My fiancée & I's flat is fairly new-ish, maybe 4 or 5 years. The building has a shared/communal satellite dish system, which is distributed to each flat - each one has a single outlet in the corner of the lounge, to connect a Sky STB to.

But it's obviously not new enough - no provision for having two feeds for Sky+ or SkyHD.

And we can't get a dish of our own put up. Not allowed, unfortunately.


Sky+ / SkyHD won't work properly with only one feed... as, I think, the 1st tuner normally handles what you actually watch, while the 2nd tuner normally handles recordings, & the 1st is only used to record if the 2nd is already busy, or I guess if you're recording what you're watching (so to record using one feed, on input 1, you schedule a dummy recording which starts shortly before what you actually want to record, so when what you actually want to record starts, the box will use input 1 / tuner 1 as no.2 is busy).


I've heard that although a normal splitter wouldn't be any use, apparently a "smart splitter" may help.


Quote Originally Posted by cityboy @ CF
What you need is a smart splitter that will split the single dish feed into two signals and then you connect one to each LNB port on the Sky+ (or HD) box. The "smart" bit of the splitter is that it gives priority to one LNB - connect that one to the second LNB port (which is the one the recorder uses unless you are watching the programme you want to record). That way, you are guaranteed that your chosen programme will record. If you are watching another channel at the time you can carry on doing so unless it is the opposite polarisation to the one you are recording. So, this is not as good as two LNB feeds but much better than just one.


Anyone know if that's right?


Do you think it'd work?