Picture Freezing

Raytown Rocks

Hi All

Was asked to check my dad's sky digital yesterday, picture quality is terrible.
Picture keeps freezing. He had contacted sky directly who had him do all the usual things ( check connections, unplug clean card etc) but to no avail.

So anyway I had a look for him yesterday, went into the menus for signal strength, signal quality.
So as I look at the screen the 2 bars that show strength, quality.. are moving up and down all the time ( from 50% down and back up), never any higher than maybe 50% hope that makes sense.

So basically I was wondering what your ideas may be as to the problem.
Is it a dish alignment issue, or an LNB problem, cable or maybe the digibox( not sure as to the make, but its 4/5 years old).
If its a major problem, would I be better going for sky+ instead of a service call ( price wise is it cheaper)
Sorry for asking so many questions,but would like to help him out ( he doesnt get out these days)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Happy new year to all.

Chef.

god's toy

How old is the Digibox? I know of many that never made it past the 5-6 year mark as the tuner went ga ga on them, mine included befor I got Sky+. It could also be a dish alignment issue, did you have strong wind over the last few days?

I'm sure we have many lads on boards that know the reasons behind the problems your having and you will get the answere soon.


Happy new year!

sheepshagger

the digibox was only 3 and half years old.

Thought is was teh dish being out of alignment so got a guy around (thought he was professional as (got his details off here) he charged us EUR 70 as a callout fee and he couldnt even fix the problem!

To cut a long story short, we had to get a new digibox (arrnaged thru Sky) cost us EUR 108 but the problems fixed.

Good luck.

Aquos76

Was it a new box or a reconditioned one that they gave you?

DinoBot

Im having similar problems. A friend of mine got a fix kit for the power supply of the box and that did the job for his box. Im going to check this out for my one as well.

If you need more details let me know.

Tony

Can you borrow another digibox and try it on your Dads dish?

chef wrote:

Hi All

Was asked to check my dad's sky digital yesterday, picture quality is terrible.
Picture keeps freezing. He had contacted sky directly who had him do all the usual things ( check connections, unplug clean card etc) but to no avail.

So anyway I had a look for him yesterday, went into the menus for signal strength, signal quality.
So as I look at the screen the 2 bars that show strength, quality.. are moving up and down all the time ( from 50% down and back up), never any higher than maybe 50% hope that makes sense.

So basically I was wondering what your ideas may be as to the problem.
Is it a dish alignment issue, or an LNB problem, cable or maybe the digibox( not sure as to the make, but its 4/5 years old).
If its a major problem, would I be better going for sky+ instead of a service call ( price wise is it cheaper)
Sorry for asking so many questions,but would like to help him out ( he doesnt get out these days)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Happy new year to all.

Chef.

sheepshagger

it was a new didgibox (well it was all wrapped up in plastic and in a box)

Seems to have done thw trick - the moral of the story - dont try and get some guy out to fix it(and think it will be cheaper), if the box is over 3 years old - pay the EUR 108 and get it sorted once and for all.

parsi

sheepshagger wrote:

the digibox was only 3 and half years old.

Thought is was teh dish being out of alignment so got a guy around (thought he was professional as (got his details off here) he charged us EUR 70 as a callout fee and he couldnt even fix the problem!

To cut a long story short, we had to get a new digibox (arrnaged thru Sky) cost us EUR 108 but the problems fixed.

Good luck.

ah feck - if you argued they would have done it for 54....

Raytown Rocks

chef wrote:

Hi All

Was asked to check my dad's sky digital yesterday, picture quality is terrible.
Picture keeps freezing. He had contacted sky directly who had him do all the usual things ( check connections, unplug clean card etc) but to no avail.

So anyway I had a look for him yesterday, went into the menus for signal strength, signal quality.
So as I look at the screen the 2 bars that show strength, quality.. are moving up and down all the time ( from 50% down and back up), never any higher than maybe 50% hope that makes sense.

So basically I was wondering what your ideas may be as to the problem.
Is it a dish alignment issue, or an LNB problem, cable or maybe the digibox( not sure as to the make, but its 4/5 years old).
If its a major problem, would I be better going for sky+ instead of a service call ( price wise is it cheaper)
Sorry for asking so many questions,but would like to help him out ( he doesnt get out these days)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Happy new year to all.

Chef.

Hi all

Thanks for the replies. Anyway in the end I got onto to sky and they sent an engineer on New Years Eve... €108. ( was surprised that sky offered this date but to be fair he was there on the day and on time).
Anyway had to have the LNB replaced,he left the old one with us for us to see.
He was in and out in 20 minutes.
I must say I usually see a lot of people who have major trouble with Sky installs and service calls etc, but in this case the guy was from Sierra, was prompt, effecient and overall a job well done.

Chef

Raytown Rocks

Well Everyone

The plot thickens, The problem re-aapeared very shortly after the engineer left. Another call out was required. Engineer arrived yesterday. Replaced LNB(again), also replaced the didgbox, also ran a temporary cable feed, and the problem still persists.....
ANY IDEAS ANYONE? Is it a new card we need as recommended below.

Engineer told my elderly parents to order a new card.......and then all the problems began.
My mother rang sky and ordered a new card, Sky said 5 working days......:mad:
Sky didnt tell her the old card would be disconnected in 20 minutes.:eek: :eek: :eek: :mad:
Now they have nothing!!!!! and dont even get me started on their "helpdesk".:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
They were completely useless, sorry your new card is already ordered your old card could take upto 3 days to reset ( this we were told less than 1 hour after the original call to order a new card).
Am I right in thinking they can just take the old card out and watch FTA channels untill the new card arrives anyway ( despite the fact that the picture keeps freezing )...
Overall very disappointed with their customer service, they will not recognise me or my sister( she pays the bill btw) as having anything to do with the account and keep insisting my 73 year old, profoundly deaf father call them to setup a password..:rolleyes:

RANT OVER..Sorry it went on so long.

Thanks all for any input
Chef

watty

Sounds like dish alignment.

Put card in back to front while in Interactive on Sky news. Back up and you should have BBC/ITV on 101 .. 103 etc.

Raytown Rocks

Cheers Watty, will do.
I would however have imagined that the 2 different engineers would have checked for dish alignment.
If when the new card arrives, the problem persists ( i.e thats now a new card,LNB,decoder) would sky replace the actual dish and cable and realign etc...I presume they would have to.

Cheers
Chef

watty

Perhaps LNB skew is wrong. Clicky rotation of LNB in its holder.

If dish bolts not rusted it can be adjusted slightly Up/Down or East/west.

Only slacken one direction at a time.

View the Quality bar in Services Setup Signal Strength.

I bet if you adjust carefully it will be much better.

Put TV where you can see it or get someone to shout
Steady Steady
Better Better
Worse Worse
About every 2 sec. It takes about 1s to respond so very smal adjustment and wait to see result.

Raytown Rocks

Cheers Watty

Thanks for the input.
I will wait untill the new card arrives to see if it makes any difference before I do anything. My mams already paid €108 to SKY so if the card doesnt fix the fault I will be on to them to have it fixed.
But it would be good to know what i may need to do if the case arises.

Just as an aside, if my Dad decides arse to all this I'm going NTL digital, if I were to take his decoder and connect it at home, have a quad LNB, will SKY give my a mirrored card for a one of price or do I need to go multifoom €10 a month ( I know its off the original topic, but was just wondering)

As a completely off topic question, could I put an rj11 jack( modem connection) into the back of the decoder(s), but loop the pin's on the rj11 to make the decoder believe the line is busy ( obviously after I have initially setup the new card) thus saving me run phone cables to the 2 boxes.

Hope you dont mind all the questions

Cheers

Chef

PS, Not trying to cheat or anything like that, was just wondering about the whole RJ11 loop back, if this is against any charters I will remove it.

watty

If you have a mirror sub, no the that won't work.
If you don't have a mirror sub it is no eventual difference from no phone line.

The card has no effect whatsoever on channels "freezing", esp non-Pay channels.

If the card is faulty you get the FTA channels fine and intermittantly on pay channels either "re-insert you card" or " Contact your provider to update your susbscription"

watty

If it is a multiroom system with a Quad LNB, then it isn't aligment if only one box is freezing.

Swap boxes over. If freezing stays on same box then it is a faulty digibox.

If freezing stays at same place it is a faulty cable or LNB o/p. If a quad LNB and freezing at same place swap LNB connectors at the LNB. If still bad then the cable is damaged or picking up interference at mains sovcket or into cable.