picture freezing and breaking up ?

shabbyroad

has been bugging me for quite some time - happens particularly on the Disney channels. The picture pixelates and then freezes. Usually I can fix it by turning off and disconnecting the box for a few minutes - while the kids moan at me.
most channels appear fine - just happens on the odd channel.
It's a Panasonic box.

Suggestions for reason for this or fixes ?
Sky have only been able to offer the above 'solution'.

Tony

Sounds like dish alignment or cabling problem, really needs a spectrum analyzer to tell so I'm afraid you need a service call.

Tony

shabbyroad

that's what I was afraid of because the dish and LNB are supposedly aligned ok, if it's cable then it's a needle in a haystack.

is there a way to properly test all connections from a splitter ?
(I have a triax dish, grundig lnb and triax 10-way active splitter feeding the house with Sky and Cablelink), this only seems to affect a particular set of channels which I believe are on one band - or was the engineer I've had out before talking horsesh1t ?

and if you could PM me with a price on a box+card basic family pack subscription I'd appreciate it (don't need an install as you can probably figure out), would prefer another panasonic box. If the price is right I might just dump cablelink and run two Sky subscriptions along with my FTV Pace + UK card.

Tony

Where is the splitter located before or after the digibox? AS for the digibox the unsubsidised price is 399 but you might have heard of the "altering your address slightly" method although I never told you to try this

Tony

shabbyroad

Hi Tony,
the box I have was not subsidized - so there's never been a subsidized box at this address.

the setup is :
Quad LNB (4 outputs) --> Splitter (22H and 22V + & - inputs)
Cablelink -->Splitter (UHF/VHF input)
(splitter located at attic level, less than 3 meters from dish)
Splitter outputs x 10 to rooms in house
each point has the 3-way TV/Sat/FM output socket(s)

Last time engineer was out (ok, it was a year ago but surely no change since then ?) he replaced LNB, replaced cabling from LNB to Splitter, realigned dish, used cableties to 'fix' LNB into position. Everything seemed fine.

Anything I could check ?

Tony

Ok firstly I would try the digibox out on different points, if you have not already done so. If this makes no difference then you need to identify what channels are giving problems so you can identify what band/polarities are affected and then by pass the affected one so as to eliminate the switchbox as the source of the problem. Your engineer really should have a spectrum analyser which will show up the cause pretty quickly.

Good luck

donmaga1

The same thing happened to me. i solved the problem by unpluging the digi-box at the mains then unscrewing the cable from the satellite. If you leave it unpluged for 5 to 10 min then plug the cable from the satellite first making sure that the cable is in correctly and it is in as far is it can go, if it is not in all the way the pic may break up. Then plug in the satellite at the mains, DO NOT SWITCH THE DIGI-BOX ON FOR 10 MIN. This should get it to work. When the digi-box is left on for a long time and not switched of the pic will start to freeze. At nite switch it off at the front and not at the mains as the digi-box software is updated at nite.
Try this a couple of time'sif the problem is still there. If the problem if still there you will need a new digi-box. If you have digi-box.

cupthehand

I was getting the same problem myself a few months back, I checked out the box and it was perfect I then got a friend in the know to check the dish alighment etc. and he found out that the seal connecting the cable to the LBN had broke and water was getting into the cable and distorting the picture (this explained why it happened more frequenty in poor weather) and seeing as my 12 month warranty was up a whole new contract using " an Altered address" was the cheaper option and it all worked out perfectly

Mossy Monk

i've been having dreadful breakups and loss of signal for the last 3 days. the picture was messing up every 4 minutes so rather than pay for someone to look at it, today i covered the bottom half of the lnb with tape (don't know why) and hey presto i haven't had one problem since. never doubt green tape, it's a god send

shabbyroad

me off to buy some green tape ;-)

Thanks all, I'll try those solutions and troubleshooting tips.

My guess is that it is water getting into the lnb connections - the problem is intermittent so I would suspect it is weather related rather than switch/splitter related.

carrolls

My problem was quite the opposite.
Between July and September 2002, I experienced the same problem with RTE and the ITV regions on the FTV card.
I got my cousin who is a satellite expert out and actually he said my signal Quality/Strength was too strong, (95% and 95%)
so he put in an attenuator to bring it down to 60%.
Its been grand ever since. Not a glitch in 4 months.
By the way, I have a Pace 2500.

Tony

Originally posted by shabbyroad
me off to buy some green tape ;-)

Thanks all, I'll try those solutions and troubleshooting tips.

My guess is that it is water getting into the lnb connections - the problem is intermittent so I would suspect it is weather related rather than switch/splitter related.

From experience I must say that green tape aint gonna help. The weather just attenuated the signal showing up ay defficiences in the hardware.

Tony