No Signal Problems?

Ouijaboard

Have an odd problem over past couple of weekends on sky sports1 only, cant quite understand why its happening only on this channel. During the week the signal is perfect, when it comes to a certain part of the weekend I have bad freezing, macroblocking which then jumps to and from the blue 'no satellite signal is being received' screen.

The beauty of this litlle 'fault' is it thens to wait until there's a prime time match on that i want to see an then starts playing up, and returns perfectly when the event is over...last weekend played up during liverpool match and then during arsenal/manu game. Week before that during the barca/madrid game.
Today is the first day it happened on a saturday when theres no live match on, it'll most likely occur tomorrow during the liverpool game

Heres an example of the screen:
imageshackpic1
and
imageshackpic2

Have tried all the usual procedures. reboots, switch off and on LNB. no luck, signal quality is at about 90% and strength at about 75%.

The dish does not seem to be misaligned, its locked on perfectly and every other channel displays fine.

I dont have another box to test with at moment, and just wondering about ringing sky, an engineer call out will most likely happen when the box is not showing problems during week, and i'll have to foot the bill for what looks like a perfectly functioning system.

Any ideas?

box is a pace 2600.

Cheers,

Jeff.

Tony

is there anything external happening at the time of breakup and does it happen at exactly the same time every day?

Ouijaboard

Hi Tony, It has happened at the roughly the same time every sunday for past two weeks, showing exactly the same symptoms at around 2pm and starts to come back at around 5pm or so. Today was the first time it happened on a saturday....odd I know, during the week it is absolutely fine.

Its a really odd issue I know, how can something so random as signal breakup, show some sort of coincidence that it happens at roughly the same time each weekend, almost always when there's a big match on?

Dont think sky will treat me seriously when i ring them up, kinda wish at this stage the issue would occur accross all channels (not just sports 1)
, that way I might not sound like I'm imagining it if an engineer comes out to look at it during the week.

Theres nothing external going on when the issue occurs, weather has been clear, no obstructions to signal.

I'm lost....the only occurence that may have contributed is that I received a software update about 3 weeks ago, problems started happening after that...still doent really explain why it only happens on one channel.

Thanks,

St Senan

It's probably the tuner in your box or lnb problem what make of box do you have
when it happens again check these channels they share the same frequency as sky sports 1
{12148.00 H 27500 2/3} Sci-Fi UK - Sky Sports News - British Eurosport 2 - Hallmark Channel- Sky Sports Xtra - Discovery Real Time +1. Or {12110.00 H 27500} Cartoon Network UK +1 - Sky Sports 1 - 3 Sky Bet - FX UK

Tony

As it happens at the same time i would think something external is involved.Is Ct100 cable used from the dish to the receiver uninterrupted?

cougar1 wrote:

Hi Tony, It has happened at the roughly the same time every sunday for past two weeks, showing exactly the same symptoms at around 2pm and starts to come back at around 5pm or so.

Ouijaboard

yeah the cable seems fine, its fairly secure on its way to the dish, no kinks as far as i can see, of course the dish is attached to my chimney and i cant be 100% sure what shape the cable is around the LNB. Will have to get that checked out.
I'm just a little perplexed as to the fact that it only affects sports 1. Is there something specific about the frequency of this channel or other transponder settings going out of whack that may affect this channel only.

Maybe its some crows trying to eat the lnb for lunch every sunday

Tony

you say it seems fine but is it definitely CT 100 cable, if it is its marked on the cable? Anytime i've had a problem on a specific freq it was almost always related to badly shielded cable affected by an external source. External source could be anything from a cellphone site to a taxi company.

cougar1 wrote:

yeah the cable seems fine, its fairly secure on its way to the dish, no kinks as far as i can see, of course the dish is attached to my chimney and i cant be 100% sure what shape the cable is around the LNB. Will have to get that checked out.
I'm just a little perplexed as to the fact that it only affects sports 1. Is there something specific about the frequency of this channel or other transponder settings going out of whack that may affect this channel only.

Maybe its some crows trying to eat the lnb for lunch every sunday

Robxxx7

check everything possible ..i had something similar where i lost some channels at some times of the day...and it was due to the cable running close to the central heating boiler ...when the boiler started up, some of my channels became pixelated ...once i re-run the cables away all was ok

Ouijaboard

Thanks guys, sorry scaller missed your post above, will keep an eye on the other channels you mentioned, was looking for the frequencies similar to sports1 in case their is some polarity problem. I'm definitely having a few fleks on some of the channels you mentioned, i.e. scifi, sky sports news, hallmark. The box is a pace 2600 about 2 yrs old i think.

Sports 1 started acting up at about 11am this morn, and yes it is gone now for the liverpool game
Yesterday the channel started coming back gradually after about 6pm and was fine for what I saw of it last night.

Tony yeah sorry was not very clear about the cable. Yes it is CT100, is marked on it. Also what you say about external interference is echoed by sam radford over at digitalspy. Will be looking into it.
http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=365610

http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/interf.htm
Scrolling down to 'Interference at specific times of day'
Looking at here aswell, was surprised at the amount of external sources that can muck up the signal. Your boiler issue was mentioned in the above link as well rob.

I'm going to have to get at the lnb to see how the cable is, and probably get hold of a box, I just wonder would it how 'easy' it would be to get sky to come out and replace box or lnb for free? Might threaten to cancel sub and see how it goes. They will most likely need to see the problem in action before they do anything, that could be a problem. would keeping screenshots as above get them to act.

Thanks,

St Senan

It sounds like either tuner or lnb problem. To decide which, you need to test your digital receiver on a known good dish system.