No Satellite Signal being received

[mjcairney]

I seem to be getting the message "No Satellite signal is being received" more and more and wonder if other people are experiencing this, or is there something wrong with my system. Sometimes I can only receive BBC1 (101) and BBC2 (102), other times I just lose Sky Movies 1, 2, 3 and 8. When I look at signal strength and quality, they can be non-existent one minute and then come back to full again in a relatively short period of time - other times they can remain non-existent for quite long periods of time. No doubt, if I call out Sky, everything will be okay when they visit and they will charge me £65 for nothing.

Any help or advice gratefully received.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

[William]

This has recently started to happen to me a lot recently (since last EPG update ?). It seems to happen most frequently about a minute after I change channels and only lasts about 10 seconds. Every time I try to check the signal strength, the signal returms before I can get to the right menu.

However, your problem seems to affect certain channels which suggests that you may have a disk alignment problem (ie weaker channels dropping out )

William

[mandril]

sky won't (shouldn't) charge you for an intermittant fault. Get them out thats what you pay your subscription for. If theres nothing wrong the day they come round explain to the sky guy whats been happening and if he doesn't know what the problem is and doesnt do anything about it just keep phoning sky and complaining every time it does it.

I had an intermittant fault with my box during playback, which was fine the day they came round to take a look. The guy didn't care and just swapped it for a new (recon) box.

Good luck
Ricky

[Grumpy Old Troll]

Sky WILL charge you £65.00 because they will find something 'wrong'. They're not daft!

You do not pay your subscription for free engineer call outs. You pay for the quality progrmming

"No doubt, if I call out Sky, everything will be okay when they visit and they will charge me £65 for nothing." If you call them out you should expect to be charged! Do you work for free?

Seriously, though - I've had this fault a few times with my Sky+ in the last week. Strongly suspect Sky's software and not the receiver.

Anyone else?

[mandril]

We are talking about the initial 12 month period arn't we. If so get them out. If you had them out every day then you wouldn't be charged.

If your out of the 12 month period, of course you'd have to pay. so I'd suggest checking a few things yourself, ie make sure all the bolts securing your dish are tight and it hasn't moved in high winds, recent snow sitting on it. get your missis to sit in front of the tv press services 4 6 I think off the top of my head, so you get the two pairs of bars up and carefully move the dish up, down, left, right and get her to shout better worse till you get the best out of it.

Also take the two (three/four) cables out of the lnb remove the F type plugs and see if the cables full of water.

Buy some self amalgamating tape (£2.99 screwfix) and tape it up properly.

You could also put your old single lnb back on for a day to see if thats ok.

Oh I'm assuming you have sky+ if you dont you may not be able to do the last.

Good luck

[mjcairney]

Thanks guys for all your replies - really appreciate your time and effort.

First of all, I do not have Sky+ and, no, I am under any warranty - I actually went digital at the very beginning, when I had to pay for my STB.

I don't mind paying if they fix it, I just don't like the idea of having to pay if they come out and do not find the problem, as it may not be manifesting itself at the time.

I shall try re-aligning the dish when I get some time and decent weather to go out and do the job.

Thanks again for the replies.

[SimonY]

We had this exact problem recently. We could get BBC1 but not BBC2, BBC3, BBC4 etc. Then started loosing the kids channels (big, big problem).

I tried realigning the antenna - BEWARE!!! a tiny (tiny) movement affects reception in a big way. Eventually I got signal strength back to where it was before I started.

Anyway having done all of this it was no better.

Spoke to a local antenna man in our village and said that it was problem in the Sky kit itself and we had 3 options.

1) We could get him to look at it - price would depend on what he needed to fix.
2) Get Sky in - cost £65 (guaranteed fix)
3) Cancel current Sky subscription then get it reinstalled in my wife's name for £1.

He recommended option 3.

I decided on option 3. Rang to cancel the subscription - said that it had gone wrong and didn't want to spend the money to fix it at the moment. Got through to someone else who then said what about if they fixed it for half price (£32.50) - I still said no, I wanted to cancel (I thought if I was going to spend some money I might as well get a full set of new kit). He then said as we had a premium package (movies etc.) and had been a customer for so long (some 10 years now) they would fix it for free.

Engineer came a couple of days later - replaced the bit in the antenna that converts the signal to electricity (can't remember the proper name for this). He said this is a common problem as it is the sensitive bit outside exposed to the elements.

All now perfect.

[Grumpy Old Troll]

Sky's desperation to keep your subscription gets worse!

We are getting to the end of the footbal season though. It's at this time of year they lose a lot of subscribers or customers 'downgrade' their viewing package.

What else will they give you for free?

If my telly goes wrong and I threaten to cancel, will they give me a new one? Worth a try.

Where's that hammer?!

[mjcairney]

That sounds like a good deal SimonY - may well give it a try.

Thanks.

[mjcairney]

Originally posted by SimonY

He recommended option 3.

I decided on option 3. Rang to cancel the subscription - said that it had gone wrong and didn't want to spend the money to fix it at the moment. Got through to someone else who then said what about if they fixed it for half price (£32.50) - I still said no, I wanted to cancel (I thought if I was going to spend some money I might as well get a full set of new kit). He then said as we had a premium package (movies etc.) and had been a customer for so long (some 10 years now) they would fix it for free.

Engineer came a couple of days later - replaced the bit in the antenna that converts the signal to electricity (can't remember the proper name for this). He said this is a common problem as it is the sensitive bit outside exposed to the elements.

All now perfect. [/b]

Thanks for the advice. Finally got round to calling Sky tonight to complain about this, the girl tried talking me through a few things which did not work. She then offered a call-out at £65 to which I replied I would rather cancel than pay that amount of money - was transferred to another guy who listened to what I had to say and then offered a free call-out.

They definitely do not want to lose customers.

Thanks for the good advice.

Regards .... Martin Cairney.

[Gort]

I have Sky Digital and since the last software update my Grundig box switches itself off every couple of days. Seems to happen reguarly around 6PM, sometimes early in the morning. Happened last nite when I was watching Angel (20:30PM) and two weeks ago when I was again watching Angel (20:30PM).

Actually happened twice yesterday.

Sent Sky an email, waste of time, they just expect you to pay for an engineer to look at it or try and get you to get Sky Plus , and yet it is a software problem. It cannot be a hardware fault as I could probably set my watch by it.

DigitalSpy has loads of complaints about this.
What does anyone else have to say?

[Starburst]

Pedantic I knnow but Angel doesn't start till 9pm

Perhaps the main cause is heat buildup, a digibox would crash if the internal temp got too high and perhaps the time is crashes is based on the length of time it's been operating.
Might be worth taking the cover off or relocating the digibox (as an experiment) in a very open position to allow air flow around it.

[Gort]

Sorry I meant 21:30 not 20:30 as Angel starts at 21:00.

Don't know about heat build up as I never turn it off - Due to the personal planner - It's been on since $ky Digital started which is quite a few years now. When it goes off, I just switch it back on straight away.

This time of year I rarely use the heating, I have quite a large gap between the shelf above it.

At the end of day the box is quite cool to the touch, only slightly warm on the left side where the power supply is.

I've just done a complete reset and software download.
If that doens't fix it I could try fitting a pc fan inside.
One more thing there is some branches growing around the sat dish, could that cause any probs?

A couple of years ago I kept getting a message saying, "Insert $ky Card" or "No signal Found"....Phoned $ky and they said they'd boost my signal strength - it stopped after that.

At the end of the day, the switching prob started when $ky decided to give us new software.

[Shady]

Hi all

Similar tale of woe.

Have the full Sky package (not plus), and have been paying this for at least 10 years now.

Recently a number of channels are displaying 'Satellite signal not being received'. I called Sky support twice and were talked through a number of key presses (resending channels etc), but to no avail. We still cannot get E4+1 and usually have to spend 5 minutes getting Sky One to come on (usually happens just before 24 or the Simpsons).

Why would this only effect certain channels ? Surely all channels come in on the same signal through the same hardware and cabling. We never get any problems with BBC1 -> Five etc. but the above two are a nightmare. We get the same problem with a load of the other channels, which we fortunately don't watch (Friendly TV anyone ?) - but even so, we are still paying the same.

Any further suggestions ?

Cheers

[Mylo]

Mine loses BBC1 & 2 regularly. Strange thing though, all other Regions of BBC on channel 948 (BBC wales?) etc are fine always.

I suspect Sky are ****ing us all about, but then again I'm paranoid. Funny how I had less problems during the warranty period. Edit I had a new LNB and box fitted last year so I doubt it's that causing it.