# Sky+HD box to Free to Air



## rayn (6 Oct 2016)

I am thinking of leaving Sky. I have a Sky+HD box with wireless connector.
I tried to see what channels I could get with free to air by withdrawing card and turning power off and on again. There is no difference to programs and on all stations I get "please insert card".
I thought the free to air channels would be available. Can anyone please advice what I am doing wrong or was I miss informed?


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## dub_nerd (6 Oct 2016)

You need to leave the card in to get the FTA channels, even if your subscription is expired. Note that when you leave Sky the recording functionality of the box will stop working and any previously recorded material will be unavailable.


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## PaddyBloggit (6 Oct 2016)

Sorry for hijacking thread but it's kinda related.

I'm pulling out of Sky next week. My contract is up and I'm tired of paying big money for repeats.

What's the story with the availability of channels online/alternative boxes?


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## dub_nerd (7 Oct 2016)

One of the major pains about using a Freesat satellite box, including an expired Sky Box, is that you will not receive any of the Irish channels -- ironically, the ones your TV license is actually paying for. Sky has a deal with RTE to provide Irish channels encrypted on the Sky platform in Ireland only, but for commercial and licensing reasons the unencrypted Saorsat is carried on a different satellite with a smaller footprint, which needs a whole other differently pointed dish.

There are a couple of combo boxes available that gives you a satellite tuner _and_ a Saorview (not Saorsat) tuner which picks up digital terrestrial -- you'll need a separate antenna for Saorview but if you're in a good reception area it could be a cheap indoor aerial. There are some good threads on boards.ie discussing this stuff.

I don't know anything about online options, except that some of them are illegal and will (rightly) incur the ire of the mods if discussed here or on boards.ie.


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## Lightning (8 Oct 2016)

If Saorview is not an option, one can use FreeSat for the UK channels and hook an Android TV box up to the TV and use the RTE Player and the TV3 player apps to legally watch Irish terrestrial TV.


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## dub_nerd (8 Oct 2016)

I refuse to watch RTE Player because even assuming you have the internet bandwidth to stream it, a) it serves several ads between segments, which infuriatingly are often the same ad repeated several times for up to five minutes, b) it won't serve any content if you install an ad blocker, c) it seems to suffer regular glitches even on a good internet connection, whereupon it starts the whole ad rigmarole again every time.

I could just about live with RTE broadcast TV having both ads and license fee when I could skip the ads with "live pause" functionality, but they've managed to make the RTE player completely unusable.


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