Spare Satellite

[Vin047]

I won't bore people with the details, but long story short, I have a spare satellite currently lying on my roof (not attached or fixed, just lying there) and im wondering whether I could use this satellite to extend the number of channels I receive?

I just ordered a dreambox 600s from linuxsat.eu (heres hoping theres no problems) and I believe they have 2 LNB inputs? Could I use my existing satellite (sky) plus this spare one (set up to point at a different satellite then sky) and receive a larger number of channels?

Sorry if this is a noobish question, but yes I am a noob .

And finally (for the biggest noob question ever, and sorry I know its unrelated) but what exactly are bouquets? I see this term posted everywhere but no clue what it is and what it does etc.

Thanks in advance!

[westkill]

how big is the spare dish..?

bouquets are were you put the big long list of channels after a scan into
catagories like sport , movies , news , etc
there 2 ways to your setup
1 two dishes going to seperate set top boxes
or
2 two dishes with a diseq switch to the set top box ie the dreambox
were your sky card will have to be inserted to get the channels
but needs some configeration to work

[Vin047]

ah ok thanks, so basically bouquets are collection of categorised channels?

the 2nd dish is about 2-3 times the size of sky dish (dunno exact size im afraid)

and i think i had it all wrong about the 2 dish thing, i assumed dreambox could aggregate content from 2 different satellite sources, and present them in a single epg but apparently not? (or is that what the diseq switch does? i could be wrong but sounds like id have to switch to 2nd satellite every time i wanted to view content from that source and then back again for sky content)

anyway ill think about both options. incidentally, and again sorry for the noobishness, but can sky boxes work with other satellite sources (eg using it for my spare satellite rather than sky satellite). and also, how comes nobody's ported linux or something to a sky box?

anyway, is there any other recommendations/ideas as to what i could do with this second dish? just curious to see whats possible nowadays

[westkill]

the size of your dish sounds like a 60 or 80 cm i think
sounds bigger enough for some european satellites
what i was trying to say is
say both dishes are setup
you 2 cables coming from each dish into a diseq switch then 1 cable from the diseq switch to the dreambox when, changing channels it will automatically switch from 1 dish to the other

[Vin047]

oh right i get you now, so just have to find a cheap place to get diseq switch now

anyway this is all hypothetical, it probably will be a while before its set up.

so what can i do with the my current sky boxes, ie. can it be changed by putting linux etc on it? and can it accept other satellite sources other than sky?

thanks for all your help and patience!

[mikeyb]

You can't put mod the sky boxes, but the linux box you have got will do a lot.

[Vin047]

yh i thought so, but my question is how comes? ive seen this kinda stuff happen for so many other devices where "hackers" modify software to have more freedom (gaming consoles come to mind but also things like ipods and iphones). I would have thought there would be a lot of interest for sky box "mods" since loads of people own one but i believe the only "mod" is the hard drive upgrade.

im just saying, since i already have a sky box and a sky+ box being able to modify them both would be awesome (stream media to my other tv's at home from my home sever is something id love to have) but now i have to reinvest in linux boxes. oh well, nothings perfect i guess