Freesat without STB?

[elite]

I live in a valley in the UK, and so get my terestrial signal form a relay transmitter that will not be upgraded to digital terestrial until 2009 :mad:

I've therefore been looking at getting Freesat

Now, my question is do I have to shell out the £150 for the STB and all, or could I just purchase a dish and a DVB-S card and get the same channel line up or are some/all of the channels encrypted and therefore need the viewing card?

[fatjerry]

http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/freeview.htm

[elite]

Cheers for the helpful reply...

Seems, I'd get BBC, ITV etc with no probs but B$B, CH4 and Five insist on encoding their channels although they are free...:mad:

[martint123]

It's supposed to have something to do with copyright and their permissions to transmit films and stuff - they only pay for UK coverage so that's what they have to do.
Ebay is a source of cheap sky boxes & dishs, sometimes with cards - cancelled, but still OK for freesat channels.

[elite]

Thanks for the tip - kind of wanted to avoid doing the whole irblaster thing - oh well..