Hi there, I need to know if we could use Sky Receivers to receive another free to air broadcast using a dish and LNB like Hotbird and Astra, and if the Sky receiver has a recording hard disk will it record from Hotbird and Astra or it must have the Sky card to do so? I would appreciate an answer on this. Many thanks

Abu Abdullah, August 2009

At the end of the day a DVB-S STB is DVB-S STB and so the answer to whether a Sky box can receive stuff from other satellites is yes - but there a BIG however.

You won't be able to use the Sky menu structure and so you will need to add all the channels manually. Sky+ will not work.

You would be better off buying a proper Free to Air Receiver for about fifty quid from Lidl, Aldi or Maplin. (The latter may even have PVRs.)

T, August 2009