Picture breakup

dil999

I have a quad LNB with 3 connections. One feeds into a Sky digibox with a FTV card and 2 into a sky+ box.

I am getting picture breakup on the Sky digibox. Its most noticible on Channel 5, sky customer channel and ITV3. Not on the Sky+ box.
Therefore not the dish

I have swapped the sat feed between the 2 boxes and still have picture breakup only on the sky + box. Therefore not the cables/LNB
I popped the FTV into my sky + box. picture is fine. Therefore not the card.

I watched the FTA channels on the sky box (no card inserted) And the picture is fine. (not the box ??)

I have powered the box off and on a few times with no improvement.

Only thing I can think of is the card reader in the skybox might be dodgy

Has anyone seen this before or have any ideas ???? The box is a panasonic 'bout 2.5 years old

Thanks
Dil

Tony

sounds like tuner problem with box, repair/replace I would imagine

dil999

Thanks Tony, Only question is though: if its the tuner, why does it work fine with no card inserted ? Or is it the tuner that does the encryption?

I put in my Ireland sub sky+ card in the box, and immediately got the problem on channel 998 - Sky welcome channel.

Is it worth opening it up and having a look at the the card reader? Is it accessible/ repairable (ie to clean contacts/check connections)

If not whats the best/cheapest way to get the box repaired?

Thanks
Dil

Tony

Thats interesting, can you identify specific channels its happens with or does it do it will all channels? Do the free air channels break up if you insert card during viewing? TBH i've not come across this particular problem before where its only affected when card is inserted

dil999 wrote:

Thanks Tony, Only question is though: if its the tuner, why does it work fine with no card inserted ? Or is it the tuner that does the encryption?

I put in my Ireland sub sky+ card in the box, and immediately got the problem on channel 998 - Sky welcome channel.

Is it worth opening it up and having a look at the the card reader? Is it accessible/ repairable (ie to clean contacts/check connections)

If not whats the best/cheapest way to get the box repaired?

Thanks
Dil

dil999

I got a bit of time to look at it this evening. Sat watching the quality indicator for 10 minutes.

With the card in: the signal quality indicator drops to zero every 10 seconds or so and immediatley returns back to ~90% percent.

With the card out the signal quality drops to ~20% every 45 seconds or so and stays there for 2 seconds and returns back to ~90%

Watching channel 5 and Sky customer channel (998) is constant picture breakup. Watching the FTA with the card in (ITV1 and ITV3) i have noticed slight picture break up. Slight pauses every 15 mins type of thing. Chanel 4 seems fine.

I still havent seen any picture breakup with the card out, but I probably will if I wait long enough based on the quality indicator.

Signal quality is rock solid on my sky+ box on both feeds

Tony, do you repair these?

Tony

Sorry no I dont, someone else mentioned a repair shop up north which seemed reasonable.

byte

I've come across a Panasonic box recently with similar faults. I've never fully found out the problem with it, and getting them repaired for reasonable price is rather difficult. I'd be interested if you find somebody to fix yours.

Out of curiousity, what's channels like Rapture TV like? Do they break up?

dil999

A buddy in work has a spare box that he's giving to me, so I probably wont have to get it repaired.

I'll check Rapture TV for you tomorrow. (What number is it?)

I left the card out last night and I watched BBC 4 for an hour with no breakup. I switched over to ITV3 and was getting constant breakup.
I switched to ITV 1 central, it was fine. So I went to UTV in the 'Other channels', adn constant breakup.

I notice from lyngsat that UTV and ITV3 are on the same transponder frequency. So it may be failing on specific frequencies, I'll do a little more investigation tomorrow evening.

Dil

Tony

specific freq break up usually points to the coax cable or lnb

dil999

I swapped over the cables with my SKY+ box and put my FTV card into it alos and Channel 5 had no problems.

When I put it back into the sky box, immediately the picture was breaking up.

I'll be able to say better when I get the other sky box, hopefully tomorrow.


Thanks
Dil

dil999

Thanks for your help guys.

It look like it was the box. Replaced it with a Pace box and the picture seems fine.

The problem seemed to be by frequency as the all the channels on the same freq as UTV/ITV3 were affected and all the channels on the same frequencey as 'Five' were affected. The only other channel with a proble, was sky cust channel, 998 but i could find its frequency

Dil