REPASSAC – 33 minutes ago  » 

The Foxsat is designed as a freesat unit and not as generic FTA sat unit. It does however support the use for non-freesat channels at a basic level. To see what you have tuned you need to change one thing in setup – STB mode – it needs to be set to non-freesat.

Thank you. I see that in “non-freesat” mode it is picking up English-language channels, apparently from 19.2°E, in a list starting 5xxx, but not showing me ARD, ZDF etc. How do I see these?

grahamlthompson – 27 minutes ago  » 

Have you set up diseqc on the Foxsat ?

http://foxsat-hdr.wikispaces.com/DiSEqC

Yes, it was having found that link above that brought me here.

Although the menus are not quite the same on my box, I went through the procedure with the hidden menu and watched the box list the channels from 19.2°E as it found them during the scan, including the ones I want to watch. However, although by switching STB mode to “Non-Freesat” the red box at the top of my channel list says “Astra 1 19.2°E” and all the channels have a reference number 5xxx (xxx for 28.2°E Freesat), the only channels I can see in the list are British ones like Channel 4.

I have a feeling I need to break out of a list of pre-defined channels somewhere, but I can’t see where…

EDIT I think when I did the setup I was puzzling over the screens too much. There it suggests that 19.2 should be set up as D but trial and error tells me that’s wrong. 28.2 had set itself to B so by elimination on mine 19.2 was A!

Thanks for your help. I believe the “PVR” is a sort of inbuilt disc that acts like a videotape and can tape programmes. That will be jolly fun. Still, one thing at a time.

They should be there but don’t expect them to show the channel name. They will be somewhere in the 5000 range.

Found them, see above! Now to set favourites. I want channel 5133 to be 1 and 5134 to be 3!

I was starting to think with all this “freesat” business that I had bought a box that didn’t support ordinary channels! Phew!

EDIT it appears you can’t set “favourites” for non-28.2°E and that you cannot mix 28.2°E with 19.2°E in a single list. This means you have to re-arrange the main list, though so far channel 1 is 5001, how annoying if I always have to type that just to get Channel 1.

You can find where channels are and see them through “LIST” but you have to go to the completely separate “MENU – EDIT CHANNEL LIST” to move them, which is a bit of a pain so far…

grahamlthompson – 2 minutes ago  » 

If I remember correctly non-freesat channel numbering starts at 5000 so you would have to use 5001 and 5003.

Thanks, I’ve just found that, how user-unfriendly!

I’ve tried taping a programme on the inbuilt disk and the quality was marvellous.

It’s the first receiver I have had which imposes on me not being able to start the channels I watch at 1!

I have done a not-good-enough search for “instal Custom Freeware addon”. Do you have an easy-to-find “pshaw these n00bs” link?

Start here

http://www.avforums.com/forums/freesat/1747997-media-file-server-bundle-foxsat-hdr-release-4-0-part-4-a.html

Thank you very much. My head is spinning from all this technical talk!

I have now managed to set up my channels in a decent order, although I cannot mix and match satellites in a single list, e.g. have 28.2°E and 19.2°E channels next to each other so I can switch from RTL ( to BBC (9) with one “up arrow” as the commercials come on.

I have also just taped a programme from Arte onto an E-180 which has come out superb quality.

So I am now virtually where I was before thanks to your secret tips and setting 19.2°E up as DiSecq(?) A.

I will worry about the rest another time – after all, why would I have satellite if I just wanted to watch British television? (So I could watch the Tour de France highlights in English twice! )