No satellite signal

[Wendy]

Is anyone else, with SKY, plagued by the 'no satellite signal is being received' at certain times of the day?

And it is only AT certain times of the day, and on certain channels!

Is there a conspiracy against non-mainland SKY users?

[Clair]

Never have a problem here, even now when it's chucking it down outside...

[Tim]

I've not experienced any problems either.

Perhaps if you could be a little more specific someone may be able to help, although, with what you have said would make me think that it's likely to be a dish problem.

Tim

[Bugsy]

Jura, have you remembered that you are now in the Northern Hemishere................[:D][:D]

[RicandJo]

Does sound like a dish alignment issue to me.  I get no trouble whatsoever, and I'm down in Italy at the mo.........[:D]

[Anton Redman]

You do not mention whereabouts you are. Possible cause LNB (thing on the end of the arm) beginning to fail . If LNB is easy to get at either swop it or try cooling it with water.

 

[Wendy]

We are near Perpignan in the Corbieres. Way south. We have just swapped over the old 80cm dish for the new 95cm dish. New transponder and cables as well. Changed the LNB. No signal at all. My son has been on the roof for three hours turning and pointing the bloody thing and we cannot get a tiny blimp even. He did this with the old dish when the wind blew ( it blows mean as the devil here in winter) and it needed repositioning so he is pretty spot-on with regards to where it should be pointing. Could the satellite in outer space have moved at all? (that's a woman's technical question there).

Did UK transmitting change at all on the 31st so that we require something new? We've no Brits locally to compare things with.

Bugbear, I suggested turning the antenna upside down but the whole situation is in the hands of men here...

I cannot bear to watch anymore Brum or Bob the Builder dvd's. Help...I'm missing my telly ! [:'(]

 

[Anton Redman]

Biggerdishes are harder to align you need very small movements. If there are two positions for the arm he may be using the wrong one. No changes that I am aware of am still getting 100% strenght and 95 % quality from both feeds on our 80 cm near Bordeaux.

I would swop back to the 80 and then check the LNB by swopping it if you can find the signal with the 80.

[Wendy]

I just told my son to 'swap back to the 80cm' and he has threatened to leave the country...this has been the work of an entire day[:)] He has to get up onto the roof again in the face of angry black weather bearing down on us from the mountains and we are dreading the wind when it arrives.

However your advice as to smaller movements being needed with the bigger dish may be the key...thanks[kiss]

If your suggestion works you could be in line for something more, however they don't have an icon for such [:D]

[Wendy]

An update: we have replaced absolutely everything...LNB, dish (from 80cm to 95cm), coax, tuner and tried every combination of everything we have (old with new/new with new) but still have no picture at all. Co-ordinates are spot on as we are getting 75-99% signal strength but are only getting 45% signal quality.

We don't have anyone in our area that deals with this and technicians 30 minutes away are not interested in coming this far. Anyone open to blackmail?[:'(]

[Tim]

I'm sure you will get lots of ideas popping up here, but for what it's worth, here's my 'pennysworth'. 

Bear with me.[:)]

You mentioned problems with Sky in your first post, does this mean you are using a Sky box?

You say you've tried using new and old, does this mean you've connected different boxes to try to get a picture? If so, what?

This may sound silly, but it's possible the readings you are getting are false - if you are using a Sky box, they are notorious for giving incorrect readings.

It's also quite possible that the readings you are getting are from the wrong satellite. Sky boxes are useless at pointing at a different satellite.

As I said in my first reply, a bit more info would be helpful to try to help you.

Regards - Tim

[Deimos]

I have been doing a lot of paperwork the last week and had Sky on in the background.  Every day around 15:00 (different channels) it starts breaking up, pixellating and losing sound.  Problem stays if I switch channels (though have not tried them all !!).  I find that unplugging the box for 30 secs and re-starting solves the problem for a few hours when it briefly happens a bit more sometimes, but then is fine until the next day.  Just switching off does not solve the problem - required unplugging.

As it happens every day (that I've had it of - which is most) it has been through a variety of weather conditions so in not e.g. wind or heavy rain).  As its been fine for years and is fine after unplugging then I doubt the dish alignment is out (Sky box shows excellent signal strength and quality even when its pixellating and breaking up badly).

I've no idea what it is and cannot be bothered to solve it as I suspect it will just go away at some point and cannot think of how it can relate to my system (but open to ideas).  I don't know if this might be a similar thing to the original question/problem.

Ian

[Tim]

Almost all of these 'niggling' things are down to something very simple - the problem is finding out what it is. In your circumstances I would try the following:-

Simple thing first - I'm fortunated enough to have another non Sky box - so I would swap that over first and see what happens.This will help to find out whether it's your box, or something else.

Secondly, a very close inspection of all the connections, paying extra close attention to the those outside. Water is very sneaky and gets in all sorts of places.

Finally, I've had a couple of friends over the last year, or two, who've experienced a similar problem. I asked them to note exactly what channels were affected. They both reported some of the (for me anyway) less watched channels - I think it was True Movies, or something like that. I took my non-Sky box down and hooked it up to their dish. As I've said in previous posts, Sky boxes are really terrible at reliably reporting signal strengths and quality. My box reported back that the signal quality on the affected channels, was lower than that on most of the others. A little check on the LNB alignment revealed that an adjustment to the skew of the LNB sorted out the problem very simply - just one screw loosened, a quick 'tweak', and do up the screw.

This thing about LNB skew is a little odd. I've read explanations about it which I've understood, but it's not necessary to know exactly what's going on, just that it can make a big difference. I know there are people on here who go through all the details, if you wish. I've 'rabbited' on enough on here and I'll leave that bit to them.

If you want any more, please come back.

Regards - Tim

[Anton Redman]

Deimos you problem sounds like one of the following :

1. Power supply on box on the way out and it gradually over heating.

2. Either LNB being affected by the sun or dish moving from expansion.

If you leave the box completely on plugged for the day and only plug in at 3pm if it makes a difference it is probably '1' either new dish or a cooling fan kit (available from UK)  . If it as bad then try new LNB or marginally realigning dish.

[Anton Redman]

[quote user="Jura"]

An update: we have replaced absolutely everything...LNB, dish (from 80cm to 95cm), coax, tuner and tried every combination of everything we have (old with new/new with new) but still have no picture at all. Co-ordinates are spot on as we are getting 75-99% signal strength but are only getting 45% signal quality.

We don't have anyone in our area that deals with this and technicians 30 minutes away are not interested in coming this far. Anyone open to blackmail?[:'(]

[/quote]

When you use 'services'  '4- system setup' '6 Signal Test' after unplugging the box do you get

Lock Indicator OK

Netwrok Id '0002'

Transport System ' 07d4'

If signal strenght constantly moves dish is not mounted firmly enough

You are almost 5 hours away so I do not think I drop in

The box locks after a time and just reports the last settings until it is rebooted by unplugging.

[Maggie]

We had a very similar problem with our Grundig Sky Digibox. About a year ago, Channel 5 suddenly 'disappeared' reporting 'no satellite signal being received'. All other channels OK. A couple of months ago, BBC2 became intermittent and eventually also permanently reported 'no satellite signal being received'. Gradually, other channels, ITV3, BBC News 24, were similarly affected - all reporting 'no satellite signal being received' while others, BBC1, ITV1 worked perfectly well. In addition to the Sky box, we also have a Free-to-Air box. When this was connected, in place of the Sky box, everything worked fine (for those channels that were able to be received FTA, e.g. BBC2, News 24. After much 'fiddling about' we sought advice and were told that the 'old' Grundig Digibox had a very weak power supply system (whatever that means!!) and, if we replaced it (the power supply), it should do the trick. Less than totally confident, we sent the box away to a local specialist who replaced the power supply (total cost, including return postage, 80 Euros). The repaired box works perfectly and all channels, including Channel 5, are now available without any problem at all. In our case, at least, 'replacing' the power supply was the complete and instant solution. Depends, I suppose, whether you too have the 'old' Grundig box. Hope this helps anyway.

[Wendy]

Thanks so much for all this advice [:)]

We are using a generic box at the moment to do the tuning as we were having probs with the SKY box, it kept turning on and off on it's own...it was four years old.

We will go over all the points you have all suggested: we just cannot work out why we are not getting one single channel reading at all. We are tuning to Astra satellite.

Here goes![:-))]

[Anton Redman]

One other thought if your new dish has the arm at a different angle to the previous dish then the angle of the dish will also ned to change. 

[Tim]

Before you go, one thing. This 'other' type of box you say you are using - has it been tuned to the UK channels? May sound a silly question, but I'm not sure exactly what you are using and depending on your answer, it may help with your problem.

Tim

[Wendy]

Tried everything suggested and today are changing back to the old dish to see if the new cables etc work with that one. We have a signal strength of 99% but absolutely no picture at all, I would have thought that a fragment of a picture would be picked up... but not a sausage. If nothing works after this last effort Im picking up the phone tomorrow, will let you's know how it goes[:)]

[Anton Redman]

For the avoidence of doubt you have the dish at about 34 degreees of elevation and aimed about 36 degrees east of south. You have checked there is not a power pole in the line of sight ? The most common cause of string signal an no quality on a Sky box is that it is aimed at the sun ? Best of luck

[Wendy]

Anton you are a sweetheart. There are two of those creatures between us and the road. Taking into account your advice we have now located:

* several Dutch and German channels(obviously on the wrong satellite and total non-runners here) so we have moved on...

*Sky News UK - it is flakey but at least we are seeing Eamon Holmes ( I like him)

* Channel Four Wales - well, at least we have pictures now, even if the people are speaking backwards (mean't in jest I might add).

Tomorrow we will keep at it. Thanks Anton here's one for ya...[kiss]

And thanks to everyone else here for the assistance as it has all helped...[:D]