I have upgraded to Horizon (great product and free box!!). UPC haven't looked for the old box back and I have connected it to the TV in bedroom to watch recorded content. I have a free to air satellite connection in the bedroom and am wondering is it possible to use the old UPC box as a decoder which would give me extra recording facilities. Anyone got ideas??
Hi Joey, The output from the Satellite is co-ax which is the same as UPC. I think the function of decoding is going to be similar so there should be a way to restart the UPC box as generic rather than as UPS.
Hi Joey, The output from the Satellite is co-ax which is the same as UPC. I think the function of decoding is going to be similar so there should be a way to restart the UPC box as generic rather than as UPS.
Not so. Lots of equipment use coax cable, the signals carried come in a huge variety. Carrier frequencies, encoding, compression, all likely to be different. Also, satellite boxes send power/control to the LNB on the dish that tune it to pick up individual transmission streams, cable carries all channels in one encoded stream.
Leo is right. Satellite and Cable are coded and decoded completely differently.
The vast majority of STBs are designed to decode either cable or satellite not both. The standard Thomson or Pace boxes used by UPC are fairly cheap Cable only boxes.
Sorry Frank, Only seeing this now. I find the Horizon box to be excellent. There have been many comments on many sites expressing negative feedback, however, I have nothing but positives to say about it. The facility to record 4 different programmes at the same time is really good. Also there are little things, for example, if you are watching something and then hit Record it will record from the start (if you've watched from the start. Overall very happy!
I have an old UPC box. I am just going to bin it as I can't see any use for it. All my rooms have pre-installed tv sockets and a simple cable connection to a tv set gets the basic UPC package without subscribing to multi-room viewing.