E4 and E4+1 missing

kkelly77

We have a FTA setup using a communal dish.

Recently the signal on E4 and E4+1 has been deteriorating. At times they are gone completely. All other stations are fine.

Do these stations need to be retuned or can anyone offer some advice on a solution? Thanks.

Holbrook

You will also have problems with Channel 4 +1, & More 4. Retuning won't do anything.

I suppose all you can check for yourself is whatever part of the system is accessible in your own dwelling: look for say, kinked cable or loosened connectors. After that, it would be a matter for whoever maintains the system. Might be the dish has become misaligned, & could have exacerbated an already existing weakness at the particular frequencies those channels are carried on.

St Senan

OP ask your Neighbours are they having the same problem. If they are then the dish/communial system needs to be checked. If not then it could be some sort of interference from a cordless phone known as Dect interference turn off any wireless devices in your apartment and see does the picture come back.

CATwalk

Had same problem last couple of weeks kept breaking up. Cost €100 for call out and had to get dish replaced. It's perfect now.

hoodwinked

first step,check the signal strength (in the menu)
second step, turn off the box and turn it back on again, if it doesn't fix it:
third step, check the cables from the wall to the box are ok, swap them around and see if the signal bars change accordingly, if they do replace/fix the broken cable (note: sometimes the connectors become loose and screwing them tight will fix it)
fourth step, call your management agency/landlord to have the dish checked,

kkelly77

Thanks for the advice.

FYI, no equipment/cabling used has been moved or changed in any way. We're using a Sky+ box (without card) as our receiver. It always gets powered off at mains when not in use, so it has be restarted every time.

If it is a cabling issue, wouldn't all channels be affected?

I've attached signal strength images for E4 and BBC1. As you can see, signal quality for E4 is way down compared to BBC 1.

hoodwinked

kkelly77 wrote: »

Thanks for the advice.

FYI, no equipment/cabling used has been moved or changed in any way. We're using a Sky+ box (without card) as our receiver. It always gets powered off at mains when not in use, so it has be restarted every time.

If it is a cabling issue, wouldn't all channels be affected?

we didn't move ours either, the first time it turned out to be a dish issue the second time was a cabling issue, when my husband rang sky the first time they ran through the check list above so when we did it before ringing them the second time it worked and fixed the channels,

for some reason only certain channels weren't working for us,

Holbrook

kkelly77 wrote: »

If it is a cabling issue, wouldn't all channels be affected?

Not necessarily all channels, there could be frequency-selective effects. There might just be some "quirk" in the system that caused these frequencies to always be a bit worse off, & something has happened recently (say slight dish misalignment) that has pushed them below decoding threshold.

Also, DECT interference tends to affect the encrypted "Irish" versions of Channel 4.

Irish Steve

If it's a Sky + box, don't necessarily believe the signal strength indicators, we had a problem here recently that looked like a cabling issue, channel 2 was showing low compared to channel 1, and we had occasional problems. We also have more than one box, via a Multi Link system in the roof

As a first check, I decided to swap the cables between channel 1 & 2. Having swapped the cables, the relative signals were still the same, Ch 1 was high, and Ch 2 was low.

We had a box swap a few days later, and the engineer checked our signal strength, it was down due to the height of the trees on the boundary of our garden, we attacked them with the chain saw, which solved that problem, but the engineer's comment was significant, he said that on the older plus boxes, the signal strength indication is not an accurate indication of the signal, especially on tuner 2, so it can't be relied on to set the dish/lnb alignment with any accuracy, and certainly the indications I saw were a confirmation of that.

Based on other experience, it sounds like the dish/lnb is slightly out of alignment and as more than one satellite is being used to provide the signals, that specific sat and alignment is marginal.

Having said that, as its an old Sky + box, it might be worth swapping the 2 input cables over and seeing if it makes any difference, based on our experience here.