Sky Box - Signal Strength

Arist

Hi,

I live in an apartment block with one dish serving perhaps 6 apartments. At certain times, especially during bad or particularly good weather it seems, certain channels keep freezing and the sky box keeps reporting that no signal is being received. Also if I am on the mobile phone the same happens and I suspect if my neighbour is on the mobile this also causes me problems. The worst effected seem to be Setanta and National Geo though I'm sure other channels are effected too. Sky Sports or Movies and most other channels don't give any trouble.

I've checked the signal strength and quality and they are roughly 10% signal strength and 90% signal quality.

I have changed the cable from the box to the wall outlet but this didn't make any difference. Short of getting the landlord to call out a TV engineer which will probably take forever have I any other options to improve the signal strength?
Thanks

John

kingtiger

just sounds like the dish is slightly out of alignment

Peter Rhea

More like rubbish quality cables installed. The downconverted signals for the affected channels mentioned would be in or near 3G phone freqs. afaik.

zg3409

I would nag the landlord. It would be best if he/she could get the person who installed the initial system. If no then get someone who has installed apartment systems and not someone who has not done apartment systems.

I don't think there is any more you can do your end besides making a note of which channels are affected and which are not.

Arist

Thanks for the replies. I also posted about the cable some time ago -

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=77156636

in post 6 Zerks recommends eliminating the push in connector. Would this be worth a try?

Peter Rhea

Could be worth a try, mightn't make much difference. The whole system was probably spec'd for the bare minimum needed to distribute terrestrial signals. The cables in the wall are probably no use for satellite, hence the very low signal level (due to cable losses) & the mobile interference. If you remove the wall plate, don't be surprised if you come across poorly screened (no foil) cable, usually brown in colour.

zg3409

Yes it may help.

You need to use quality branded satellite cable for the lead to the box, such as TX100 and only use F connectors and joiners. This may help. If you are using a molded low cost lead that could be the problem.

However I am suprised the initial installer used coax outlets, so I would not be at all surprised if the initial installation was at fault either.

kingtiger

it might be shoddy cable but I wouldn't dismiss the dish alignment

only fixed a friends last week with similar symptoms by re-aligning the dish and skew on the LNB

Peter Rhea

OP mentions 90% quality though. It's probably a case where the dish installer has come along & had to make do with the cables already in the walls, though he could have at least changed the wallplates to f-connector types.

namoosh

Sounds like the dish to me, had the bad cabling problem as well and the picture quality and signal kept coming and going all the time. Fixed that and then only had problem during high winds, the dish size is just about adequate for the job so alignment has to be spot on. I'd moan to the landlord.

bulbs2010

more than likley its the dish give that a try before changing cables

Peter Rhea

More than likely nothing to do with the dish, based on what the OP has reported, both here & in their previous thread on the subject.

Arist

I'll tackle the cabling first as its the easiest option. The dish is on the roof of a four story building to which I have no access. Thanks for all the replies.

Liameter

IEC "Belling-Lee" TV plugs were originally designed for Medium Wave radio only, so they barely work for UHF TV. They certainly won't work properly for satellite TV LNB signals. The likely effect is that some frequencies will be noticeably weak.

Peter Rhea

Didn't BSB receivers use Belling-Lee plugs?



A few months back, someone asked me if I could get this setup to work . . .

zg3409

Peter Rhea wrote: »

Didn't BSB receivers use Belling-Lee plugs?

Yes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_aerial_plug but they are not recommended.

Liameter

Peter Rhea wrote: »

Didn't BSB receivers use Belling-Lee plugs?

That was before my time but the analogue sky Nokia receiver (SAT1700 ?) certainly did and it had continual problems with some channel signals being too weak. The tuner design was just dire.