to buy a dedicated Freesat box, one thing’s clear – satellite TV on your PC is now more straightforward in the UK, and that has to be good news.

Satellite TV on your PC

Originally published in Personal Computer World

If you’ve not gone digital yet, you’ve only got a few years before it’s unavoidable. Nigel Whitfield explores the options for satellite TV on your PC.

TV on your PC isn’t anything new; there have been tuner cards around for years, allowing you to pick up analogue stations and record them on your hard drive. But broadcasting is changing to digital, and the existing analogue signal is set to switch off by 2012. There’ll be more channels, high definition and exciting new services.

While many people will just choose a set top box, digital TV and the PC are natural bedfellows, allowing you to use the PC to record programmes, and put it at the heart of an entertainment system. Take a look around the PC stores, though, and you’ll get the impression that where TV on your PC is concerned, terrestrial reception is the only game in town, with tuners for analogue or Freeview easily available. But what if you want channels that aren’t available on Freeview, or you can’t even get a signal? You could be forgiven for thinking that you can’t do satellite TV on your PC – but you’d be wrong. And in this article we’ll explain how you can tune in.

To many people in the UK, satellite is synonymous with Sky’s subscription package; in most of the rest of Europe, however, that’s not the case – in many countries, free satellite services are much better established, partly because there isn’t the extensive analogue terrestrial coverage that most people in the UK take for granted. And, even in the UK, a subscription isn’t a necessary part of satellite television. Both the BBC and ITV broadcast their channels ‘Free to air’ or FTA, which means there’s no encryption needed – and that includes the BBC’s HD trial channel, and the ‘extra’ digital channels like BBC3, BBC4 and CBBC.

And just as terrestrial broadcasting is a standard, so too is digital satellite, using a system known as DVB-S; so a DVB-S receiver, whether stand-alone or PC-based, is all you need to be able to pick up extra FTA channels. Why pay Sky then? They provide an electronic programme guide, and also ‘regionalisation,’ which ensures, for example, that people who watch ITV via Sky automatically see the correct version for their area on channel 103.

On a standard satellite receiver, not having a programme guide can be annoying – most channels simply broadcast Now and Next info – and it’s not always easy to move channels around. But on a PC, it’s much easier to overcome those issues; you can download programme information from the internet, organise channels how you like, and even record directly to the hard drive. So whether you can’t get Freeview,  you want to sample the BBC’s HD service, or you just fancy a few extra channels, a satellite receiver for your PC could be the solution.

First steps

First, you need a dish; if there’s not one set up already, don’t despair – they’re actually quite simple to set up, with a compass and a £20 satellite finder, and you don’t even need to fit it to the side of your building; you can site a small dish on the patio if you like, as long as it faces in the right direction. Our sister magazine ActiveHome explained exactly how to install and align a dish – an article that I’ll be adding to GoneDigital soon; there are plenty of web sites that will help you calculate the alignment, such as www.satsig.net/ssazelm.htm. If you do have a dish, remember to check out ‘Satellite basics’ – it’s not as simple to share it between an existing receiver and your PC as you might think.

You’ll also need to decide what sort of receiver you want to use; although in our visits to retailers all we could find on the high street was a PCI satellite card, there are also receivers available that can connect via USB or FireWire, which may be easier for some installations, and essential if you’re using a laptop.

Choosing the right card or adaptor isn’t just a matter of deciding if you want internal or external, though – there are other things to bear in mind too. For example, some cards will come with a remote control, or with AV inputs, so that you can pass signals from a DVD player or VCR through them, giving your PC more of a media-centre feel.

There are also two other key factors. First is encryption – it’s used to protect pay channels, and in the satellite world, what looks like a PC card slot on a receiver or adaptor is known as a Common Interface slot; equipment with one of these can accept a CAM, or Conditional Access Module, into which the smart card for a subscription package works. It means, essentially, that you can pick the CAM for the service you want to subscribe to, and you’re not forced to buy a receiver from the TV company.

The big fly in the ointment – and a potential stumbling block for UK users – is Sky; there’s no official CAM available for Sky’s encryption, so you usually need to have one of their receivers and a card, even for free to view channels, like Channel 4 or five. We say ‘usually,’ because a programmable CAM, called the Dragon CAM, can emulate Sky’s encryption, but the card still needs to be put in a genuine Sky box from time to time for regular updates, even if it’s a free card. For most people in the UK, this really means that it’s best not to bother with a CI slot and CAM, and simply use satellite on your PC for Free To Air channels.

The second factor you need to consider is High Definition. We said earlier that the satellite standard is called DVB-S; that’s true, but only half the story. There’s a newer standard called DVB-S2, which is so far used by only a few channels, but is likely to be used by more in future, as they move to HD; the BBC’s HD service uses DVB-S right now, but may switch, so if you want to be futureproof, you should invest in a card or add-on receiver than supports DVB-S2.

Software considerations

It’s also worth considering the software you want to use on your PC – we’ll look at some of the options later. But for now, keep in mind that if you want to use a particular piece of software, rather than just accepting what comes with a satellite card or adaptor, check the compatibility list first – some programs are very picky, and having the ‘BDA’ drivers necessary for Windows Media Centre is no guarantee that a card will work with other software. In many cases, it may be best to decide which software you want to use and choose a card or external satellite adaptor that’s known to be compatible.

If you want to watch HD channels, remember that you’ll also need a codec that understands the H.264 MPEG4/AVC format used on many of them; and that goes hand in hand with a powerful PC. It’s hard to give a definite figure for how powerful a PC you’ll need – it will depend on the satellite card you have, and the graphics card – but it’s likely you’ll need at least a 3Ghz Pentium 4 for smooth playback; dual core machines will perform better.

There are three main choices of codec for playing back the HD streams – CoreAVC (www.coreavc.com), Cyberlink’s H.264 codec, included with PowerDVD 7 (www.cyberlink.com), and Elecard’s Moonlight H.264 (www.elecard.com); expect to pay around £30 for a codec if you don’t have one already – if you’ve already equipped your computer for playback of HD discs, it should be capable of managing satellite, since the broadcast bit rate is lower than you’ll find on a disc; August’s Hands On Hardware and Performance columns cover the requirements for HD in more detail.

Turn on, tune in

If you just want to dip your toe in the waters with satellite TV, without worrying about HD – or you plan to upgrade to a graphics card that will do it justice later – you don’t need to worry about a codec; you just need software that will tune in your satellite card or adaptor, and play the MPEG2 video streams, and maybe record them on your hard drive.

We experimented with the Kworld DVB-S 100 card, available from Maplin (www.maplin.co.uk) for around £60. Other manufacturers making cards and adaptors include ElGato, Hauppage, Technisat and TwinHan. The Kworld is a basic card which comes with its own software and a copy of CyberLink’s PowerCinema 5, which effectively turns your PC into a media centre, so you can record from satellite, and play back music, video and photos on the PC, without needing Microsoft’s Media Centre.

In use, however, we found configuration a nightmare; to successfully scan all the channels, it was necessary to power the computer off completely if an error occurred – otherwise PowerCinema would claim to find over 200 channels, but actually duplicate the first nine many times! We had better luck with ProgDVB (www.progdvb.com),  which can be downloaded free, though it’s a more bare-bones application, without the slick interface of PowerCinema – but it can still record shows, display TV full screen, and will decode HD streams, as long as you have a suitable codec installed; Elecard will sell you a version bundled with a H.264 codec for

Setup is a little bewildering for newcomers; you need to use the Diseqc settings screen to specify what sort of LNB you have – the defaults should be ok for the UK – and which satellite it’s pointing at, before you can scan for channels. Diseqc is a satellite standard that’s used to select between multiple LNBs, or control movable dishes; for a single-dish setup, you’ll typically choose ‘None’ for the Diseqc option, then add an LNB pointing at the Astra 2 satellites, at 28.2 East.

Another solution is the $99 (£50) TS Reader (www.coolstf.com) which is notable for its ability to stream a channel to the VLC media player (www.videolan.org); that opens up the possibility of having the satellite card on one system, and watching a channel on laptop elsewhere in your house – but it’s a much more technical application; for a free media-centre type system, check out GBPVR (www.gbpvr.com), though as with other packages, you’ll find limited compatibility with satellite cards.

All this, of course, is largely academic if you want to watch channels that are Free To View on Sky’s system; by the time you’ve obtained a Dragon CAM, and paid for a satellite PCI card or adaptor with a CI slot, the costs will soon be mounting up – and you still won’t have a programme guide without hunting around on the net. One alternative, if you do want to be able to record from channel’s on Sky’s system is CielPlus (www.cielplus.com), and add-on card for some Sky boxes that provides a USB port and lets you access the data using TS Reader – and even schedule recordings via the Sky programme guide.

Ultimately, of course, the big question is “Is it worth it?” And there’s no clear answer to that – for a future-proof card that can receive DVB-S2, you could pay over £100, plus the cost of your dish and LNB. And you still won’t be able to receive Channel 4 and five easily; but on the other hand, if you simply want HD, and have a powerful enough PC, or would like access to a range of foreign TV stations, using your PC to record satellite TV is likely to be cheaper than buying a stand-alone satellite PVR – and potentially a lot more flexible.