signal strength, quality and pixelation

rockape

I bought a freesat system(philex) from powercity for e85. Took a bit of fiddling about but eventually got signal strong enough to get the stations in. The highest I could get was about 80 on strength and quality. Can anyone tell me how high it should be as the picture quality is slightly pixelated at times. not sure if it's down to signal or cheap kit. EPG is terrible on it. Only tells you whats on at the moment. Don't know if this is due to the same issues. If anyone could offer any advise I would be grateful as if it's down to the receiver theres no point messing with the dish.

St Senan

Your LNB needs to be skewed to receive maxium signal stand in front of it and turn it clockwise until the connecter is at 7 oclock then tighten up the to screws on the black collar with a philips screw driver.

Kashkai

A slight change in the dish's azimuth and/or elevation can also improve signal strength and quality (and I'm only talking about a couple of millimetres here). What cable are you using and how long are the cable runs as cheap cable and long runs can also affect signal quality and strength.

As for the receiver, you could invest in a dedicated freesat receiver. They start at around €90 and go up to €300 but that would buy you a Humax HDR that has all the qualities of a SKYHD box without the monthly subscription. If the budget is limited, try acquiring an old SKY box that will give you the free to air cahnnels and a 7 day epg which sounds better than what you're using at present.

rockape

Cable run is pretty long but i bought a decent quality one. I'll try to fine tune the dish but I think a better receiver might be the order of the day. Thanks for the reply.

byte

By pixellated, do you mean picture breakup, or just pixelly picture? The latter is quite normal on some/many of the channels, due to over-compression/low bitrates.