@basilfaulty wrote:
When I upgraded to Sky Q in summer 2024 I was advised I needed a mini box to watch TV in another room and was given a deal at £5 per month for one minibox. Previously I had Sky+ HD and because my flat is wired for internet in every room I was able to buy HDMI extender devices and have the Sky TV in other rooms. but got the impression that Sky Q couldn't be used in the same way however when my deal at £5 per month ended and the multiroom price went up to £15 per month I discovered that I could indeed use my HDMI extenders with Sky Q.. What I had to do to get it to work was change a setting in the audio visual menu I had to reduce the picture resolution from 1080p to 1080i as it wouldn't work with 1080p. As far as I am concerned 1080i works fine for me and I can't really notice much difference.
I've now cancelled multiroom and returned the minibox to Sky today. Just thought some might be interested in this. Obviously if you want to watch different Sky channels in different rooms then this system isn't for you but I don't need to do this.
Apart from that my Sky+ HD box is still connected to the dish with a single feed and so if I want to watch two different channels at the same time this works better than Freeview which seems to be very difficult to keep good reception on. I never realised that Sky Q only requires one feed from the satelite dish leaving the other one for an old digibox..
SKy Q does need 2 feeds from a dish- each feed carries approx 1/2 of the channels as each feed carries the channels from the different polarised transponders - one for Horizontal & one for Vertical.
SKY Q only works fully with a single feed when connected to a system capable of handling the dSCR commands and where that system has access to all frequencies and polarities (in communal systems often provided by 4 separate feeds - one for each of the different bands & polarities)
SKY HD boxes will not work fully on a Wideband feed as used by SKY Q - they use a different oscillator frequency & (as above) only one polarity - the wideband feeds do not respond to the voltage change & 22KHz tone that re used to switch high & low bands. So whilst you may get some channels you are likely to get < 1/4 of them.
edit : There are some Hybrid LNBs that can 'smart switch' between Wideband & Universal feeds but these are fairly rare & not used as standard - later Hybrid LNBS have 2 wideband feeds & 2 universal feeds (as used by SKY HD) - again SKY only installed these occasionally & when they knew both types of boxes were to be used - they no longer install them
