More4 and e4 and CH4 etc gone from satellite?

andy69

Hi everyone, first time posting here and a total newbie for all things TV outside of Sky :eek:

We've lost, all of a sudden, CH4+1 and More4 and the other Channel4 stations we had. No reason, nothing changed at our side, just gone. We could see the channel name in the list, but it shows 'no signal' when we select the channel.

I Wonder if anyone else is having the same trouble - bit strange and I can't see anything on the web about it.

We had Sky TV since we moved out of Cable-TV-land 15yrs ago, and just a couple of months ago we got rid of them. We still have the Dish and the Cable running to the sittingroom, so now the satellite cable runs straight into our TV and we were able to get CH4+1 and More4 etc just fine until Wednesday.

Some of the other channels in our 'popular channel' list (like ITV and UTV for example) also stopped working, but I can choose another one of them for the dozens of duplicate entries avalable under 'all' channels.

But all the Channel 4 ones are not working. I retuned the TV, and now they aren't even listed anymore! They were at the top of the list of available channels but now all I see is a number like 3001 and 3002 where they used to be. Scanning right down through the whole list I can't see any of them.

Have they been taken off air for direct satellite cable viewing?
We don't have a saorview, just the cable directly into the TV, and an Aerial for the home channels.

Hope you can help!
Andy

lawred2

Does your tv have a sat tuner?

St Senan

If your TV is either Walker or Nordmende and has a Satellite tuner. then go back to first time install and scan for All channels instead of free. It will be a pain deleting all the Sky related channels but keep all the channel 4 family and channel 5 family of channels.

andy69

thanks guys, yeah it has a Sat Tuner alright - I have the Sat Cable running directly into the TV. Was working fine until the other day. I re-tuned all the channels from satellite this evening, and all came back except for the CH4 group.
It's a new TV, Samsung MU6500 range, so there isn't even a software update for it yet (tried that first in case there was a bug and maybe they provided a fix or something).

dxhound2005

You could be missing other channels without knowing it. A full scan of Free to Air TV channels should give you 512. Some of the frequencies are stronger than others.

http://en.kingofsat.net/pos-28.2E.php

The very strongest is 10964 H(Horizontal) which has Channel 5 and it's offshoots. Channel 4 HD on 11126 V (Vertical) is also very strong. Your TV menu should have some way of showing the signal strength on the different frequencies.

There is a known issue where a fault in the LNB can stop reception of either H or V channels, so you could check that first. Or your dish might have moved a small bit resulting in weak signals.

andy69

dxhound2005 wrote: »

You could be missing other channels without knowing it. A full scan of Free to Air TV channels should give you 512. Some of the frequencies are stronger than others.

http://en.kingofsat.net/pos-28.2E.php

The very strongest is 10964 H(Horizontal) which has Channel 5 and it's offshoots. Channel 4 HD on 11126 V (Vertical) is also very strong. Your TV menu should have some way of showing the signal strength on the different frequencies.

There is a known issue where a fault in the LNB can stop reception of either H or V channels, so you could check that first. Or your dish might have moved a small bit resulting in weak signals.

might be a fault I reckon then - the CH5 ones are coming in, and even AlJazera and EuroNews and ITVBe etc, just those CH4 ones are missing (that I know of, but interesting you mention I might be missing other ones that I don't know).
The dish is actually quite old and looks rairly weather-beaten (we're fairly exposed where we live), so I wonder if a new dish might be something I should consider - I think that is the original one from 15yrs ago.
Didn't move afaik...we had it working before, during and since Ophelia right up to the other day.
I'll also check the number of channels...I stopped scrolling after a few hundred, but will look to see if we got in 512 of them.

dxhound2005

Will the menu let you scan an individual transponder? The top two on that list are the Channel 4's and the +1's. What about signal strength menu?

andy69

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Will the menu let you scan an individual transponder? The top two on that list are the Channel 4's and the +1's. What about signal strength menu?

hmmm...not sure now. I'll check and see if I can find that, and also the signal strength as well. Whole new world for me!

andy69

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Will the menu let you scan an individual transponder? The top two on that list are the Channel 4's and the +1's. What about signal strength menu?

ok, so.... found both of those and the signal strength is 66%, and then in the individual transponder option under manual tuning I selected the first one from the top of the list and got zero channels. Same with the second - zero channels.

I wonder then if the signal at 66% is considered to be good? (sounds like it's not great), and then if there was an issue with the Dish being old, maybe it's time for a new one.
Strange that all the other channels come in with lovely quality etc...doesn't appear to be anything wrong other than we can't get the Channel 4 group of channels (all of a sudden).

edit: Also, we get 4-hundered-and-something channels in on a scan, not 512. Definately seems to be some just not getting picked up

dxhound2005

You are not missing many if you did a Free only scan. But if you did a full scan including encrypted (Sky, BT) you are missing over 500.

andy69

dxhound2005 wrote: »

You are not missing many if you did a Free only scan. But if you did a full scan including encrypted (Sky, BT) you are missing over 500.

:eek: jaysus! yeah it was a full scan alright (I did a Free scan earlier and got 200-and-something I think).

So would it sound like it's maybe due to an auld crock of a Dish kind of thing? (it being so old I'm thinking a more modern one might be better/stronger/faster and pick up everything)

dxhound2005

If the dish is on your chimney, get a new 60 cm one. If you can put it on a wall go for 80 cm. Bigger is always better. I think a Sky dish is around 50 cm. Might be a good idea to replace the cable as well, and get a new LNB.

TallGlass

In fairness Andy, it might just need realignment. I put mine up myself, awful place where it gets gusts of wind from time to time. So out with ladder, other half on phone and I move it till the signal comes back. Have a sat finder but the phone and tv is much quicker :pac:

andy69

dxhound2005 wrote: »

If the dish is on your chimney, get a new 60 cm one. If you can put it on a wall go for 80 cm. Bigger is always better. I think a Sky dish is around 50 cm. Might be a good idea to replace the cable as well, and get a new LNB.

yeah it's a fairly small Sky one mounted to the chimney - we can put one on the wall, the house is detached with a clear view to the south so I reckon a new larger dish/lnb is the way to go then. Wife will go mad, I got rid of Sky to save money and the looks I get now when someting doesn't work! ha!

thanks for all the help - really appreciate that.

andy69

TallGlass wrote: »

In fairness Andy, it might just need realignment. I put mine up myself, awful place where it gets gusts of wind from time to time. So out with ladder, other half on phone and I move it till the signal comes back. Have a sat finder but the phone and tv is much quicker :pac:

good thinking...I'll check it for any signs of movement, but it was grand right through the big storm and right up to the other day so I kind of eliminated (in my head) that it could have moved. I'll give it a try before going down the new dish route though
thanks!

dxhound2005

There are some very weak transponders. 11112 H is only 8 dB signal strength on my 110 cm dish. The scale reads up to 20 dB which is maxed out by Channel 5.

But for BBC, ITV and Channels 4 / 5 a small dish is fine.