On Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:03:12 +0100, John wrote:

she lives in a non-cabled area and is on a relay station and has poor
reception and not much hope of Freeview for a while.

Poor analogue reception doesn't bode well for Freeview. But bung her
post code into the checker on http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/ to find out
when DSO should be happening for her.

As I see it there is Freesat and a free offering from Sky.

As I don't think they will want to go down the route of subscribing to
additional services, what benefits does each offer?

Freesat (either one) offers better quality than Freeview but does
require the installation of a dish rather than simply (ha!) plugging
in the existing aerial feed. There are fewer channels on Freeview
than either Freesat service and with Freesat you can expand what
channels you get beyound those in the EPG's via the "other channels"
part of the receiver.

An existing terrestial aerial does need to be producing decent
analogue reception, if not you may well have to upgrade or at least
work on it to produce decent analogue reception.

Installing a dish is not difficult for a competent DIYer that can
drill holes and run cable. The hardest part is probably finding
somewhere suitable to site the dish so it can direcctly see the
satellite and the alignment of the dish onto the satellite. The
receivers have built in strength and quality meters but they are
quite slugged and coarse so the fine adjustments required to get the
best signal can take a while. Basic alignment meters are quite cheap
thouugh (£20).

There isn't much (if any) difference between Freesat and Freesat from
Sky in terms of the channels you get but with Freesat from Sky you
have to pay £20 to Sky to get a card that will enable the Sky digibox
to get the regionalisation correct and allow viewing of channel 4 and
five via the EPG. If you move you'll also have to tell Sky your new
address to get the correct regional channels. A Sky digi box that has
not seen a card since power up will default to London services on the
BBC and not have 104 or 105 available.

With Freesat you give the set/box your postcode and it then fills in
the regionalisation correctly and you can get channel 4 and five with
jumping through hoops (or paying any more money).

We've had Freesat from Sky for years, it's done the job but the
recent card change means that Sky wanted another £20 for no real
benefit to us. So we have moved to Freesat, much simpler, it just
works.

--
Cheers
Dave.