Geddon

Recently my sky keeps getting bad sattelite reception and 'no sattelite signal' errors.
I thought it was a shrub that has been growing a lot recently nearly in line with the way the dish points but having attacked the shrub , there doesnt seem to be much difference.

Can you play around with pointing the dish yourself ? How precise is the position? Will I screw it up terminally? Please dont tell me I have to call the Sky monkeys to do it

john_s

iTrader: (1)

I got my hands on a satelite signal meter and aligned my dish myself. Just kept altering it slightly to get the best signal.

John.

hectic

your looking at a point in the sky at 28.2 degrees (give or take) east of due south.. somewhere in the region of 24,000 miles up into space with something not much bigger than a dinner plate.. so , YEP, I reckon its a pretty precise thing...

Geddon, chances are that if it goes off and on intermittantly, you may have a faulty LNB... (block on end of dish) if it were the dish 'offline' you would get no pics at all, ALL of the time....

Infractfree

For now ignore comments about the LNB. It could be something physical but I'd suspect cabling before the LNB. What you could try is unplugging the digibox and disconnecting the cable that comes from the dish. Then reconnect after a minute or so and plug the box back in. I've heard people say this clears 'static' from the cable and is effective. Sound a bit like bolleaux to me but if it works and might save you all this messing around..........................

If it's intermittent then the dish could well be slightly misaligned and the signal quality varying. You don't need signal meter, there is a crude signal strength indicator built into your sky box.

First things first look at that and see if it is varying. Press 'services' then 4 and 6. See if the signal quality and strength bars are varying. If these are solid at well over half for strength and at least half for quality then you can begin to suspect a hardware problem.
If they are fluctuating then all you have is likely to be a slightly misaligned dish. You have two things to alter- the elevation and the direction the dish points. Alter these very slightly if you can get at it easily and I do mean slightly.
Ideally you will be able to see the aformentioned test screen as you do this. Less ideally you'll need to have someone watching it and telling you the results- allow at least 5 seconds between actions so the results are actually seen on screen.

If none of this works ring Sky, ask for cancellations and when they ask why tell them your TV only works part of the time and you don't intend to pay for an engineer visit as you feel their programming is crap anyway. For extra brownie points tell them you're thinking of switching to Virgin. This assumes you're paying to watch Sky TV of course rather than just using their digibox to watch free TV.

sbk1972

I had this problem.

If you go into the setup menu, there's an option to test signal strength. That will show how good / bad the signal is. Over time, my signal got worse, I used to reset it by switching the power off / on. However, after a while it stopped completely. Called out Sky, but they wouldnt go up a certain hieght, I need the "Special Hieghts Team" ?!?!!?!?.

So, old SBK here got his ladder out and took a sneak look. Turns out that due to the winds of late, the dish had been vibrating and the cable was slowly rubbing against the chimney, eventually cutting 80% through the cable.

So, I cut the wire, and re-stripped and plugged the thing back in. I also tightened up the dish which knocked it out of line. By putting the unit on the signal strength test, getting my g/f to watch it, whilst shouting up to me, as I moved it, eventually got a perfect signal again.

Happy days. Go up and take a look at the cabling.

SBK

Mrs WRX

I had this but it turned out that the actual Sky box was dodgy and had to be replaced.

Infractfree

Possible but it's also in the interests of the 'enginee' or repair shop to sell you a new one. Depending on which model of digibox you've got some are known to have problems with the capacitors leading to exactly the kind of failure we may be seeing here.

Also does anyone else want to chip in with exactly the same advice I gave yet again? I do wish some muppets would try reading what's been written before they launch into one.........

skoobidude

I hope you carried out a risk assessment and that somebody supported the base of the ladder

Nick

sbk1972

Nick,

Nope, I did it 70's style i.e. when men were men and no one worried about health and safety, wearing flip flops and shorts, making sure my beer was safe from being knocked over, I legged it up that ladder, wire clippers in my mouth, investigated the problem.

Special heights team ? ????? ??? poofs more like ! :-)


SBK

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

Tell that to rod Hull...

stara

ok ok, don't get upset, it's not worth it.

anyhoo, i was a sky engineer in a past life, and usually USUALLY pic break up's are one of 4 things, 1. obstructions like birds sitting on arm of dish, or trees's etc 2. alignment 3. mobiles in vicinity of receiver 4. weather. (break ups meaning freezing and or pixle-ating of the picture). If you are feeling confident and want to attempt a alignment fine-tune without a meter (it is possible, but needs 2 people) just bear in mind the tiny amount of movement needed on the dish between an excellent signal and total loss of signal, we are talking the amount of movement you would use to maybe adjust a slightly wonky picture frame, i.e. finger tip movement and pressure and in millimeters.
So lightly slacken the clamps, gently apply pressure on one side of the dish rim so it barely moves (no more than 1mm) if signal degrades, go the other way, if it still degrades, then left/right is good. then do the same for up/down. no more than 1mm at a time. and be gentle. Sky won't want to know if you threaten to cancel due to a weak signal and you are out of warranty (although some people have had good luck), they'll just want to send an engineer and charge you

Infractfree

Sky don't have any 'engineers' that they send out to users houses. What they have are little more than trained monkeys who come and fit cables and equipment usually on a contract basis.

Anyway I digress if you can see the TV from the dish you don't need 2 people and if you ask for cancellations because of the poor quality of service I guarantee you will get a free call out/fix if you say the right things.

Geddon

Cool- really helpful guys
I shall try a few things tonight then.
My g/f said last night she was sure the signal never broke up during adverts- only during the stuff she wanted to watch lol

Trucker Ted

FPMSL , Cheers Jay ,i,ve just sprayed my monitor with beer mate.

dsmith

Just to echo some of the above.

Adjusting a sky dish with just the sky box signal meter is entirely possible. Works best if you can see the meter directly (I'm fortunate I can see a bedroom TV whilst adjusting). The trick is to make a very small adjustment and pause for a few moments to see the effect.

I take a Dish and sky box to Le Mans every year and can get it aligned from scratch usually within 10 minutes.

I had an intermittent issue - occasional freezing but more often "There is a technical fault with this channel", that was fixed by a new LNB.

hectic

And you know this because?

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

Recently with the advent of spring and those nasty trees sprouting big green leaves everywhere? I had the same problem for years and despite calling out the sky monkeys time and time again (free of course just threaten to cancel and see what I mean ) all they would do is replace the cable from the dish to the receiver despite my protests about the fecking gerat tree in the way after I canceled I took down the dish and re positioned it myself with the help of someone watching the signal strength and it works now even through the heaviest of rainfalls dunno where the "engineers" get their qualifications from probably a Christmas cracker

hectic

Aaahh , But KoT, those GERAT trees grow at a really rapid rate

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

Kiss my **** sky monkey

Infractfree

Engineers are highly skilled professionals registered with the Engineering Council, usually having passed a rather difficult degree course.

Not some muppet with a drill, ladder, van and a beer belly.

That said Sky do employ some broadcast and development engineers but you don't usually see them round at someone's house sorting out their dish alignment.

sbk1972

Not being one to add fuel to this fire, but when I thought about upgrading to sky+, the `engineers` that turned up at my house were perhaps more suited to tarmacing drives.

Must of been a sub-contracted job, there was no sky sign on the van, just two rough looking, pikies telling me that I had order a new sky+ package. They wouldnt go up a certain height wanted to put the disk right in the middle of a wall, and just drill through, meaning the cables would come out in the middle of my lounge wall ! :-(

I rang up sky and cancelled straight away, asked why ?, I told them it was due to the retarded engineers they had sent out.

Mind you, not all sky engineers are like that. I stopped a sky van going passed one day, paid him a £20, and he legged it up my roof, and replaced the lmb. I would of used him, but I lost his number.

So, it comes down to the individual I suppose. All by the by really, as sky had ruined their movie channels now anyway. I just tend to watch MTV dance or discovery home / lesuire or turbo. Rest is ****e

SBK

zip106

I'd go along with 'monkeys' theory of some Sky installers.
We had Sky+ installed one Saturday night ( should have been midday...) it was just getting dark and two young lads of about 19 turned up and installed the dish and 2 boxes (1 Sky+ and 1 digibox in a bedroom).
They wanted to put the cables down the middle of the walls instead of underneath the brick indents. I got my way on that one .
After a couple of months the signal got worse and worse and eventually Sky sent out a 'proper' engineer to find out why.
The first muppets had only joined all 3 cables and layed them in the gutter with no tape or protection from water and were rusty as hell.
We had to have it all ripped out and re-cabled.