Page 1 of Hauppauge Nova-S with Sky+ Dish?

Hi there,

I`m in the middle of building my HTPC and would like to have a freeview tuner inside. Living in a velley in Sounth Wales really doesnt help since I cannot receive a freeview signal. I was reading the other day about freesat(i think thats what it was called) thing where you use a Sky+ dish and box to receive the freeview chanels. Brilliant idea, but I want to receive these channels through a tuner in my HTPC to give me more flexibility.

Then I read about a Hauppauge Nova-S card (here), which receives satelite signals. I read a review and that said that the card was setup originaly to point at Astra 1 at 19.8 degrees east, but that sky+ dishes are aimed at Astra 2A at 29.9 East. Then the reviewer goes on to say that using the card with Sky+ dish would only allow you to receive free to air and unencrypted channels.

Does anyone know which channels are free to air are unencrypted? Would I be write in thinking the freeview ones?

Also later in the review it says

"If you're moving from analogue to digital, then, yes, keep your current dish, and you'll be able to use all of the services. If you've already gone digital, save your money."

Does that mean that using an old sky dish I would be able to receive other channels, or maybe just all of the freeview channel?

Thanks in advance for any help

Not all the Freeview channels are Free to Air on satellite- All of the ITV regions C4 and C5 are still encoded. All of the BBC channels (Including all the regional variants) are FTA now though. There are lots of FTA channels from within the `Sky Digital` platform as well-Take a look at http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html for exactly what you can get.

I have the Technisat Skystar2 pci card in my PC and it`s fantastic for grabbing at `broadcast quality`- The Skystar is usually a fair bit cheaper than the Nocva-S card too.


BTW- The Astra 2`s are at 28,2 east, so don`t set a dish to 29,9 east otherwise you`ll get nothing but noise!