Satellite reciever installation query - Sky Engineer

American Pie

I have a question regarding the installation of a satellite receiver and particularly the connection with the satellite LNB.

A friend of mine recently moved to a new apartment and arranged to have his sky television package moved to the new address. Before moving he had asked about having Sky TV and had been told by the agent during a viewing that this would be no problem as there was a communal dish for the apartment block. He accepted this as fact and does not really appear to know much about how satellite systems work.

Just after the move, I got a phone call asking if there was a way to connect the Sky box to get TV and was immediately wary when they told me the story about the communal dish. I know systems exist for this, but I see it as unlikely this block of apartments would have such a system installed. A few days later I called around and sure enough, I could only find a terrestrial coaxial output connection in the wall and no satellite connection (Never mind two which he would need for Sky+).

A week later I called back and the situation had not changed despite a Sky engineer having visited the apartment. My friend told me that the Sky engineer had attempted to connect to the communal dish, but had been unable to get it work. The Sky engineer then told him that a new dish would be required and its installation would cost £100. Now the fact that a new dish and cable would need to be installed did not surprise me at all, but the method the Sky engineer used to supposedly connect to the communal dish did.

My friend said the engineer had attempted to connect the Sky + box into the connection in the wall. He then pointed to the terrestrial TV coaxial output connection in the wall I had found before. This made no sense to me as I am sure this would not have worked. There is no satellite output that I can find and I am pretty sure the "communal dish" is actually a "communal aerial" which the agent either accidentally or deliberately confused during the initial viewing. I can't understand however if the "Sky Engineer" just had no clue what he was doing, or was deliberately misleading my friend.

I want to check that a standard coaxial connection for terrestrial TV would not be used for a satellite connection? I want to make sure there is something I don't know about before I possible get in contact with Sky about the installation (I also have other issues that I may contact Sky about on behalf of my friend other than the TV). I understand terrestrial and satellite feeds can share the same cable, but I believe this needs a splitter behind the wall output that separates the signals into their respective plugs. These still have separate TV and satellite connections from what I can see.

I have attached links to pictures below (Apologies, I can't seem to post pics or proper links as I am a "new user") of the wall TV connection and a left over piece of dual satellite cable left over by the Sky engineer during his visit. This is the same type of cable my friend said the engineer tried to connect his Sky+ box to into the wall connection shown.

***h**p://i57.tinypic.com/2s6rel5.jpg***

**h**p://i62.tinypic.com/2q3963d.jpg***

Kristopherus

I doubt Sky will talk to you. They usually only converse with the account holder.

American Pie

Kristopherus wrote: »

I doubt Sky will talk to you. They usually only converse with the account holder.

That is true. And that may be the end of it. I may be able to convince him to call and check. I am just worried he may have been mislead by both Sky and the engineer. Sky have also offered him "Free" broadband, which having dealt with Sky in the past, I find hard to believe without a catch. I just don't want him being mislead because of having not fully understood what he was agreeing too and what the engineer was doing.