Problems with Sky when connecting Freesat

Andy Kravitz

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Hi there, help please.

I have just bought a Panasonic 42V20 - great Tv ,really impressed, BUT, to get the freesat working, having read a few threads, I decided to just pull out 1 of the 2 sky inputs running from my dish and fed that to the tv to receive freesat.

Good news - freesat now works fine
Bad news, Sky seems to be intermittent with the one feed (left in input #1) and quite frequently fails to record or even show Sky channels - it says you have no Satellite signal - turn the box off for 1 minute at the mains and...

I thought that by having one sky feed, Sky would still work and that I could stil use Sky+ to record, as long as I didn't want to watch another Sky channel at the same time, which I don't because I can quite happily watch the Freeview or Freesat tuners in the TV.

Any help gratefully received :)
Thanks
Andy
 
You will not be able to use all the facilities on a Sky+ box with only one feed.

Here's what you can do

The davemurgatroyd2 tips for using Sky+ with one feed

"All you need to do is connect the single cable to input 1 and set a manual recording on a channel you never watch lasting 24 hours repeated daily which will always fail but take virtually zero hard disk space ("Services" "Manual Recording" NOT from the EPG
). Delete these failed recordings when the next dummy starts.

This works because input 1 is the channel normally used for viewing (from switch on with nothing recording) and input 2 is normally used for the first scheduled recording. If an input is already in use the box will automatically switch to the other input for whatever it wants to do. Because the dummy manual recording is already telling the box that it is already using input 2, anything else will happen on input 1. With this setup you can do any one of three things
1 Watch one channel.
2 Record one channel (either timed via Planner or by pressing Record whilst viewing).
3 Record one channel and watch a previous recording.

If you want full use of the Sky+ box and of the Freesat TV the solution is to run another feed directly to the TV.
If you change feeds between the Sky box and the TV remember to switch both items off at the mains before doing so
 
"I decided to just pull out 1 of the 2 sky inputs" sounds ominous if it's literally accurate!
The screw-in f-plugs need more careful attention than that, and the devices have to be powered off.
Have you tried swapping the two cables between the TV and the receiver?
The single-input situation has to cause recording problems, which davem's solution should solve, but the "you have no Satellite signal" is something else, and immediately suggests connector problems.
 
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Just to be clear when I said i pulled the second lead out, it wasn't literal. I did unscrew the lead before carefully inserting into the freesat connection point, however i didn't turn the power or sky box off, so maybe that's confusing the Sky system (or me !!!).

I did swap the cables over and tried different leads into the TV, swapping from Sky dish input 1 and then 2 but couldn't see a major difference.

I'll give the Dave option a go and see where i end up.
Thanks for the suggestions.
 
I use a variation of the Davem method and it works reaonably well.
The single-input setup doesn't ever give me the loss of channels problem though.
That has to be something to do with the cables and plugs.
You were lucky that unscrewing the plug with power on didn't do any damage, but it's not likely to have caused the missing channels.
If you took out the Sky receiver's Satellite In 1 connection and left 2 connected, swap sockets there also.
 
Just to be clear when I said i pulled the second lead out, it wasn't literal. I did unscrew the lead before carefully inserting into the freesat connection point, however i didn't turn the power or sky box off, so maybe that's confusing the Sky system (or me !!!).

The reason it's advised to disconnect the equipment from the mains is that a voltage of between 13V and 18V is fed to the LNB from the receivers even when in standby
 
As you will feel if you touch the cable!
 

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