Poor satellite picure in the perigord

[Keith]

We are in Sarlat and get very poor reception on Sky satellite. Some channels are OK i.e. BBC1 and film 4 but others are usually very poor or absent i.e.BBC2 and E4. I have a normal sky dish and one from our local bricolage. Also tried 2 different receivers with no improvement. The picture disappears completely on all channels if it rains.

I assume I need a better LNB this far south +/- a larger dish. Any suggestions? (other than move further north)

Could anybody please advise where in the UK or France to buy these and suggest makes and models.

Also will we get a better picture from FreeSat as opposed to FreeSkySat.

Many thanks for any help

Keith

[Anton Redman]

It is far more likely to be alignment of the dish or LNB. If you are using a standard 80 cm dish from the DIY shed or supermarket this should be more than adequate. The larger 60 cms Black sky dish which is oval in the horizintal plane rather than the vertical should also be OK. freesat as opposed to Freesat from Sky is the same transmission except for the Electrocnic Programme Guide so will not improve things one iota. Link to notes on fine tuning dish alignment follow. Read the thread and have a play at comparing the various signals before trying realigning

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/1362132/ShowPost.aspx

sorry - welcome to the forum

[AnOther]

For reference we are only about 50km south of Sarlat and our standard 60cms oval Sky dish works perfectly. OK, we have lost it in extreme rain but I can only recall maybe 2 or 3 such incidents in the year we have been here and believe me we've had some pretty vicious downpours [:'(]

 

Who installed your dish, how long is the cable, is it new, are you sure there is nothing blocking your line of sight, elevation from this area is something like 27deg. There are lot's of things which could contribute to your problem and you have to eliminate them logically one by one.

[Tim]

And don't forget the issue of the 'skew' of the lnb on it's arm. If you're not sure about that, please come back and ask and I'm sure there will be someone around who will help.

Regards - Tim

[f1steveuk]

We're in Belves, not far from Sarlat. We had signal problems. I called Sky, who told me they "turn down the power of the signal to see how low we can get away with". I think I knew what she meant! Anyway, she said she'd "boot it up a bit" and it's been fine since.

[Nell]

How do you phone SKY from France?? I thought you had to have your card registered to a UK address and then smuggle [:)] it to France to use it

Am I way behind the times ??

[f1steveuk]

The account is indeed through a UK address, but the box and card are in France. If you call SKY from France, you just make sure that your 'phone doesn't allow the recieve to see your call details (e.g cannot see you are calling fom France).

[Cat]

Are you pulling our legs Steve?

[Tim]

I think he must be Cathy - Sky have no control over the satellites - they don't own any.

Tim

[f1steveuk]

But they do have control of the signal allocation for each account area at the uplink which in SKY's case is Osterley. I worked for 12 years in the TV coverage of F1, and we could control the uplink frequency strength, so although I am scepticle, it is possible.

[tonyv]

Well, now, Steve, what job were you doing, precisely? Making the tea?

FYI "Frequency" has no "Strength", by any stretch of the imagination, so it can't be controlled.

The whole scenario is extremely unlikely:

1. Sky would gain absolutely no benefit from reducing the radiated power, so why, even if they could, fiddle with it?

2. The control of a satellite's systems is a highly complex technical job. The concept of a call centre operative "Booting it up a bit" in response to a call is so far from credibility as to be impossible.

Either you're pulling our legs, or you've had yours pulled.[:P]

[f1steveuk]

But you can control the power being used surely, and that would affect the signal, surely?

Making the tea! I could be offended by that! But I'm not. I was a director on live broadcast. I only qoute the lady at SKY, and as I said I had to do a double take, but having said that when we uplinked (through a dish) our engineers were boosting something!

I don't question your last remark, but when we moved to France and had to get the box "on-line", we obvioulsy couldn't do it over the 'phone line. I gave them a "story" that as we were restoring I couldn't connect the box to the land line, and again was told "that's ok, I can do that without a land line" Just curious!

[Martin963]

We went through all this nonsense about transponder power when the BBC moved to 2D and a lot of people worried that the power (about 35 W for 2D) would be reduced to further restrict the coverage to Britain.

Apart from the fact that Sky have no direct control over transponder power,  it isn't (I'm told) good for the travelling wave tubes that handle the transmitter signal to under-run them. 

AFAIK turning down the wick on an uplink would have no effect on the tx radiated power up on the satellite.    Generally if a sat needs to save power (near the end of its life) whole transponders are switched off,  rather than a general pull back of power on each one.

Having said that,  there are periods when power from individual transponders seems to drop (people in Spain have problems in the early evening if I recall right) and I'm not sure if any real explanaiton has been given for that - although battery back up at reduced power while the earth eclipses the sun (as viewed from the sat) has been mentioned as a possibility.

[Anton Redman]

Back to the real question there are enough of us on the forum with good strength and quality readings in Aquitaine for the strength and quality of the signal from the satellite not to be an issue. On the default transponder my set up on a twin LNB now gives 100% signal strength and 95% quality all three boxes. I know the sky box is a pretty poor tool for absolute measures of either but the reading are substantially better than those from a 'Sky trained professional' set up at a friends house in UK which I used to check the last box second hand box I bought.

As above if it is not alignment /skew, or blockage of the signal by buildings or trees, or possible quality of the connections and cable I will be very surprised.  

[f1steveuk]

So in summary, SKY's reasoning for my poor reception was just BS! Wonder how it was cured then? This is probably why I directed the pictures, rather than send them......

[Martin963]

The fact that there is a problem on two independent dishes (if I read the OP correctly) does either point to less than ideal installation technique,  or - if they're not far apart - some common obstruction in the signal path.

You've eliminated a receiver problem (as far as I can see) so as Anton says the dishes/location/cabling/skew situation needs a review.

[Anton Redman]

If Steve is talking about live feeds feed from a say 1.5 metre dish mounted on an OB unit up to the satellite then transmitted back to the UK that is an almost totally different set up to the problems we are discussing. Apart from the BBCs alternative transmissions for sports events like Wimbledon and the Olympics where you can access them with a ordinary numerique receiver I have never tried to access feeds from other live events though I beleive they are available.

[Anton Redman]

Two questions for Keith assuming he has not lost the will to read the forum.

Do both the LNBs, things on the end of the arm of the dish. point downwards at towards say 6 pm ? Iif so move them so they are aimed at about 7 pm and see if the picture strength and quality improve.

Who installed your set up in the first place ?

[Martin963]

I don't see why the OP should have lost the will to read this thread.   He has already been given a number of useful pointers.  Tim has already mentioned skew,  although it is sensible to explain it in greater detail - as you just have Anton.   Yes the thread went off on a slight tangent,  but it made for interesting reading and cleared up a number of confusions.

If the OP needs further help or advice I'm sure he'll ask,  and we'll all be more than happy to help - as we always are.

[Anton Redman]

Sorry if I caused any offense, it was intended as a light hearted comment nothing more.

[Martin963]

Ah ...  my mistake!

[f1steveuk]

And possibly my fault!

[AnOther]

The idea of someone at Sky turning the wick up in response to a call from a customer is perposterous.

I don't know much the precise workings of the Astra satellites and their transponders but in my position as a communications engineer I'm willing to believe that, within very defined limits, there could be some degree of linarity between input and output power meaning that a variation in the uplink could be reflected in the downlink but even if this were so I would be more than surprised if anyone at Sky had the slightest direct control over it.

[Keith]

Many thanks for all the informed and helpful suggestions, am now sure I will be able to sort out the problem.

Keith

[f1steveuk]

I'm saying nothing!