How To Get Sky Q & Sky/ Freesat At The Same Time

Here’s a new situation that quickly arose out of nowhere. With Sky Q an adjustment needs to be made the satellite dish for the Sky Q system to work properly. This is done by replacing the LNB, which is the attachment at the end of the satellite dish to which the coaxial cables connect. A traditional universal single, Quad or Octo LNB needs to be replaced with what is called a wideband LNB, although there is quite a bit more for that. Please read our blog on what the difference between Quad LNB’s and Sky Q LNB’s are and I also recommend visiting our Youtube channel and watching this video for a more detailed description.

The problem is if you want to keep your traditional Sky+HD or Freesat running at the same time as your Sky Q system it isn’t going to work anymore. Sky are very clever like that! Although they have created a system where your multi-room boxes no longer connect to your satellite dish direct, they instead connect wireless to your main Sky Q box. You may for various reasons not want this system, perhaps the amount that it costs. But do not despair, there are solutions for you!

Sky Q & Sky Off Same Satellite Dish – Including Freesat

To run Sky Q and normal Sky or Freesat at the same time off a satellite dish. You will need to instead of installing a wideband LNB, install a Hybrid LNB instead. There are couple different makes and models but essentially, they have the same final result. You connect your Sky Q box to a couple of the LNB outputs, usually there are 6. I haven’t come across one with more yet. Then connect your Sky and Freesat boxes to the other outputs. Some of these LNB’s allow you to connect the Sky Q box to any of the LNB outputs and others require you to connect to specific ones. You should check before installing yours which one you have to make sure you’re connecting the right cables to the right places. Also remember to get the skew adjustment set correctly when replacing the LNB as this could lead to poor satellite signal.

Separate Satellite Dishes For Sky Q & Sky/ Freesat

Another option you have so that you can have Sky, Freesat & Sky Q all running simultaneously at the same property is just to have separate satellite dishes. When Sky Q first came out this was the only option, but you can have one satellite dish feeding your Sky Q box and another feeding all of your Sky and Freesat boxes. You many need to choose this option if you used to have a Octo LNB feeding multiple satellite points around your property that you want to keep.

dSCR Multiswitches – Satellite Amplifiers

Now days when installing communal TV systems, we usually have to deliver terrestrial TV (Freeview), FM, DAB, Sky, Sky+, Freesat, Freesat+ and Sky Q all on the same system and believe it or not which includes other TV services like BT Vision, TalkTalk & EETV. With the exception of Sky+ & Freesat+ which both require two separate signal cables (usually) it can all actually all be done by only installing one cable to each flat from the communal IRS TV system.

You may be wondering how this is possible if you have been told that Sky Q can no longer work on a single feed and that you require two cables. This is true to an extent but only when you’re using a Sky Q wideband LNB or a Hybrid LNB. With using dSCR technology you can actually connect the Sky Q box on a SCR mode with only uses one cable! Although dSCR LNB’s exist that you can attach directly to your satellite dish these are still very expensive, so it makes more sense usually to just install a second cable from your satellite dish. Neither of these options work within a communal TV system which uses a Quattro LNB so you would need to change all or some of the multi-switch amplifiers to allow for a dSCR signal. Another word of warning these amplifiers are still very expensive so you may want to consider just adding some add of adapters to your communal system which will allow one or two flats to use Sky Q to keep the cost down until more people want to take out a Sky Q service.

Freesat has also announced that it will soon release Freesat boxes that are dSCR compatible, so the future of TV systems is going back to a single feed per flat before Sky+ came out, plus Sky have announced soon you get Sky without a satellite dish which just runs over your broadband connection. Who knows what the future holds. It’s fair to say that the broadband coverage in this country needs some considerable improvement before we say good bye to satellite dishes and maybe Sky should change their name to “Cloud” or something.

That’s it, bit of a short blog this one. As always please LEAVE A COMMENT in the comment section below if you have any questions and I will do my best to help you.

Bye for now.

Tom