Satellite dish works with Sky box but not with new free-to-air box

Eliot Rosewater

Hi all. Today I received a Walker WP645TS-HD combo box which I'm planning to use to get Saorview and to get the free-to-air British channels through my old Sky satellite dish. The old Sky box still works for tuning in these channels, such as BBC Four, through the "Other Channels" function.

Today I set up my Walker box and plugged the satellite cable out of the Sky box and straight into the Walker box. However, the Walker box can't find any of the free-to-air channels through the satellite.

Does anyone have any idea what might be happening here? Could the Walker box need a stronger signal to work, or something? It seems kind of bizarre.

I don't think it's the case that the Walker box is broken, as TvTrade.ie pre-programmed it for me which I presume they did by connecting it to their dish and running the automatic scan.

Ronnie Raygun

On the Sky box, the socket you removed the cable from, how is it labeled?

recyclebin

Are you sure you removed the right cable from sky box?

The satellite cable has a screw on connection on the end of it. You need to unscrew it from the sky box and screw it into the walker box.

snaps

And make sure you screw it into the lnb in and not lnb out (loopthrough) if the combo has it!

Eliot Rosewater

Thanks for the replies! I definitely switched the right cable; it's a screw on, as ye say.

On the Sky box I plugged it out of the socket that says "Dish Input, 13/18v DC 350mA max" and I plugged it in to the socket on the Walker box that reads "LNB IN 13/18v max 400mA".

There's no LNB out on the Walker.

snaps

See in the settings of walker box that lnb power is switched on. It should be, but you never know.

anonanymore

Hope you unpluged the Sky box before removing the cable, it's easy to damage the lnb by shorting the cable (I know, I've done it). Try refitting the Sky box and see if that works,

ei9go

Is it possible that the Walker has a different LO frequency set for the lnb than the sky box?

Eliot Rosewater

Thanks for your suggestions everyone! Looked into all those things, and they're fine.

But I think I've discovered the problem. The end of the LNB cable is kind of damaged. I dismantled it a little allowing me to stick it further into the LNB socket, and now some channels are being picked up. So the ultimate problem seems to be that the Walker LNB socket is deeper than the Sky Box one - just something to not if anyone ever has these kinds of issues.

Cheers again.

Peter Rhea

If it's the kind of f-connector that just twists onto the cable, you may have inadvertantly undid it from the cable while screwing it onto the Walker box input. Keep an eye on it & make sure only the nut on the end is turning.