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Q. I have a problem receiving Sky pictures.

A. It could be a problem with your dish, cable or box. A good start point is to borrow somebody else's digibox (with their card) and try it in your home. If the results are the same then obviously the dish or cable is at fault. 

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Q. The signal strength seems low. 

A. Only a problem if your picture freezes. The signal strength reading is pretty meaningless. The signal quality is the important one. It's a problem if your picture freezes at the first hint of rain, because that's not normal. It may suggest a problem with the coax lead from the dish. It only takes a small nick in the cable for water to cause chaos. Any signal quality reading of over 40% should be OK. Check your signal by selecting : Services 4 - 6. 

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Q. My picture freezes at random.

A. Check what's near the unit. Mobile phones, cordless phones, PCs and other things broadcast radio signals. Your digibox, just like other electrical appliances, picks up radio signals. Any interference from these things can completely confuse the box, causing picture freezes. See what happens if you move things away from the digibox, or switch things off. Also try moving the cable away from any electronic devices such as Personal Computers (anything that consumes large amounts of energy and output a magnetic field) as this could result in your cable to fail.

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A. Check your dish is correctly aligned and is not obstructed with anything, such as snow or a nearby tree.

Check the quality of your cable. CT-100 is the standard Coax. CX-100 is even better. Do not get talked into buying those ultra thin coax cables which claim to be better, because they just will not do the job. Same goes for Double CT-63 Coax, it doesn’t work very well, so Sky Plus or Sky Multi-room people, 2 CX-100's are recommended.

Faulty LNB (Low-Noise Block converter)? Surges could have occurred and knocked your LNB out. In which case, you will need a new LNB. Simplest way to test it is to get a friend with a minidish or satellite with a Digital LNB (Universal preferred) and test your unit there. If it is still not working then this rules out your dish and cable.

Warped dish. Your minidish or satellite dish could have been baking away in the sun and you've not noticed. This happens especially when people paint their dishes and LNB's  for environmental concerns or just for a trend. White and Silver reflect heat the best and cause the dish to melt and become distorted. Your LNB cap could also melt (especially those by Grundig, Thomson and Skyware.)

Have you recently had a thunderstorm? This can kill your unit completely, in which case only a replacement or repair will do. Maybe, If you are lucky, a reset is all that is needed. Discharges from thunderstorms can cause a static electric shield over the atmosphere, which acts as a bubble or a mirror reflecting the Astra satellites signals back into space. It shouldn't take long to dissipate but it is recommended you unplug your set-top-box and remove your Dish Input (the LNB in wire). Do not plug it back in until after the thunderstorm.

Low Quality/Pixilation. Although rare, can be caused by weather. This occurs when beams are reflected by the rain/snow causing poor reception. This does not usually cause long term problems and you can continue to watch TV but the pixilation and software crashes caused by it can be slightly annoying.

Dish is in a non-working position. Most of the sky channels (especially BBC networks) are positioned over the UK only, so you'll need a hefty dish to get it anywhere else. Sometimes, although extraordinarily rare, satellites do crash, or the uplink is broken. It could be a glitch and is nothing to worry about. If you find that you lose one or two channels at night (specifically those on the ITV satellite) you may need to get a bigger dish.

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Q. I can't get rid of my personal planner or favourites.

A. Remove the viewing card and reinsert it upside down or back to front. 
Disconnect the box from the mains. 
Wait 20 seconds+
Plug the box back in and allow to reboot for 60 seconds. 
Press the sky button. 
The box will switch on to channel 998 with an error message about your card. 
Remove the card and reinsert it the correct way around. 
Hopefully, your problem will be fixed.

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Q. My Sky+ has a recording problem.

A. A recurring fault in the Sky+ system software causes recordings to fail for no apparent reason. The bug eats up space on the digibox's hard disk and, even after the failed recording has been deleted, the disk space is lost. At present, there is no cure for this. It is a design fault which Sky are very aware about. Although the problem has dragged on since Sky+ first came about, coming and going through various software updates, we still hear customers occasionally have problems. Contact Sky but be prepared to be told that it will cost £65 for an engineers call out (unless under warranty). Ask them why, as it is their software fault ! 

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Q. What if I don't want to subscribe to Sky.

A. You can use your box without a card to view the BBC channels that you are used to. You would get quite a few extra channels free (like CNN, Sky, News, Travel, shopping and Asian channels). There are also many radio channels. Much of the output of the main broadcasters is in widescreen and all these are good reasons for getting a digibox even if you don't want to subscribe.
FTA (Free To Air) channels, all BBC, Sky News, QVC and some others, means that you can watch them without a card. 
FTV (Free To View) include ITV, C4 and C5, meaning that you can watch these channels without subscription but you will still need a card for copyright reasons. If you want to receive these FTV channels without subscribing to Sky then you can contact them and request a card. At present, it costs £20.00 and will last for at least 3 years. All Sky cards will only work in Sky digiboxes. If you do call Sky for a card then you will need to know your digibox's serial number.

View complete listings for SKY FTA & FTV

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Received mail

IT CAN PAY DIVIDENDS IN COMPLAINING TO SKY!

Just wanted to thank you for the advice you provided. I did borrow my girlfriends Dad’s sky box and we didn’t have any problems. I wasn’t prepared to pay for a new box from sky so threatened to leave and they eventually gave us a new box for free which is working fine now.

The sky chap mentioned that if the LNB is having problems the sky box stores in its memory the channels where problems are being received and tries to improve them. He reckoned that when the LNB was eventually changed the memory card was still making changes to correct the previous error, thereby continuing to effect the signal as if the problem was still being encountered. Not that we tried but he did think just resetting the box would have sorted it.

Thanks again for the advice.

Mark

IT CAN BE A LOT CHEAPER TO CHECK THE SIMPLE THINGS YOURSELF.

Thanks for the info about Sky that I found on your site. I swapped my digibox with a friends which proved mine was ok because his did the same thing. I did not want to touch the dish but checked the cable which was looking a bit sorry for itself. I bought the cable (PF100) suggested by my local electrical wholesaler and replaced it myself. Pictures are now perfect! 

Thanks for your help

David

( If you do this, do not forget to use self amalgamating tape to waterproof the dish end connection)

(C) SJS Television Services Ltd. Please note that we can not be held responsible for any damage that may occur by downloading software or following any advice offered throughout this site.  
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