Signal Strength vs Quality

[Mattyboy_W]

My set up displays both Freeview signal strength and signal quality. Signal Quality is always at 100% but Strength varies from 50-65%. Should I be boosting the signal to improve the signal strength or is 50-60% normal ?

 

[simon100]

I am no expert, but my understanding is that it is better to have quality over strength.
Digital doesn't loose quality like analogue, you either get it or don't to a degree, the quality is important and as long as you are receiving a good picture I would suggest that your set up is fine.
With my Sky dish 60% is about correct, but I have never really bothered unless the picture gets a bit blocky, and then I cut my tree back!

 

[Nick_UK]

Signal quality is a function of the number of errors which have been corrected by the box. Having a low signal quality is not desirable, because it makes the processor chip work much harder, and when the signal degrades further due to weather conditions, it can't cope. Bad quality can be due to dish alignment, faulty or wet cables, or a faulty LNB, and sometimes even a faulty box.

 

[SamRadford]

100% signal quality indicates that the signal strength is perfect. If you increase it you could overload the tuner (with the accompanying analogue signals) causing problems! You know the old adage - "if it ain't broke..."

 

[Nick_UK]

100% signal quality indicates that the signal strength is perfect. If you increase it you could overload the tuner (with the accompanying analogue signals) causing problems! You know the old adage - "if it ain't broke..."

Sam, I think you are getting confused. 100% signal strength does not guarantee 100% quality. I've seen 100% quality with 50% strength. I've also seen 20% quality with 100% strength. As I said in a previous post, signal quality is related to the number of errors corrected by the box - the fewer the errors, the higher the quality.

 

[Mattyboy_W]

Thanks for the replies. In general the picture quality is excellent which I would expect given that the Signal Quality is 100% however there are times when the picture breaks up or blocks and I wondered whether this would be reduced by trying to increase the signal strength.

 

[Nick_UK]

I don't know if you're aware, but there is a problem with the latest firmware upgrade (which only happened recently) which can cause pictures to go intermittently blocky on some boxes.

 

[WoodWorker]

I've just had sky re-installed and the signal strengeth and quality only ever show 50%. Can this be improved with a larger dish or better alinement?

 

[Nick_UK]

The dish alignment could be poor, or the LNB (the receiver part of the dish) could be faulty.