how did sky uhf receive free to air channels

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tombrownzz

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#72970 6-Dec-2010 08:27

A house of a mate of mine has a roof uhf antenna that used to have sky uhf. The previous owners said sky provided and installed the antenna. Did sky uhf used to receive tv1,tv2,tv3 because the sky uhf antenna was uhf/vhf or could the sky antenna and set top box only receive uhf? We are trying to find out.

scottjpalmer

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#413294 6-Dec-2010 08:44

UHF Sky didn't have 1, 2, 3 etc but plug in a Freeview terrestrial (not satellite) set top box to that antenna and you will get them in HD.

trig42

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#415500 10-Dec-2010 12:49

As above, those old Sky aerials are only UHF (and it must be pretty old now too by the way - check for corrosion). They will not pick up FTA VHF TV (which will be switched off in a couple of years anyway hopefully).

Any newish TV (<2 years old) or a Freeview|HD box, or a TiVo will be able to pick up FreeView channels off it though.

Assuming of course, you are in an area that they broadcast Freeview DVB-T in.

Spyware

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#415527 10-Dec-2010 13:59

tombrownzz: A house of a mate of mine has a roof uhf antenna that used to have sky uhf. The previous owners said sky provided and installed the antenna. Did sky uhf used to receive tv1,tv2,tv3 because the sky uhf antenna was uhf/vhf or could the sky antenna and set top box only receive uhf? We are trying to find out.

Sky analog decoders simply passed through any RF present on antenna lead. If you wanted VHF channels then obviously you needed a VHF antenna as well as a UHF antenna. Decoder could also be programmed to tune to certain channels that were present and pass that out on its own UHF channel, e.g., if you lived in Christchurch then channel selector 1 could be set to VHF channel 3 as TV1 broadcast on channel 3 VHF from Sugarloaf or channel selector 9 was set to channel 62 which is the UHF frequency of Prime. Obviously Sky did not provide any duplicate transmissions as it does with FTA channels on Sky digital.

Sky only installed a UHF antenna because its channels were on UHF band and any VHF channels could be viewed independent of their decoder/decrypter assuming you had the correct antenna. Obviously in some areas where the VHF signal was strong people received VHF signal using this UHF antenna. This is typically the case when people are ignorant of what the correct antenna for VHF reception even looks like.

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