- The Guardian, Saturday August 16 2008
Is it possible to run both Freesat and Sky off the same satellite? If so, could you feed two TV sets at the same time, one watching Sky and the other watching Freesat?
The major difference between Sky and Freesat - the no-subscription offering from the BBC and ITV - is not the dishes but the receiver boxes, which decode different satellite information.
This means you should be able to use a Sky receiver in one room and a Freesat one in another - particularly useful for multiple-TV households that don't want to pay the fees Sky demands for additional set-top boxes. You need to make sure your dish installation has enough 'low noise block' (LNB) outputs: a typical Sky set-up has four connectors, allowing you to add extra receivers simply by running the cable from the LNB box to your TVs.
· In an earlier column on receiving BBC World Service broadcasts in Europe, we mentioned WorldSpace Radio's free West Africa beam. Peter, in Spain, got in touch to say he uses WorldSpace, but that the free transmissions are 'slanted to Africa, and often in French or other languages', plus the full English service costs about £85 a year - leading him to consider using Freesat instead.
