View Full Version : Freesat on XTrend ET10000
OK - it's a noob question. I'm sure I'm missing a trick but here goes...
Am an engineer - fairly familiar with linux, very comfortable with networking etc. ... but never owned a satellite box before. So couple of weeks ago set out on steep learning curve to get into this wonderful hobby...
-> Got a dish, lined it up, bought a receiver (xtrend et10000), tuned it in. So far so good. Have all my free-to-air channels.
-> Installed OpenVIX enigma2 image and played around with the GUI... very nice.
-> Have a terrestrial tuner in the satellite box, put up an aerial and connected to it, tuned it in, getting pretty happy now - all the satellite free-to-air channels and irish dtt channels.
-> Started playing with the plugins... got my 7-day epg sorted... getting really happy now!
Most of the above came from following guides on this forum and reading around here. So - I got stuck when it comes to the freesat channels. I though I would ask directly.
A lot of the threads that ask about CCcam etc. touch of card sharing - that's not what I want. I want to be able to plug in an old Sky card or a "Freesat-card" and get ITV2/3/4HD - or E4, e4+1.
Question 1) Is this possible!? From my reading here it seems to be but maybe I picked something up wrong
Question 2) Can I use the internal card readers in my et10000 to do this?
Question 3) (Don't laugh!!) The card goes in chip-facing-down, right!?
Question 4) I've installed CCcam from a .IPK linked to on this forum. It installs. Starts. I've transferred a blank CCcam.cfg file to the /etc. folder on the box...
but I just get 'no card inserted' when I check the card in the menu (or by browsing to http://<my-ip>:16001/entitlements). Any idea what's wrong?
Thanks, in advance, for any help. Apologies if the questions are pedantic/basic - I'm only a beginner!
flintdk
abu baniaz
19-10-16, 16:07
OK - it's a noob question. I'm sure I'm missing a trick but here goes...
Am an engineer - fairly familiar with linux, very comfortable with networking etc. ... but never owned a satellite box before. So couple of weeks ago set out on steep learning curve to get into this wonderful hobby...
-> Got a dish, lined it up, bought a receiver (xtrend et10000), tuned it in. So far so good. Have all my free-to-air channels.
-> Installed OpenVIX enigma2 image and played around with the GUI... very nice.
-> Have a terrestrial tuner in the satellite box, put up an aerial and connected to it, tuned it in, getting pretty happy now - all the satellite free-to-air channels and irish dtt channels.
-> Started playing with the plugins... got my 7-day epg sorted... getting really happy now!
Most of the above came from following guides on this forum and reading around here. So - I got stuck when it comes to the freesat channels. I though I would ask directly.
A lot of the threads that ask about CCcam etc. touch of card sharing - that's not what I want. I want to be able to plug in an old Sky card or a "Freesat-card" and get ITV2/3/4HD - or E4, e4+1.
Question 1) Is this possible!? From my reading here it seems to be but maybe I picked something up wrong
Question 2) Can I use the internal card readers in my et10000 to do this?
Question 3) (Don't laugh!!) The card goes in chip-facing-down, right!?
Question 4) I've installed CCcam from a .IPK linked to on this forum. It installs. Starts. I've transferred a blank CCcam.cfg file to the /etc. folder on the box...
but I just get 'no card inserted' when I check the card in the menu (or by browsing to http://<my-ip>:16001/entitlements). Any idea what's wrong?
Thanks, in advance, for any help. Apologies if the questions are pedantic/basic - I'm only a beginner!
flintdk
Those channels you mention are not on Freesat, they are on Sky. They are FTV, not FTA. OS the card needs entitlements to read the channels.
If it is a white card paired to a HD receiver, you wont be able to use on 3rd party receiver.
If its is red card, not sure if it works in CCcam. But in Oscam, you need the box id value
2. Yes
3. Depends on the card reader. There could be a logo to show which way.
SKY did a right job on confusing the issue when they issued "freesat on SKY" cards to UK customers. They actually provide very few additional channels over and above those available from Freesat apart from the ITV 2/3/4 and E4 HD variants that you mentioned.
I was never able to get my official SKY card to clear any of those HD channels. It worked fine for all SD channels on my entitlements. I cancelled SKY entirely last May and don't watch anything other than FTA channels and I don't miss it. Might be different if I was into footie, though!
You may be able to get an old UK card to work, I don't know for sure, but any RoI card will not work for clearing the FTV channels. I've always found CCCam to be tempramental - sometimes it would recognise the card, others not.
Ah - thanks folks for the replies! I got the difference between the "freesat from sky" and freeview and all that... I think! And Abu you're 100% spot on - I am wondering if I can get the FTV and not FTA channels.
I do have a white old Sly card at the moment... aww.
If I got a freesat box (half my family and friends live in the uk - so sourcing one is not a problem) and a genuine "freesat from sly" card - would that work in my third party box? Again - apologies for the questions - but while I can figure out the basics I'm not up to speed on what the different cards are capable of etc..
Thanks!
I might not have phrased that last question correctly...
If I buy a genuine, legit freesat from sky box and card (Like the "MANHATTAN PLAZA HD-S2") - is it possible to then use that card in my XTrend box (using cccam or mgcam or oscam etc.)?
Ah - sorry - just answered my own question.. those 'legit' freesat boxes don't seem to have cards :o - I assume all the necessary encryption is built in?
OK - so the picture finally dawns on me.
So to use the white card I have... I would need a sky box to go with it.
To use a red-card - I would really need the red (uk) card and the box it is "paired with"
... is that right?
And of course because those channels are on a sky platform sky can change the game whenever they want.
I start to see your point fat tony - not sure I'll miss those things too much/if any of those things are worth the hassle... as I'm just starting I wanted to try to get "as much free stuff" as possible!
Freesat is free to air completely and branded freesat receivers don't need cards. There is no encryption built in (well there is on freesat PVRs to protect recordings of HD programmes) as none is needed to view the channels. BBC 1/2/4 and CH 4 and 5 are available in HD as are a couple of news channels. All the rest of the ITV and Channel 4 / E4/ More 4/ Film 4 plus loads of other channels are available on the freesat EPG. The EPG and channel list (bouquet) is really what the freesat brand is all about - all the channels are FTA and there is a 7 day guide available. SKY has a similar 7 day EPG with most of these FTA channels plus movies and sports and they make you pay a monthly sub, but you know all that!
If your white card was paired with a SKY HD box in the past, then you should forget about it - an Irish card couldn't receive the ITV 2/3/4 HD channels anyway. If you get a "freesat from SKY" card from relatives in the UK you may be able to receive the ITV HD variants and E4 in addition to the SD variants you already receive.
OK - I'm clearly not able to read english...
"Freesat is free to air completely and branded freesat receivers don't need cards. There is no encryption built in"
- I thought 'freesat' was like a 'piece of sky branding jargon' - some of the channels on freesat are free-to-air (bbc etc.) and some one only free-to-view (i.e. encrypted, but watchable on a branded freesat box, which must therefore decrypt them). Or can you not view ITV2/3/4 HD etc. on a branded freesat box?
"All the rest of the ITV and Channel 4 / E4/ More 4/ Film 4 plus loads of other channels are available on the freesat EPG. The EPG and channel list (bouquet) is really what the freesat brand is all about"
An epg is just a program guide, right? So what is the point of having the encrypted channels (ITV2/3/4 HD, E4, More4) on an epg... if you can't view them because they're encrypted?
My white card is an english card fwiw... not an old irish one.
Ok - I'll start at the beginning...
Freesat is a brand, started by BBC/ITV as a satellite counterpart to the terrestrial Freeview service.
http://www.freesat.co.uk/ The channels are free to air (FTA) and can be received by any satellite receiver. The transmitted programme guide (EPG) and list of channels is managed by Freesat. Theoretically, the 7 day EPG is only receivable by Freesat branded receivers and PVRs as the information contained in it is compressed using a proprietary algorithm (huffman table). The table was reverse engineered and is now in the public domain so a lot of linux-based receivers use it to maintain a 7 day EPG. Many of the channels now available on Freesat started life on SKY but gradually, some of the channels which were once available only as encrypted SKY channels became free to air. The latest transfer to FTA is CH5 HD if I recall correctly. All (most) of the channels available on Freesat are also contained in the SKY EPG and channel line-up.
When SKY customers in the UK close their accounts their cards still work for FTA channels and a further subset of so-called free to view (FTV) channels which include ITV 2/3/4 HD and E4 HD etc. I think UK residents can also apply for this "freesat from SKY" card which really has nothing to do with Freesat the company. RoI residents have no such facility - an expired card does not have any entitlements. Furthermore, the boxes have an Irish EPG with RTE 1/2 TV3 etc. at the beginning of the channel list which can't be decrypted. Ironic, really, as the channels are free to air on the domestic terrestrial Saorview network. It's a question of sporting and movie rights, though, as otherwise our national channels would be available to all in the UK (shock, horror!).
If you use ABM (autobouquetsmaker) on the ViX image you can select a Freesat region (Northern Ireland, London etc.) and you will get the official channel list for that region. It will not include ITV 2/3/4 HD etc as they are not part of Freesat (but they are part of Sky's "freesat" line-up). The SD versions of ITV 2/3/4 are there on Freesat of course and ABM will manage the channel list if you configure it to run at a particular time each day. The Freesat EPG will download as you watch Freesat channels (it's a setting in the EPG config in ViX), so it will gradually populate over a period. If you want to download the EPG in one go (or if you also watch channels on SKY with a card in the box), then using CrossEPG will download the entire 7 day EPG in less than a minute. You would run CrossEPG once a day on a timer to keep everything up to date. I have Saorview and Freesat combined into one channel list (bouquet) and EPG using ABM and CrossEPG. I also have a SKY bouquet but haven't really used it since my entitlements ran out last June.
fat-tony - thankyou! That is the most concise explanation of the state of things I've seen. So I believe I get it now.
My mistake: I think I must have looked at the freesat-from-sky channel list (probably more than once!) and not the 'proper' freesat list, and then got it in my head that those HD channels would be nice to have. On the balance of things, having ITV2/3/4 in SD is absolutely fine. Pity about E4/More4... but I can live without those.
You mentioned: "I have Saorview and Freesat combined into one channel list (bouquet) and EPG using ABM and CrossEPG."
... and that is what I have done. It is - I have to say - pretty neat.
The only bit I'm missing is ITV2/3/4 in SD - I did a blind scan and ran down through the list (more than once :o) but didn't spot those. Just the HD versions - hence all the questions here. I did see the "+1" versions - but not the regular ones. I'll have another go at cleaning up the bouquets I have this evening or over the weekend and see if I can tune them in. I used a little program called 'dreamBoxEdit' to manage the bouquets - I have to say that was awesome, much faster than trying to manage the satellite channels one-by-one on the receiver itself.
I have some german and italian relatives too... so have been messing about with some of the channels on Astra1 and Hotbird (put three lnb's on my dish). So I think between figuring out about the dish, the alignment, the multiple lnb's and switches, the linux boxes, 'enigma2' (which I only found out about while researching the box), then all the plugins etc. ... maybe I just ran out of steam when I got to this stuff! Appreciate you taking the time to run through that for me- it's much clearer now.
I would suggest you try Autobouquetsmaker (ABM). It's in the setup/service menu. You set a region you want in Freesat and/or SKY and/or Saorview and it builds the list of channels in the correct order. You'll need a little bit of extra config to merge Saorview and Freesat into one, but try out ABM first and you'll never go back to DreamBoxEdit - certainly for the UK/Ireland channels. All handled automatically in ABM.
There is a whole section of ABM support on the forum which will show you the tweaks you can do with custom settings etc. - http://www.world-of-satellite.com/forumdisplay.php?441-AutoBouquetMaker-Support-Discusson
OK - cool - that sounds like exactly what I'm after. I had seen the vix gui settings for ABM but wasn't aware you could customise it more than that. Looks like I have an evening or two of homework /reading to do :-)
Thanks again, flintdk.
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