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Voice/Picture synchronisation on satellite


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Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the synchronisation is getting worse. I t seems like they're a second or more apart, in some cases. I've tried switching the (Strong) digibox and TV off for 30 secs - the improvement, if any, is marginal and temporary.

Is this mis-sychronisation:

A. just the way satellite television works?

B. a function of my inexpensive (cheap) digibox?

C. a figment of my imagination?

D. fixable?

E. none of the above?

If it is fixable, what can I do?

Thanks

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I've read a little about this, but not much as it's not something I've been inflicted with. I can say, that under normal circumstances it's not the satellite signal because if it was, there'd be thousands more complaints. So, that leaves the receiver. I should have a look on the internet to see if there's anybody else around with a similar problem, that may lead you to what they did about it.

Unless, of course, there is someone on here who knows more.

Regards - Tim

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I think certain individual digiboxes can be afflicted with this, it's called 'lipsync' BTW [;-)]

Here offshore I have a rack of 20 receivers, all the same Panasonic model, and a couple of them suffer from it. What happens is that occassionally an approaching helicopter will pass through the line of sight to the satellites briefly interrupting the signal which causes them to go into this out of sync mode. It's easily cured by a brief prod of the on/off button.

I think a new box may be your only real option [:(]

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I believe Strong is actually a digital receiver rather than a Sky Digibox. If it allows you to input FEC values for each transponder or channel it might be worth having a look at those. Lyngsat publish them.

Next step for me would be to try my receiver at another location and try another recevier on my dish. That will let you know if the receiver is the problem.

I would then try a new LNB and also check the F connections on the cable.

Finally have a look at signal quality and strength on the worst offending channels before trying realigning the dish and adjusting skew on the LNB. 

Link to notes on fine tunning dish alignment using a sky box as below. My non sky digital receiver shows strength and quality be channel anyway.

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/1363030/ShowPost.aspx

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Sadly this sort of problem - as Ernie says - is often symptomatic of a failing box.

You don't say what model it is,  but just in case this applies,  do take out any card/conditional access module that you might have inserted and try it then.

And if there is a "factory reset" facility in the menus I would perform one,  even though it means you'll probably have to rescan all the programmes back in,  and they'll doubtless be in an irritatingly different order to your present list.   Still,  you've nothing much to lose.

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Thank you for these pieces of advice. Tomorrow, I'll reset it to factory settings, check whether updates are available to download (doubt it), then start again.

IF this proves unsuccessful, and I decide it needs replaced, has anybody any suggestions for a better quality digi-box? All it'll have to do is pick up UK channels from satellite - an EPG would be nice, but sophistications like HD are unnecessary. Maybe one of the new Freeview (right name?) boxes from the UK? (We'll be back there for a few days in September).

Cheers

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If you are going back to UK then grab yourself a couple of cheap Sky boxes from eBay. You'll find then for as little as £10 so cheap enough to throw away if they fail. Look carefully and you can find then complete with a Freesat card for CH5 for not much more money.

Just last week I bought somebody's clearout of 6 allegedly working boxes, 5 ordinary plus 1 Sky+ with a remote control fault, complete with 2 Freesat cards, for a total of £99 including delivery to my son's address in UK. I'll be picking them up when we go back for a visit in October and even if only 3 of them work at £33 quid a shot I don't think I'll be complaining [:D]

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I didn't have the courage to reset the box (Visionic not Strong, that's the one for the french channels), and lose all the channels, but I did check the signal strength and quality. FWIW, both are 70%+.

I am ignorant where digiboxes are concerned, as you can tell, but if I could just bounce some thoughts off you....?

A. Both boxes are fed from the one dish (a multi-parabolic by Ausene).

B. The lipsynch on the french channels seems OK.

C. The UK lipsynch seems to have deteriorated recently.

D. We have not had any storms recently to move the dish.

From the above, I'm assuming the alignment of the dish is probably still OK? Or, is it still worth biting the bullet and resetting?

If the concensus is I need a new box, I'll do as ErnieY suggested, and acquire one or two Sky boxes with Freesat cards. This would have the advantages of access to Ch5 (SWMBO will be happy) and lots of advice/manuals available in English. e-Bay is offering several different models - is there any particular one I should look for/avoid like the plague?

Thanks for all the help - I appreciate it.

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Don't know anything about Visionic or Strong digiboxes but a reset might be your only way of determining if it is a recoverable fault or not.

Regarding which model of box, doubtless some will advocate one over another but frankly in my experience there's really not a great deal to distinguish one over another. If you are on the extremities there are one or two particular boxes which might give you a tiny edge but offhand I couldn't tell you which and anyway your choice will be naturally limited because only a small number on offer come with a card.

A tip, just because a box is pictured with a card don't assume it comes with it unless it specifically says so and if in doubt email the seller and ask [I]

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Is the Visiosonic box somewhere where it gets hot (in a cupboard,  in a pile of other equipment?).    Just a thought but sometimes these cheap boxes really struggle once they get above a certain temperature,  and often they're poorly designed to shed their excess heat.    If it is warm try letting it cool off for a couple of hours by unplugging it from the mains,  then try it again.   If it's better consider a different location well away from other heat sources....

You *could* disconnect your TNTparSat box and try the faulty box on Astra 1   you'd have to scan in some channels and then watch one of the free to air ones (eg ARD,  ZDF) for a while and see if the sync drifts.   It's a roundabout way of checking but in the end it would tell you if the box was faulty.    Don't put the TNTparSat box onto Astra 2 though,  it'll only confuse it.

Otherwise a reset is about the only option,  as dish alignment doesn't sound as though it's the cause.   It is annoying having to

sort out all the channels again but if it cures the problem.....

You can certainly get a Sky box off ebay,  but it is fairly likely that ch 5 will go FTA before the end of the year (at least that's what the non-technical idiots who run the channel are still claiming) so a "freesat" box is likely to be a good alternative.

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The equipment is only about 8 months old. The single dish but with several LNBs set ups are difficult to get first time. I would pay for another visit from the person who set it up the first time.

 

Failing that the LNB for Sky will, I think be the one to the left of the dish when viewed from the front of the dish. Check by disconnecting it. The reconnect and try minute adjustments to Skew and direction if the dish allows this

 

 

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[quote user="Ian"]Thank you for these pieces of advice. Tomorrow, I'll reset it to factory settings, check whether updates are available to download (doubt it), then start again.

IF this proves unsuccessful, and I decide it needs replaced, has anybody any suggestions for a better quality digi-box? All it'll have to do is pick up UK channels from satellite - an EPG would be nice, but sophistications like HD are unnecessary. Maybe one of the new Freeview (right name?) boxes from the UK? (We'll be back there for a few days in September).

Cheers
[/quote]

While considering a Freeview box myself I found that the Humax Foxsat Freeview box has a well documented lipsync problem in HD broadcasts. See http://www.joinfreesat.co.uk/index.php/lip-sync-on-humax-freesat-box or do a search.

Steve

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[quote user="Sc"]

[quote user="Ian"]Thank you for these pieces of advice. Tomorrow, I'll reset it to factory settings, check whether updates are available to download (doubt it), then start again.

IF this proves unsuccessful, and I decide it needs replaced, has anybody any suggestions for a better quality digi-box? All it'll have to do is pick up UK channels from satellite - an EPG would be nice, but sophistications like HD are unnecessary. Maybe one of the new Freeview (right name?) boxes from the UK? (We'll be back there for a few days in September).

Cheers

[/quote]

While considering a Freeview box myself I found that the Humax Foxsat Freeview box has a well documented lipsync problem in HD broadcasts. See http://www.joinfreesat.co.uk/index.php/lip-sync-on-humax-freesat-box or do a search.

Steve

[/quote]

That's interesting.......

I had a Humax digibox in the UK, for FTA through my antenna, and it also had a bad lipsynch problem.

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Adjusting the dish myself isn't an option - it's on the chimney, and I've no roof ladders - so the plan now is:

A. Bite the bullet and reset - see what happens

B. If no improvement, replace the box with either a Skybox (making sure it's sold with a Freesat card) or buy a new freesat box - any brand of either that is available (apart from Humax).

C. If still no improvement, then it must be the dish, and I've wasted the money for step B. Call out the dish installer and get him to re-align the dish. Tell SWMBO that the new box was also necessary, and not a waste of money.

Thanks again for the help

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[quote user="Ian"]Adjusting the dish myself isn't an option - it's on the chimney, and I've no roof ladders - so the plan now is:

A. Bite the bullet and reset - see what happens

B. If no improvement, replace the box with either a Skybox (making sure it's sold with a Freesat card) or buy a new freesat box - any brand of either that is available (apart from Humax).

C. If still no improvement, then it must be the dish, and I've wasted the money for step B. Call out the dish installer and get him to re-align the dish. Tell SWMBO that the new box was also necessary, and not a waste of money.

Thanks again for the help

[/quote]

Well, I went ahead and reset everything I could, then rescanned all the channels. It is better. I'll go with it for the time being, and see if it stays like this. Even if I have to reset it every couple of months, that's OK.

Thanks for all the help

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[quote user="Martinwatkins"]Excellent.   Hope it stays that way.   It would be interesting if at some point you could update us again....

Do try keeping it cool too if you can.[/quote]

Well, 24 hours later and it's not looking too rosy. The lipsynch is again drifting off. I can improve it by powering off and on, but I suspect I'm just p*ssing against the wind.

So, it looks like replacement is beckoning. With what, though, is the question. A second-hand Sky box from Ebay is easy to operate and offers more channels, like C5, UK History, etc, but buying from Ebay carries a risk. On the other hand, a Freesat box would be new, but doesn't offer these channels. Also, there's little choice - all the cheap, non-HD ones are made by the same group (Alba).

Decisions, decisions.

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I think you mentioned 70% signal quality.   Does this apply to the channels on which the sync is the worst?

I ask because if your problems are due to a dish/LNB problem (as Anton has surmised) then one would expect the quality to be worst on the channels with the worst sync problem.   On a Skybox the signal indicators only refer to the default transponder (unless one goes to a lot of effort to alter them) but on most other boxes (as in your case) they display the conditions specific to the channel being watched.

The reason for asking is to double check that it's not a dish alignment problem.....

Any which way,  I'm sorry you're still having probs.

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Actually Ian now that you're something of an expert in getting the box to rescan,  I'd turn off both boxes and put the Astra 1 cable onto the faulty box.

Then do a scan (or rather "Add channels",  "manual/transponder search") on

11953 MHz,  (11.953 GHz)

symbol rate 27500

Horizontal pol

FEC = 3/4  (only if it asks)

and see whether these channels lose sync too.

If they do then it has to be the box,  if not your installer should - I would have thought - come out for free for une petite revision.

Got to be worth trying before you invest in more boxes.

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[quote user="Martinwatkins"]Actually Ian now that you're something of an expert in getting the box to rescan,  I'd turn off both boxes and put the Astra 1 cable onto the faulty box.

Then do a scan (or rather "Add channels",  "manual/transponder search") on

11953 MHz,  (11.953 GHz)

symbol rate 27500

Horizontal pol

FEC = 3/4  (only if it asks)

and see whether these channels lose sync too.

If they do then it has to be the box,  if not your installer should - I would have thought - come out for free for une petite revision.

Got to be worth trying before you invest in more boxes.

[/quote]

I'd have replied before now, but I had to reload my PC from scratch (starting with repartitioning...), as I was stupid enough to let a virus in. No, let me rephrase that - I was stupid enough to import a virus through my actions! It took control of IE and Firefox, so I was unable to get help.

The UK digi-box has just hiccuped, in a different way. Switched on, it didn't give me any TV channels - said there was "no signal". However, the UK radio channels worked, and if I switched between the two, it briefly showed the tv channel "information window" (strip at the bottom of the screen that shows title, satellite, channel number, type of channel, etc) before reverting to "no signal".

(EDIT - the TV signal has just returned)

If anyone else has just had that fault, then it's just a co-incidence and I'll have to try the above trick tomorrow. If it was just me, then I'd say that was the digi-box telling me it wanted to be put out of its misery. And mine - I hate digi-boxes - so unintuitive - plaything of the devil...

Regards

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Well, I looked at signal strength/quality on a variety of channels on Astra 28 - there was no significant difference between them. Then, I checked the French channels (Astra 19 plus dedicated digi-box) - lip-synch seems OK there.

Finally, I tried your idea, Martin, of using the Astra 19 feed in the Astra

28 box. The channels I found were as badly lip-synched as BBC1 is from

Astra 28.

Things are still pointing to the Astra28 digibox, I think.

??

Regards

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