Freesat vs freeview

We ditched sky for freesat years back so at least had a dish already installed. Freebies reception is rubbish.
Pretty sure our Samsung tv has the ability to talk to a usb drive.
But why would you want to? Just stream what you want when you want. We never use the built in hdd in our freesat box.
In fact why bother with the dish? Just stream the live tv you want to watch via a fire stick or similar.
Re freesat channels, there may be more but you won’t watch them. There is a big hole called channel 4hd on all freesat branded devices (not your Samsung tv) and 4od is missing from the streaming part of freesat boxes.
In your situation I would just get some fire tv sticks I reckon.

I think that this is the case. Does it have 2 sat inputs ?

We have both and they are broadly the same, though I prefer Freeview. Sometime Freeview reception deteriorates so we flip it onto Freesat. The dish was on the house when we moved in, so it didn't take much setting up.

Not sure we record much anymore as it can be streamed on catch up.

There is a big hole called channel 4hd on all freesat branded devices

C4HD has been back on Freesat since the start of this year.

But why would you want to? Just stream what you want when you want.

Because streaming commercial channels often involves unskippable ad breaks, recording and replaying doesn't.

just keeping their broadband as we can only get fttc at our house for broadband from other providers.

..... And what do you get from Sky?

All the non-Virgin broadband options come in via copper wire from the cabinet (including sky) and it’s quite a distance from our house. So I think any of the non-Virgin broadband options will be at best 30mbps download. At the moment we’re supposedly on Virgin 100mpbs download but when I’ve tested it I’ve found it’s always about 50mbps. Both my wife and I work from home with loads of teams / zoom calls etc.

I don’t know if our Samsung tv has freeview as well as freesat- I’ll have to have a look and see. If so I can try freeview in that main room and see if it works ok. I could pick up a relatively cheap external hdd and see how the recording goes. Everytime we’ve tried streaming normal sort of tv it’s been annoying with ad breaks. We also tried an android box and it was really buggy and annoying - so not keen to go down that route.

We have freesat on our main TV and just stream on other TVs. Only like that because when we bought the house it had a dish and the satellite cable sticking out of the wall. Not noticed any channels really missing, especially now C4HD is back so I can actually read the text on the F1 highlights.
We also have a samsung smart TV. I tried the USB recordingon to a stick. The interface for it is woeful like it was added on as an afterthought. Really difficult to navigate. It also likes to just randomly stop recording in the middle of something for no reason. We don't use it like that anymore. But these days 99% of our viewing is streaming and catch up. Yeah the adverts can be annoying on 4OD but it's a necessary evil to not have to pay for it.

Well I never knew that about c4hd. Still have to use the firestick not the freesat box for 4od.

Can't say I've noticed any more (decent!) TV channels on my Freesat box compared to Freeview.

Anyway - you only need Quest and Yesterday! 🙂

Yeah the adverts can be annoying on 4OD but it’s a necessary evil to not have to pay for it.

Until the rules are changed and you get 40mins of advertising per hour!

And the one-off cost of a recordable Freesat box is well worth it so I don't have to watch one more bloody Dormeo or Verisure advert! 🙂

We have Freesat, very very similar to Freeview. Our dish was removed by some builders about 2months ago - and we've not missed it tbh.

Now watch everything on catch-up.

Trying to get my mum off paying for SkyQ now I've seen Manhattan is a thing (on another thread here) - looks viable enough for someone tech-illiterate .....

Is the Sky dish sufficient (and pointing the right way) for receiving Freesat? Just need to effectively put the cable off the dish out of the sky box and into a freesat - and that's job jobbed?

Yes, people who lived here before me had a sky dish and I can pick up Freesat. Same standard of picture I get with my roof arial which delivers Freeview.
Use catch up too with a Roku stick.

We ditched the lot and got a hooky fire stick...

Short of buying a ‘proper’ freeview or freesat box with HDD in it, is there another way of recording from our tv that has freesat already in it? E.g usb flash drive / usb external hard drive etc?

My LG TV needs a HD plugged in the back to record TV channels, but it'll only record the channel that is on. Most of my recordings are therefore set in the early hours so it will change channels and I won't have my viewing affected.

It'll still record the TV channels if I'm watching on the firestick, or one of the built in apps - My5, iPlayer, Netflix etc

Edit: This is on Freesat

@andy5390

Thanks - we’ve got one LG smart tv but haven’t had much luck with it. It seems to want to retune freeview all the time - whereas the previous Samsung non-smart tv just gone on with it. Our 2 main tv’s are Samsung smart TVs - but only one has an aerial that goes near it. The other is in an extension I’d struggle to get an aerial to. If needed I could prob hook up a satellite dish with external cable to that one but probably won’t bother. I mostly watch blue ray or Amazon prime streamed in that room.