Increasing Sky Digital strengh / quality to 100%

notahappycamper

Hi all,

With the recent weather conditions the signal quality and strengh indicators have significantly reduced on my Sky system. I was just wondering is it ever possible to get both bars up to 100% or even just the signal quality bar! Is there anyone you could recommend to do it for me?

Thanks...

keanebg1

Not sure if its possible in Ireland with the standard Sky dish. You do know you cant make the picture any better right? Once its locked on that its, no matter how big the dish?

No need to do anything unless you missing any channels.

notahappycamper

keanebg1 wrote:

Not sure if its possible in Ireland with the standard Sky dish. You do know you cant make the picture any better right? Once its locked on that its, no matter how big the dish?

No need to do anything unless you missing any channels.

Thanks for the reply.

So basically the picture quality does not change unless it falls below say 30 or 40% i.e. no picture?

No real point in having the meters then is there as u either will have a signal or have not?!

kkontour

The better you can get your signal, the less chance you have of losing your picture in bad weather.

Ulsterman 1690

Even an 80cm dish wont give a 100% signal or quality reading

watty

At low quality level the signal is "blocky" and is gone in light rain.

The Quality bar will show LNB squew and dish alignment as above about 30% to 40% the receiver locks and picture improves up to 50%. Good alignment is approx 70% to 80%.

But all approximate.


Some receivers the "level" bar wraps around.. it only shows a relative level, I proved this on a 110cm dish and a grundig. As the quality increased the Level jumped from nearly 100% to 50%. I had then nearly 95% quality and 50% level.

I have distribution system with some signal loss using a 90cm dish. The levels are all about 50% and quality is over 80%. The actual level thus is not very significant. Except maybe to see cable loss or distribution system loss (niether of those affects the more important quality unless the signal gets very low level).

This is why a booster amp on cable is no use. The Quality is decided by the Microwave signal entering the LNB, not the signal level comming out of LNB.

notahappycamper

watty wrote:

At low quality level the signal is "blocky" and is gone in light rain.

The Quality bar will show LNB squew and dish alignment as above about 30% to 40% the receiver locks and picture improves up to 50%. Good alignment is approx 70% to 80%.

But all approximate.


Some receivers the "level" bar wraps around.. it only shows a relative level, I proved this on a 110cm dish and a grundig. As the quality increased the Level jumped from nearly 100% to 50%. I had then nearly 95% quality and 50% level.

I have distribution system with some signal loss using a 90cm dish. The levels are all about 50% and quality is over 80%. The actual level thus is not very significant. Except maybe to see cable loss or distribution system loss (niether of those affects the more important quality unless the signal gets very low level).

This is why a booster amp on cable is no use. The Quality is decided by the Microwave signal entering the LNB, not the signal level comming out of LNB.

So I presume even other signals passing through the air could interfere with the microwave signal entering the LNB thus decreasing / having as effect on the signal quality / strength?

MisterAnarchy

I spent about half a day realigning my dish earlier this month.
The max signal strength and quality I could get was about 75% .
I couldnt get any higher no matter what I did.:mad:
Its staying around that level now .
My next door neighbour has a FTA receiver and his strength is about 90% but he has an 80cm dish unlike my standard Sky Dish.

Supercell

On the Sky box my quality is all the way over but level is only half way over which is weird.
On the Dreambox both signal and agr are both in the 90's range and never loose picture (ber is always 0 even in heavy weather).
Conclusion - the Digibox level seems to be pretty meaningless, concentrate on getting the quality higher.
These signals are on an 80CM solid dish BTW not a standard minidish.

watty

Yep your sig level has "wrapped" around. Quality is Fine so OK.

At 40% to 50% quality some channels can look decidedly blocky

Mayo Exile

Perhaps it should be noted too that not all of the transponders at 28E seem to be of the same strength. Have an 80cm dish and a Strong 4012 FTA receiver at home on Mayo west coast. In clear conditions most of Astra 2D beams are either 80% or 86% signal quality. However some of the Eurobird transponders such as the one "Russia Today" is on has only 53% quality and will quickly drop to about 30% in heavy rain.

watty

The Euro bird is 0.3 degree more east and indeed there is a lot of variation between Transponders. The Sky box unless you go into Installer mode only shows Default Transponder, maybe on 2B.

Ulsterman 1690

It should also be noted that having TOO big a dish pointed at a satellite with a strong signal can cause a dramatic drop in signal quality as the LNB and/or reciever go into overload and cross modulation.

Also unless the dish is perfectly aligned to the satellite a biger dish can even result in a weaker signal (due to the narrower bandwith) very big dishes (2m or more) can run into difficulties with co-located satellites (like Astra and Eurobird)


But with digital the pursuit of a 100% signal level is pointless. All one needs is enough signal to enable viewing of all channels without any breakup or pixelisation effects plus a confortable margin to allow for losses during heavy rain etc.

supergrip

The signal level is mainly used for the installers. It's totally arbitrary - 2 different manufacturer boxes on the same dish will show different signal strength/quality, depending on the tuner, tuning algorithms used and hardware in the box. It's a guide, not something to be taken seriously.

watty

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

It should also be noted that having TOO big a dish pointed at a satellite with a strong signal can cause a dramatic drop in signal quality as the LNB and/or reciever go into overload and cross modulation.

Also unless the dish is perfectly aligned to the satellite a biger dish can even result in a weaker signal (due to the narrower bandwith) very big dishes (2m or more) can run into difficulties with co-located satellites (like Astra and Eurobird)


But with digital the pursuit of a 100% signal level is pointless. All one needs is enough signal to enable viewing of all channels without any breakup or pixelisation effects plus a confortable margin to allow for losses during heavy rain etc.

All true. On 2m you need motorised to get Eurobird and Astra. 0.3 degree is too far apart.
Even on my 110cm I can see a big difference on 28.2 vs 28.5 for Eurobird

notahappycamper

MisterAnarchy wrote:

I spent about half a day realigning my dish earlier this month.
The max signal strength and quality I could get was about 75% .
I couldnt get any higher no matter what I did.:mad:
Its staying around that level now .
My next door neighbour has a FTA receiver and his strength is about 90% but he has an 80cm dish unlike my standard Sky Dish.

I got Sierra out and I now have 90% quality on my standard Sky Mini-dish!