SKY HD & UHF

Randyleprechaun

Hi,

A friend of mine upgraded to SKY HD today, when he connects the rf from his aerial into rf in it causes the sky pictures going out on rf2 and rf1 to become fuzzy on all tv's(barring thru the HDMI on main tv of course)

His terrestrial channels are fine on all tv's through out the house.

When he disconnects the rf from rf in his sky is fine all over.

I've read a bit on other forums and I've seen a bit about HD boxes causing simillar probs elsewhere.

I've advised him to try different channels for his rf out but it'll be later before he can try. Has anyone any ideas.

My first opinion was that maybe the receiver is being overloaded by the amplified Rf signal(masthead amp) but then I thought if it was ok on ordinary sky box(his first setup) then it should be ok with the HD box, but perhaps not.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

kbell

Plug the old box in and connect it to a television via scart, doesn't need to be connected to a sat signal.
Go to installers menu, services, 4,0,1, select.
Go to RF outlets and see what the old box was set to.
Now input this value in the HD box, its most likely set to 68.

I've found that with some HD boxes that even inputting the correct value doesn't solve the problem and i had to try a few different RF channels to get it right.

Randyleprechaun

He reckons he has done that(set to same rf as before I mean)

I suggested that he try various different rf's

steveon

The HD box's tuner is definitely weaker than that of the skyplus and std boxes, you might need to get a variable attenuator to turn down the signal strength of the terrestrial signal.

Randyleprechaun

steveon wrote: »

The HD box's tuner is definitely weaker than that of the skyplus and std boxes, you might need to get a variable attenuator to turn down the signal strength of the terrestrial signal.

Thanks Steveon

Yeah, I was thinking along those lines all right. I was thinking of getting a variable gain mastheasd amp and seeing if less gain might work. Not sure what gain amp he has there but I'm sure a 10-22 or 7-22 or something might help.

What do you think, will this be the same as the variable attenuator. I suppose the attenuator will be cheaper than an amp so might be wiser

steveon

Yes using a variable Masthead would do the same job in most cases, I have used them to solve said problem on numerous occasions.

byte

Yes, most definitely. I dunno what kinda modules are being used (I tend to end up with Amstrad boxes mostly these days), but they don't seem to like incoming high RF levels, unlike Sky+ or Sky boxes which have a much greater tolerance.

steveon wrote:

The HD box's tuner is definitely weaker than that of the skyplus and std boxes, you might need to get a variable attenuator to turn down the signal strength of the terrestrial signal.

steveon

I cannot understand why they bother putting in an input tuner if there gonna put in such a crappy sensitive one....complete waste of time...at this day and age they need to cope on and make proper equipment.

snaps

Ok, this is going to sound the strangest thing BUT IT WORKS! I came across the same problem last week on a simular install using the RF 2 out to feed other tv's from a HD box. When the aerial was plugged into the RF IN all pictures on other tv's (including the sky boxes own channel) was fuzzy with ghosting, spent hours trying to emilate this by changing the RF output to various channels.

Then by a chance i thought, nothing to loose by connecting the AERIAL feed into the RF 1 OUT instead of the RF IN. You need to change the aerial plug to a female using back to back coupler.

All ghosting, fuzzyness all gone.

This worked brilliantly for me so it may well work for you.

The only difference is that this setup was using the RF 2 output for the 9v supply to a 4 way distributor in the attic (4 magic eyes), so the RF 1 output was free. If this works you may well be able to split the RF 2 output to make it a 2 way instead of 1 (Hope that makes sense)

kbell

Weird, il keep that in mind, thanks for sharing that with us.

Randyleprechaun

steveon wrote: »

Yes using a variable Masthead would do the same job in most cases, I have used them to solve said problem on numerous occasions.

What happens if you end up having to attenuate the signal that much that your terrestrial pics/UHF aren't what they should be.......are you screwed!!!!!