Dam Sky television
 

I dont know whats wrong with sky but sometimes when it rains the channels freeze and then audiably click in quite a load manner, also on some occassions (getting quite often now) some channels are not receiving a signal yet some are. I would just like to know if anyone else has this with their sky satelite??

My guess is that the dish is out of alignment and thus not picking up any signal. Can anybody help on this as im paying a bomb for sky yet half the time its not working.

cheers guys/gals

Jono

Sounds to me like you've got a problem somewhere. Mine works perfect near enough all the time.

Had the same problem with no signal & ended up getting sky out-they adjusted the dish very slightly & it's been fine since. Also had a phase of it freezing & had to keep turning power off to restart it,try removing card & wipe it,that worked now & again.

Yup, as above - a slight alignment problem gave me grief for weeks. I couldn't think when the dish might have went out of alignment so I spent time taking the card out, rebooting the box, upgrading the software etc. etc. all to no avail. Finally called in the engineers who told me it was ever so slightly out, but enough to cause problems. All sorted now :)

If you threaten to cancel your subscription they WILL (in most cases) send an engineer out for free...:)

Yup had the same problem for a few weeks. Started after a period of really bad weather. We lost every station. When it was back up and running the next day every other channel was as you describe.
An engineer came over yesterday after ringing the day before and the dish was out of alinement by approximately 10%.

If its happens when there is bad weather that is definitely the problem, perhaps the dish could be moved to a less exposed position that is the long term solution they are looking at for our flat.

ITV1/2 are the biggest problem for me as they're beamed from a different sat to most of the other channels with a smaller footprint, so I'm right on the edge of where you can receive it. I get heavy picture/sound break up and sometimes no signal. Other channels are usually OK though.

Dish alignment is definately your problem. Its quite easy to do yourself if you can see the TV from where your dish is. Enter the setup menu and then 4-0-1-Select-6 to get the more accurate (hidden) signal meter. You may find changing the angle of the LNB will fix the problem as this is generally the only bit that will move on its own on most of the Sky dishes.

Thanks guys,
BMWhere, i was thinking about doing it myself and getting the misses to shout out in the room. Will the signal strength move up and down in real time ??

Atm moment the signal seems to be just over half strength

Theres usually a delay of 1 to two seconds between moving the dish and the signal strength updating.
You can get away with a low signal strength value 60% should be adequate. The important one is the quality - should be at least 80%. I get 90% quality and about 70% strength with an 80cm dish in South Germany. I also have the LNB angled about 20 degrees. You can calculate the angles you need Here if you know your Lat/Long position. The sat position for sky digital is 28.2degrees East.

wow, u defo know your stuff mate, i will look into it more before i attempte but i may need your help mate pretty soon. :)

it probably got moved during the windy bit last week

yeh thats wot i was thinking,the wind mangaed to move my big green dustbin halfway down the road so its more than likely it has adjusted the position of the dish.

I had a b1tch of a job trying to get my system to work with the standard dish in Germany, so did a lot of reading up, spent many hours trying to align and finally managed it using a friends digibox which seemed to have a more sensative signal meter. Pretty much read all the info bases on the internet trying to get that sorted, so theres not much I don't know about it now!

The first thing I would check is the LNB angle as this makes a huge difference, particularly in bad weather. The dishes don't tend to move much in bad weather as they have all those little holes in them to let the wind through! If you look under the LNB, you'll find there is 5 or 6 notched positions where the cable connects to the LNB. You can adjust that without moving the dish (and can adjust itself :mad: ). Try all the different positions and see what happens. I would expect the best setting to be 1 or 2 notches clockwise (looking at the dish) from vertical.

If that doesn't help, then you'll have to move the dish. If you have a reasonably good picture anyway, then you only want to move max 1degree in any direction. Its also a good idea to mark (with pen or scratch) the current positions (vertical (elevation) and horizontal (azimuth)) so you can accurately get it back to where you were!

Any other questions, then just ask!

I had exactly the same problem with my sky a couple of months ago. It was driving me and the husband mad coz it only ever seemed to happen in the programmes that we actually wanted to watch!! It would do exactly what you described - freezing picture then clicking noises then it would go to 'no signal being received'.

We ended up calling out sky and they said it was the LNB in the dish, but the engineer said he couldnt fix it as our dish was just above the conservatory and said he'd lose his job if he went up there without a ladder (bearing in mind they managed to put it up there without one!) and they'd need to get their 'Special Heights' contractors out which i found highly amusing!! So after 3 weeks of waiting these contractors finally came out and changed the LNB on the dish......and surprise surprise the problem was still there.

So another 2 weeks later, we had a phone call and the contractors advised sky.....all we needed was a new damn box!! Then hey presto, problem solved.

So i'd definetely advise to get a engineer out before you get up there yourself, you may need a new box!!

*Raises Hand*
I live in Germany, have a DBox and a satellite receiver but can only get Sky News as a UK channel, is there any way I can point the dish somewhere else to get more UK channels?
*sits back down*

When I phoned Sky up I was played the following message:

"Sorry, all our advisors are busy speaking with other customers at the moment. Please call back later" ......dead.

Cheeky barstewards! Not even a queue, not even press 1 for this, press 2 for that. Just piss off bye. :( :)

DBox - is that a German digital receiver or do you have a UK Sky Digibox?
Which satellite are you pointing at?
Theres very few free to air UK channels left either on the old analogue or newer digital satellites. maybe just BBC world and Sky News now!
All the UK stuff is now broadcast on Astra 2 cluster located at 28.2 degrees east, but not sure what channels if any you can get without a viewing card. If you have a UK address, then you can get a free viewing card for the UK free to air TV (BBC channels, ITV1, C4 & 5), but not sure if this will work in a German satellite box - but its free so no harm trying! You could also try manually tuning the channels but many won't work without a decoder card. Have a look HERE for available channels and their freqency/polarisation etc.

All the BBC channels are now free to air ie unencrypted and are broadcast on Astra 2D, which means the footprint is tighter than other transponders.

You do not need any kind of viewing card to see these channels as long as you can receive them. CH4, CH5 and ITV/ITV 2 do however require a viewing card.


BBC world is encrypted on the Astra satellite, BBC news 24 isn't. You might find that if you can get one of the Hotbird satellites you can manually tune in BBC world unencrypted.

Thanks guys. The DBox is the German Premiere (Sky digital equivalent I guess)!
I would'nt have a clue which satallite I'm pointing at as I can't see it ;)
Think I'll p*ss the wife off this evening by fiddling with the dish trying to find that Astra 2D with the BBC channels on it. Guess we'll end up watching a tape once I've b*ggered everything up :(

Just set the dish up as you would for all Astra Channels ie 28.2degrees East.

You'll need to know the frequencies for the BBC channels which can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/dsat_...ncies_ns.shtml

Just add them manually to your receiver.

If you had a Sky Digibox (like me- ebay £20)then once you had found 28.2degrees East, the BBC channels would appear on the channel guide.

Do some research on the web first before you try anything would be my advice. It's very simple but you need to know what you are doing.

The Premiere channels are on the Astra 1 cluster which is at 19.2 degrees E. So you will need to move your dish! You could also get a dual LNB dish so you can tune to both Astra 1 & 2 with one fixed dish, but one will be lower quality and may give problems unless you have a big dish! Another option is a motorised dish, but you may need a new box to control it!

BTW: Where are you in Germany & have you seen THIS?

I live next to a big race track ;)

I didn't know they had horse-racing in Germany! Never seen it anyway ;)

and again