Thursday, August 5, 2010

Receiving Five with a Digibox without a Card

Receiving Five with a Sky Digibox without a Free to view card


In the next couple of months Sky will be replacing all the Blue yellow house cards with a new viewing card. The new card will be automatically sent to all existing and new subscribers. Unfortunately this will mean that all viewers who currently use a Free-to-View card or expired Blue yellow house Sky card to receive Five on their Sky Digiboxes will no longer be able to do so. With the old style card inserted in the box, Five will still appear in the listings but when selected the viewer will be asked to contact Sky. This will also be the case with Sky 3, Fiver and Five US.


However all is not lost as there is now a Free-to-Air version of Five available courtesy of Freesat (No card required) on 10.773 GHz, Horizontal, Sym Rate 22,000, FEC 5/6, which may be added to the other channels menu of your Sky digibox. To do this please execute the following instructions:-


To add Five to the other channels menu ensure that your digibox is operating normally then press Services, this will reveal the following menu


1)Using you Sky Digibox2)Telephone Numbers3)Parental Control4)System Setup5)Auto Standby6)Favourite Channels7)Other Channels


(Please note that Auto Standby only appears in 3.7.6, 1.2S4.FJ software or later, if your box has not been updated recently there will only be 6 items in this menu, 5) being Favourite Channels and 6) being other Channels


Press 4 or use the down arrow key to highlight System Setup and press select this will reveal the next menu


1)Picture settings2)Sound settings3)Language and Subtitles4)Add Channels5)System Details6)Signal Test7)System Test8)System Health Check


Press 4 or use the down arrow key to highlight Add Channels and press select this will reveal the next menu which should be as follows


Frequency 11.778Polarisation VSymbol Rate 27.5FEC 2/3Find Channels


With Frequency highlighted key 10773 from your remote, this should now appear in the frequency box, if you make a mistake press backup and the original 11.778 will be displayed. With 10773 shown in the frequency box press the down arrow key to select Polarisation, use the right arrow key to change this to H, press the down arrow key again to move to Symbol Rate and use the right arrow key to change this to 22, press the down arrow key again to move to FEC and press the right arrow key twice to select 5/6 finally press the down arrow key again to highlight Find Channels, press select and wait.


The following list of channels should now appear


BBC 1 London FiveBBC 2 EngETVBBC Tes 2BBC Tes 3BBC FourCBBC ChannelC Beebies BBC ThreeBBC 1 NI With BBC 1 highlighted use the right arrow key to highlight Five and press the yellow key to add a Tick, now press select to save either press Sky to return to the main picture or Back Up 3 times. Free-to-Air Five will now have been saved in your other channels menu


To now view the Free-to-air version of Five press the services key and then press either 6) or 7) depending on your version of software or use the down arrow key to highlight the Other Channels and press select. Five should now appear highlighted, press select to view.


Please note that as this channel is not in Sky EPG there will be no programme information i.e. Now/Next information displayed in the search and Scan Banner. At the time of writing it is unclear if FTA versions of Sky 3 Fiver and Five US will become available.


Auto Standby Function


When Sky sent out their last Software update upgrading it from 3.6.4.18, 1.2S4FH to 3.7.6, 1.2S4FJ they included an extra feature called Auto Standby which they didnt tell viewers about, which meant that updated boxes started to randomly switch to standby as the Auto Standby feature default was set to ON. In an unprecedented move Sky rolled back the software to 3.6.4.18 and retransmitted the update with this feature defaulted to OFF, and in the case of Pace boxes a new version of 3.7.6.ns was transmitted. However this did not totally correct the problem so if your boxes appears to randomly go into standby ensure that your digibox operating normally then press Services, this will reveal the following menu


1)Using you Sky Digibox2)Telephone Numbers3)Parental Control4)System Setup5)Auto Standby6)Favourite Channels7)Other Channels


Press 5 or use the down arrow key to highlight Auto Standby and press select this will reveal the next menu


Enable AutoStandy ONSave New settings


Press the right arrow key to set Auto Standby to OFFPress down arrow key and select to save new settings.


Please note that if a forced software update is executed using the backup key routine the Autostandby function will default to ON.


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