SKY PICTURE DISAPPEARING

[bouliste]

Help! After many trouble free years my Sky system has started to play up. The picture just disappears and I am left with a blamk screen - no message and my Sky receiver (PACE DS430N ) remains switched on with the green light showing. I have tried switching off my digibox for a few minutes and replacing the sky card and this gets me Sky back again - for about 10 -15 mins and then the same thing happens again. I tried leaving the box switched off for a few hours and after switching back on managed to get Sky back for about 40 min!

Assuming it is a fault with the Pace box what options do I have bearing in mind that I have the full sky package (my wife insists on this!) and my Sky account is held with the help of a friends UK address and my subscription paid by standing order through my UK bank account.

Any advice on how to overcome this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks 

[AnOther]

If your card is married to the box, as I believe it will be with a full

subscription, then when you replace it you will have to call Sky to have

them transfer it.

Clearly you must NOT do this from a French phone !

[sid]

I think ANO is suggesting that the box will have to be replaced, and it's the cheapest and best solution if you're on a contract.

Many of us here use, or used to use, SKY boxes, often with just the free to air option. Eventually the boxes fail. In our 8 years here I've had 4 boxes, the last 3 bought secondhand which obviously doesn't help with life-span issues. Various models have power supply problems for example.

You can get information here and in some cases repair kits for specific models http://www.satcure.co.uk/

I suggest getting an independant box, (I like Humax) but of course you won't get the Sports and Film packages. If you wish to continue with SKY you'll have to take the box back to UK.

[tinabee]

[quote user="AnOther"]If your card is married to the box, as I believe it will be with a full subscription, then when you replace it you will have to call Sky to have them transfer it.

Clearly you must NOT do this from a French phone !

[/quote]

You could try getting a replacement box and then call Sky using a VOIP phone

[andyh4]

Bouliste

 

On a couple of occasions recently I found sound but no picture on BBC1 HD channel.  This was with a freesat box.  The standard analog BBC1 was working properly however.

We checked with a friend who has a similar but different brand free to view box and low and behold he also had problems - but not at the same time as we had.

 

It is possible that this could be due to software downloads or something similar.

[Théière]

They are I believe carrying out experiments to reduce down the sky footprint so maybe that's a factor but probably not for the OP.

Martin will know more I am sure.

[cooperlola]

I'm with Sid.  Get a new(ish) box from e-bay or Amazon.  They aren't all that expensive.  I reckon it's just a failed bit of kit as Sky (the free bits anyway) is working fine here in the Sarthe on both my Pace and Amstrad boxes.

[bouliste]

Many thanks to all who responded to my post. I just need clarification on the issue of replacing my current box with a new one and contacting Sky to upgrade my card. Can I not contact them via my mobile rather than the land line phone, or will they detect this as a overseas call as well? If that is the case can I not just get my UK friend whose address I use, to phone them with details of the new box to enable the upgrade by Sky or will they require some action to be taken at the time of the call. The original Pace digibox I had when I first used Sky I bought privately to avoid having to be connected via the phone for the first 12 months ( to enable me to take it to France for our extended hols), so I am not sure what sort of contract i have with Sky. When this box started giving problems in 2004 I had it replaced with my present Pace box - so i guess it has given me good service!

This is always assuming that the problem is the box (which still gets me Sky for a short time when I switch it off/on) Don't know if there are any checks I can run to verify this or to highlight any other cause.. 

[sid]

If you're paying a monthly fee then you have a subscription contract and the box would have been provided by SKY initially and will be covered for replacement, but I think only at the address shown on the contract and the engineer may want to call in person to replace it, so the box needs to be in the UK. It's yours to keep after 12months subscription, that's how I got my first one which I brought over here later.

If you're not paying anthing, and it sounds as though you fall into this category as you bought your own box initially, then you are using just the free to air services, you don't need the viewing card now, and the box is your responsibility to maintain or replace.

I wouldn't phone SKY from here though; if they get any hint that your using their service outside their legally contracted area they may prevent your box from receiving signals by blocking its serial number (you would have supplied this when you first activated the box). Are you thinking that they'll just post another box out to you? I don't think so.

If all you require are the standard BBC/ITV programmes (not SKY Sports, or Box Office etc) but including Film4 and quite a few other free channels, then you're much better taking control yourself and using a simple box. They're cheaper in the UK.

With regard to the current problem, I've had exactly this before; it was a failure of the power supply inside the box. You can get replacement components from the website I gave earlier if you feel confidant to do a bit of soldering. I decided that it wasn't worth the effort and ditched the SKY box for once ans for all. I'm on Humax now with the advantage of a hard disc recorder (all the features of SKY plus), but it needs a twin feed from the dish if you want to watch one programme while recording another. You can do a search on this forum for discussions about this and other similar boxes.

 

[Martin963]

[quote user="Théière"]

They are I believe carrying out experiments to reduce down the sky footprint so maybe that's a factor but probably not for the OP.

Martin will know more I am sure.

[/quote]

I don't think they've quite started.   Last I heard Astra 2F is now due for launch mid September (somewhat earlier than the originally intended date I believe) but they've got to get it up in position without dropping it in the sea (well it has happened!) and then start testing it so I doubt we're going to know anything before November at the earliest.

As you say,  probably nothing to do with the OP's problem but I thought I'd report what little I know.....

I'm bringing my 1 m dish with me when we're next over though - just in case.

[Sprogster]

You will need to buy a new SKY box and get your friend who provides the UK address for SKY purposes, to activate it for you from their UK house. The nuisance factor is that they will need your SKY card to do this. However once activated you can just unplug it and bring it to France.

From my experience SKY are getting a bit more cunning, as if you ring to activate from a number that they cannot readily identify as a UK or C.I. land line, they ask if they can call you back and I have a feeling they do this as a random check as well, which is what happened to me a few weeks ago. Fortunately, I was back in the C.I, so that was not a problem. 

Would suggest you take the opportunity to upgrade to a SKY HD box, as SKY no longer charge a supplement to receive the main HD channels.