Tax Disc

[kithmo]

At present I have 1080p TV and Sky HD but am looking to economise somewhere. Mind you I also have BT for landline and broadband and I think that is another area for me to look at!

They might offer you a deal if you take BT Vision?

He said he wanted to economise, BT vision isn't cheap, I'd guess it's just as expensive as Sky. Although BT Broadband have some decent offers on.

[Opifex]

Back on topic, just paid £180 for tax on my wife's Auris which seems a lot .........

Only £180? My wife's ancient automatic Polo costs us £205 in tax - and only does about 25mpg. Luckily it doesn't get used very much.I'm in favour of scrapping road tax and putting the duty on fuel instead. That way the more fuel you use, the more the country has to import, the more you pollute, so the more you pay.

Says the guy who lives half the time in France

True, but until a couple of months ago I was paying £205 for UK road tax then only driving in the UK for half the year.

The Swiss have good wheeze that if you want to use their motorways you have to pay about £26 regardless of how far you're driving or how long you stay. It produces a steady income from the foreigners driving straight through Switzerland to get to France or Italy. All governments manage to get the money out of you one way or another.

[Doesn'tExist]

We've got the dab option and it is definitely worth it. Quality depends on the bit rate allocated and reception depends on the ability to receive the bouquet. But no complaints about that as well.

Our listening is mainly a combination of capital, kiss100, lbc, and classic fm. Where we live we couldn't get capital and kiss on fm.

On the tech eu site are the installation instructions Jont. If you can't find it I can mail you the pdf when I get home. Iirc it is plug and play but you need to remove a bit of trim.

To me my time is worth more than the extra £130 for dealer install especially with removing trim on a new vehicle and how those clips easily break etc.

You can always come across to ours again bud and take a look at the installed version if you get stuck.

On the other topic, got the human hdr freesat recorder and as said it is just plug and play into a sky plus installation. And works very well.

Also have freeview in the other rooms. Had to install a big arial those to improve reception on the hilly terrain.

[johalareewi]

Forgive me for going off topic of hybrids, but at home I am paying quite a lot each month for Sky+HD including sport, film and multiroom. To save money I am thinking of doing away with this and was going to use Freeview and have a new aerial installed, but if this is really blood6 awful would I be better going for Freesat instead?

Thanks for any replies,

David

Going off topic again!!

If you get decent analogue TV reception you should get decent freeview reception without having to have a new aerial. We are still using our original TV aerial and can get freeview from the transmitter over 30 miles away. Perhaps you can borrow a freeeview box to try?

As I only had a single (cheap) Sky connection I just got a single channel Humax tuner which doesn't record. Since found that I probably could have worked round it, with some limitations.

Still off topic.

On 1st June, my trusty Tivo is having its EPG switched off :( so I am researching alternatives. I have a single LNB dish and was looking at FreeSat HD+ boxes. I notice that they are twin LNB units but I am assuming they will work fine with just a single feed. I just won't be able to record two channels at the same time. Is this right or do they 100% need to have the twin feed?

[Doesn'tExist]

That is correct, I really would recommend to put an extra feed in as that really makes it useful.

The comment regarding freeview arial, it all depends on what the current arial is and how they implement the digital switch over in your area. In our case analogue was fine on Crystal Palace, but digital wouldn't work anymore until I had a monster of an aerial installed ;-) They wanted me to go to Sandy Heath instead. So it all depends.

[Jan&tone]

That is correct, I really would recommend to put an extra feed in as that really makes it useful.

The comment regarding freeview arial, it all depends on what the current arial is and how they implement the digital switch over in your area. In our case analogue was fine on Crystal Palace, but digital wouldn't work anymore until I had a monster of an aerial installed ;-) They wanted me to go to Sandy Heath instead. So it all depends.

I had a similar problem, used to pick up Anglia on Analogue but wherever that came from I can't get digital from there, Crystal Palace was blocked by hills/trees and Maidstone (Bluebell Hill) was the only option - which meant a new ariel pointing in the opposite direction! digital from there is fine - shows about 50pct which is about right till the changeover, then their single transmitter will be all digital instead of 50/50... I got a freesat hd box from Tesco's for 60 quid and plugged in to our old sky dish - we now get freeview - with occasional interference, and freesat (3 hd channels which frankly I can't tell the difference with)

So we finished up with a freeview tele, freeview plus dvd recorder, freesat box which hopefully will cover us when analogue finally goes some time next year...

[Seamaster73]

I have a single LNB dish and was looking at FreeSat HD+ boxes. I notice that they are twin LNB units but I am assuming they will work fine with just a single feed. I just won't be able to record two channels at the same time. Is this right or do they 100% need to have the twin feed?

As an aside, I live in a new building pre-wired for Sky with a communal dish and a single feed to each apartment. I get full Sky+/HD service, including being able to watch/record two channels, thanks to some clever box fitted at both ends. Perhaps there is an equivalent solution compatible with Freesat (maybe even the same one)?

[Jan&tone]

I have a single LNB dish and was looking at FreeSat HD+ boxes. I notice that they are twin LNB units but I am assuming they will work fine with just a single feed. I just won't be able to record two channels at the same time. Is this right or do they 100% need to have the twin feed?

As an aside, I live in a new building pre-wired for Sky with a communal dish and a single feed to each apartment. I get full Sky+/HD service, including being able to watch/record two channels, thanks to some clever box fitted at both ends. Perhaps there is an equivalent solution compatible with Freesat (maybe even the same one)?

lol - our place was so old even the phone wasn't pre-wired!!

[Doesn'tExist]

I have a single LNB dish and was looking at FreeSat HD+ boxes. I notice that they are twin LNB units but I am assuming they will work fine with just a single feed. I just won't be able to record two channels at the same time. Is this right or do they 100% need to have the twin feed?

As an aside, I live in a new building pre-wired for Sky with a communal dish and a single feed to each apartment. I get full Sky+/HD service, including being able to watch/record two channels, thanks to some clever box fitted at both ends. Perhaps there is an equivalent solution compatible with Freesat (maybe even the same one)?

The thing is that in that situation the dish still has a quad (if not more) lnb. What they have probably put inbetween is a (de)multiplexer which I think the manufacturer calls a stacker/destacker. So the dish still feeds in the various bands they get muxed into a single cable and signal and then split out again at the source. It is rather expensive for a communual building but if it already has quality cable it may be worth it.

For a single home, I'd just run the seperate cable required and install an lnb.

[Peter Sale]

I have the Humax Foxsat HD Freesat box which works off a single LNB. I was put off buying the HDR which records as I was told that it needs two feeds but then found a workaound on the digitalspy forum:

Yes you can use a single feed but with limitations - you can record one channel whilst watching another but they must be sharing the same polarity. On the Humax all you need to do is connect the satellite dish feed to input 1 then use a small piece of sat cable with F-plugs on both ends to connect output 1 to input 2.

I haven't tried this but it appears to work - someone else said:

afaik this is unique to the Foxsat-hdr on Freesat boxes (Sky boxes can only record 1 channel at a time on one cable and you can't view another) and assumes the link cable is present.

(Some Freesat boxes may allow two recordings at the same time from the same transponder, not sure which if any can.)

You can record two programmes at the same time if they share the same frequency band (high/low) and polarity.(horizontal/vertical)

You can also watch a third channel sharing a transponder with either recording, if both recordings happen to be from the same transponder you can view (and time shift) any other channel in the same frequency band and polarity.

Where a channel like BBC1 has low band horizontal and vertical regional variations you can change the second recording and third channel viewing options by switching a recording to a different BBC region

Funny how we got to this from question about needing a tax disc !

Peter

[psychynurse]

My last vehicle was a 4X4 with a roadtax cost of £220 for 6 months and so taxing online or a cost free visit to the post office to renew the tax disc is going to feel brilliant!

[dwilson]

I have the Humax Foxsat HD Freesat box which works off a single LNB. I was put off buying the HDR which records as I was told that it needs two feeds but then found a workaound on the digitalspy forum:

Yes you can use a single feed but with limitations - you can record one channel whilst watching another but they must be sharing the same polarity. On the Humax all you need to do is connect the satellite dish feed to input 1 then use a small piece of sat cable with F-plugs on both ends to connect output 1 to input 2.

I haven't tried this but it appears to work - someone else said:

afaik this is unique to the Foxsat-hdr on Freesat boxes (Sky boxes can only record 1 channel at a time on one cable and you can't view another) and assumes the link cable is present.

(Some Freesat boxes may allow two recordings at the same time from the same transponder, not sure which if any can.)

You can record two programmes at the same time if they share the same frequency band (high/low) and polarity.(horizontal/vertical)

You can also watch a third channel sharing a transponder with either recording, if both recordings happen to be from the same transponder you can view (and time shift) any other channel in the same frequency band and polarity.

Where a channel like BBC1 has low band horizontal and vertical regional variations you can change the second recording and third channel viewing options by switching a recording to a different BBC region

Funny how we got to this from question about needing a tax disc !

Peter

Many thanks for this and all of the other replies - brilliant

I will read through all of the replies again but I am pretty sure I will change to Freesat. I am paying Sky £870 a year at present which seems daft when I can get most of what we watch for free!

Cheers,

David

[johalareewi]

Yes you can use a single feed but with limitations - you can record one channel whilst watching another but they must be sharing the same polarity. On the Humax all you need to do is connect the satellite dish feed to input 1 then use a small piece of sat cable with F-plugs on both ends to connect output 1 to input 2.

Thanks for this. Not fussed about watching one channel while recording another. If the PVR is recording, we can watch live TV using the TV's built in freeview tuner. As long as I can tell the Freesat PVR not to use the second feed because there is nothing there, that would be great. Looks like a freesat HD+ box in June. RIP Tivo

[Peter Sale]

Sorry, forgot to mention the major problem in doing this - and this is not a technical one.

You probably won't have experienced how bad Sky customer service is until you want to get rid of it. I won't go into the bad experience I had but all I know is that after suffering the way I did there is absolutely no way I will ever go back to them !

Hope you won't suffer the same !

Prius collection first thing tomorrow - I am like a kid at Christmas !!!!

[Doesn'tExist]

I guess it is like with anything, it depends who you get. When we were leaving three happy years ago they really tried to keep our custom. In the end they offered every channel including plus and HD for just £17. I still left.

[johalareewi]

Sorry, forgot to mention the major problem in doing this - and this is not a technical one.

You probably won't have experienced how bad Sky customer service is until you want to get rid of it. I won't go into the bad experience I had but all I know is that after suffering the way I did there is absolutely no way I will ever go back to them !

Hope you won't suffer the same !

Prius collection first thing tomorrow - I am like a kid at Christmas !!!!

I don't have Sky so not a problem! Just have a dish that came with the house. It works OK (have checked it out) so FreeSat is an option.

Enjoy your new Prius.

[Seamaster73]

Dragging this thread back on topic, Carbuzz have compiled a list of all the cars in the UK with no road tax liability:

http://www.carbuzz.co.uk/blog/post/Tax-Free-Cars-List.aspx

[johalareewi]

... cars in the UK with no road tax liability:

You mean cars in tax band A. We are all liable for car tax and have to display a tax disc. It's just that at the moment, some of us pay £0 for it.

This could be changed anytime so enjoy it while it lasts.

[cbcdesign]

Dissapointing too see a thread in Prius forum discussing Sky TV. That revolting company gets enough publicity and god knows enough other forums exist for such discussions.

My sales exec at my local Toyota dealer didn't think Dab was worth the extra money, pointing out that if the demise of FM was coming any time soon, Dab would be standard on every car from every manufacturer and it just isn't. There are too many cars on the roads as well as new cars with FM to simply scrap it.

[Doesn'tExist]

Then again your sales exec doesnt drive your car everyday so who cares what he thinks ;-)

[dwilson]

Dissapointing too see a thread in Prius forum discussing Sky TV. That revolting company gets enough publicity and god knows enough other forums exist for such discussions.

Ironic as the discussion had moved on and you have just brought it back and given more publicity to Sky

Welcome to the forum - there are some very knowlegeable people on here who give top advice.

[Grumpy Cabbie]

Welcome to the forum - there are some very knowlegeable people on here who give top advice.

Who's that then? Be interested to know!?! ;)

[Jan&tone]

Dissapointing too see a thread in Prius forum discussing Sky TV. That revolting company gets enough publicity and god knows enough other forums exist for such discussions.

Lol, we'll chat about anything on here!

My sales exec at my local Toyota dealer didn't think Dab was worth the extra money, pointing out that if the demise of FM was coming any time soon, Dab would be standard on every car from every manufacturer and it just isn't. There are too many cars on the roads as well as new cars with FM to simply scrap it.

Agreed. DAB is pretty ropey where we live. We have a cheap portable/mains dab radio which works fine in one corner of our living room. On the other side of the room we have a very expenaive hifi with dab radio and all the bells and whistles.... Dab reception is crap! Move rhe portable and we lose the signal on that too... Can you imagine that in a car?? You would forever be losing the signal...

For the extra cost at the moment I wouldn't bother either.

[Seamaster73]

Dissapointing too see a thread in Prius forum discussing Sky TV. That revolting company gets enough publicity and god knows enough other forums exist for such discussions.

Sky's a necessary bulwark against the unhealthy dominance of the state broadcaster. More power to them.

[Doesn'tExist]

I think like with anything if you don't get reception there is no point in having it.

Where we live on the chilterns dab reception is fantastic, sound quality of the stations we listen to is much better than FM. But even more important there is a whole raft of stations on dab that do not broadcast on FM. And as we listen to those in combination with the possible superior sound quality it becomes a different proposition.

Same as with sky versus freeview/sat if you are into the additional channels it is worth it but if you are not it will be hard to see the value of it.

Regarding in-house dab when we put the correct aerial in reception became great without it is was not. In the Prius you do get a specific dab aerial ad well hence I probably haven't got reception issues compared to a portable one inside farradays cage ;-)

Oh and did I mention you can record dab in the Prius :-)