Hi all does anyone have any info on how I can watch freeview /freesat (which I currently have )and record another channel at the same time
I thought I may be able to do this buying connecting a HDR via usb to my tv and this works fine but doesn’t have the ability to watch a different channel than I am recording ie watch bbc and record itv at the same time
many thanks in advance happy new year to you all
I have an external hard drive to record things onto…in addition to the drive needed for watching.
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You don’t say how you are receiving the programmes so it is difficult to give a clear response. Standard Freesat boxes with a hard disk have the capability to record one programme (or more) while watching another. Sky boxes will do the same.
If it is still the case with the latest Freesat boxes, any HD recordings are encrypted with the Freesat box signature and need to be played back through the same box.
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I always thought you needed 2 inputs to record and watch different things at the same time
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You do and the boxes that pull off this trick have two tuners.
In principle you could do what @nick_Jones1 suggested and record a digital TV stream while watching another input - but I am not aware of any TV which can do this - I suspect it is because both streams would compete for the same resources (typically a hardware video processing unit).
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Hi thanks for reply we receive free sat through a dish and use a uk post code
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I presume you have a tuner box with a hard disk recorder (also known as a PVR - personal video recorder). The box has 2 aerial inputs so you need a dish with 2 collectors (known as a dual LNB). This effectively gives you two independent aerial feeds so you can watch one signal while the other goes to the recorder section
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You need two feeds from the dish too though. I’ve only one lead from my dish and I have tried (not too hard) to multiplex multiple LNBs on to it but It’s never really worked.
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If you only have one line from the dish, It just depends which channels you want to watch and record at the same time. Recording one channel will stop you watching some other channels - but not all of them.
Given that many broadcasters use more than one channel anyway (eg. for SD and HD, or +1 hour) we found we could almost always watch and record what we wanted at the same time, or record 2 channels at once, without putting in a second line to the dish.
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we have two lines from dish one to the back of tv which has no box
the other line is wired to a room in the house that we don’t currently have tv in
Once again thanks all for your help great support
We have a Humax HDR-1100S Freesat with 2 tuner inputs and a 2 LNB dish which allows watching one channel live whilst recording another or recording two channels at once. You can also record two channels whilst watching a previously recorded program.
Unless you lay out the money for a satellite multiplexer, you can only use one satellite box per LNB as the satellite box provides a tuning signal feed to the LNB.
We have an “octo” LNB that could be used for up to 8 satellite boxes
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Just a note that Humax have stopped making boxes so support could be poor, there are others around which might be a better option for people purchasing now.
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That’s a shame - we inherited sky boxes in the house and gites (not sure of the actual manufacturer) but they were awful in terms of both hardware and software - Humax has been far better.
Yes strange that arguably the market leader should stop. I wonder if they were purchased by someone like Sky with an ulterior motive??
They were not given the license to manufacture the third generation Freesat set top boxes, this went to Arris who are owned by Pace who manufactured the first generation Sky boxes.
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Sky are beginning to move away from satellite technology and have now launched an iptv offering called sky glass What is Sky Glass and how much does it cost? cable tv and iptv are dominating the markets worldwide and satellite tv is becoming old technology so less manufacturing companies are interested in making satellite boxs as there is less profit to be made.
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For those of you who may not have noticed, channel 4hd has returned to Freesat on channel 126.