SKY Q - have i made a huge mistake?!

Do you wish you never upgraded to SKY Q?


  • Total voters
    85
  • Poll closed .
I have an Orbi mesh system - main router plus two satellites - at home so I don't need my Sky Q System trying to pollute the overcrowded airwaves with a competing mesh network. I disabled Wi-Fi completely on all my Sky boxes, including the Sky Q Hub (which now serves purely as a modem) and I run my Mini via a power line extender. I don't recall whether I could have joined the mini to my Orbi network, but with the number of WiFi devices we have I'd rather use Ethernet where convenient (TVs, consoles, Sky boxes, internal security cameras). I'll save the airwaves for my external security cameras, smart speakers and mobile devices.
 
I have Sky Q with 2 mini boxes, 2 boosters and a netgear router with BT Wholehome Mesh wifi. To begin with, it was a nightmare and the whole lot nearly went in the bin! By trial and error, however, I now have it working well in the following configuration.

The main Sky Q box is connected to the Netgear router by ethernet cable. The mini boxes are connected by wifi via a sky q booster box for each of them. To get this to work, I turned off the BT wholehome mesh and left it alone for a few days while I re-installed the Sky Q, and it settled down. After a week, I reset all the BT Wholehome dishes and set the mesh up again from scratch. This was around Christmas 2018 and it has worked perfectly since. It is best if you reset all the Sky Q boxes as well before you set them up, and turn off every wifi device in the house apart from your router. I live in an old house with thick internal walls, and apparently, this is what made the setup so difficult. It is also worthwhile downloading an app for laptop or phone, which identifies the wifi channels that all your devices are using and any nearby.

The other issue that I have had is if my wife leaves her work HP wireless printer(Officejet 7740) switched on. That seems to gradually crash the Sky Q over 2 or 3 days. Bizarre! My wireless Epson 7525 never causes an issue.
 
I have a similarly set up and had the same problem when I first had Sky Q with my Hub 6.

I did a factory reset on the Hub 6 and split the bands so I have one for 2.4GHz and one for 5GHz. I then raised the wireless channel for 5GHz band to the highest one available (I think I read somewhere that the 5GHz signal can interfere with the Sky Q network) and I haven’t had an issue since.
 
Sky Q uses (or at least did do) jumbo frames for the network packets. For unmanaged switches this normally works fine. However for managed switches where jumbo frame support is off by default you would see this swamping of the network.

Jumbo frames support is only a feature of wired Gigabit networking Ethernet 802.3a (not Wi-fi), and it's an optional manufacture specific extension (not defined as part of the 802.3a standard). Jumbo frames should be off by-default, and the maximum transmission unit (MTU) should be 1500 bytes (I've never seen Jumbo frames enabled by default on any LAN adapter).

Jumbo frames should only be enabled if *every device* on the on the LAN supports Jumbo frames and all the devices agree on what the MTU size should be (more difficult that it sounds!). Different manufacturers have different ideas about what the MTU size should be for Jumbo frames. Jumbo frames are not backwards compatible with 100 megabit networking devices - and you'll invariably have at least 1 or 2 such devices on your LAN.

Having experimented with Jumbo frames in may complex heterogeneous LAN environments, I concluded they are more trouble than their worth, and can result in some very strange and intermittent (and therefore and difficult to diagnose!) transmission problems.

JF are only really useful if you have a point-to-point connection where you have identical endpoint routers where you can manually set the Jumbo frame size - even so, you have to be careful of packet fragmentation if the connection passes through other routers. Smaller frames with less fragmentation, is far more desirable and results in better throughput.

Regards,
James.
 
@THX1138UK don't generally disagree with your points apart from gigabit only.

There were quite a few issues with Sky Q certainly initially and managed switches.

By default JF are off as you say. The symptoms of this would be a loss of Internet\network connectivity for devices on the LAN. The solution which instantly restored the network was the enabling of JF on the managed switch.
 
I upgraded from Sky HD to the 1TB box which had constant sound dropouts when using the optical inputs on my amp. Lots of calls with Sky and a couple of visits from Sky engineers didn't resolve it so they recommended a further upgrade to the 2TB box. And its exactly the same! Sky have no further advice to offer so I'm stuck in a deal I can't now get out of. On the positive side there's no sound issues using the AV input so I use this for TV and Spotify Connect works well on the digital input.
 
I also had issues with connectivity when I had 2tb box and a mini. The mini was closest to the router but connected via ethernet and so was the 2tb box. The mini was also connected to the 2tb box via WiFi but would always lose connection to the 2tb box. It was very annoying and I didn't mind giving up the mini in the end. I had to reboot the mini all the time.
 
I had similar issues to you and ended up doing the following.

Loved sky booster so that it was half way between sky mini and main skq 2tb box.

Also experimented with changing the channel sky q was using to talk to main box and booster helped. Think u need to access service menu for this to work. Was a real pain to get working properly but now setup is ok alt although still get occasional dropouts.
 
I have a large house and consequently had connection difficulties between the main and mini boxes. Contacted Sky and they sorted the issues out by providing boosters. I suggest the OP contacts Sky. In my case they responded very quickly and efficiently.
 
which had constant sound dropouts when using the optical inputs on my amp.

Did you try HDMI and what amp did you have. My older Yamaha AV2067 suffers from this on the Mini box but only if DD is enabled ... My main box with a slightly newer AVR doesn't :(
 
Did you try HDMI and what amp did you have. My older Yamaha AV2067 suffers from this on the Mini box but only if DD is enabled ... My main box with a slightly newer AVR doesn't :([/QUOTE said:
Its an Audiolab 6000A connected to a pair of Q Acoustics floor-standers. The amp doesn't have a HDMI port so unfortunately that isn't an option. As I mentioned there's no sound drop outs when using the AV input but the sound is so much better via the DAC. It also means I need to switch sources on the amp every time I change from TV to music (and vice versa) which is a pain..
 
What do you mean but av input in this case, regular stereo input?

I do wonder if it is a bug with older receivers. :(
 
HDMI from Sky Q to the TV then red/white RCA cables to the amp - standard stereo rather than surround sound.
The amp was only released July last year so should be compatible.
 
The amp was only released July last year so should be compatible.

Ok did you output it as stereo or DD? I think Sky Q has something weird going on that some amps including one of mine don't like.
 
I wonder if your two mesh networks don’t play nice together?

Have you tried, as a test, switching off the Linksys Velop mesh network and then seeing if the Sky Q and its satellite device(s) now work OK?

No idea what you do if that pinpoints the issue, though....

When checking my WiFi, I carry around my Android phone with the WiFi Analyzer Classic app, which has all sorts of useful displays and indicators.

Other similar apps are also available on the Google Play Store, some with higher ratings, but I can’t speak for them.

And nothing like this is available on iOS, as Apple don’t allow some of the discovery methods such apps need, so it must be Android.
 
[QUOTE="Ok did you output it as stereo or DD? I think Sky Q has something weird going on that some amps including one of mine don't like.[/QUOTE]
Drop outs are happening irrespective of whether the output is set to DD or normal. I did wonder if hard wiring via the Ethernet would help but the HD picture itself is fine and never freezes.
BTW thanks for your help with this :)
 
And nothing like this is available on iOS, as Apple don’t allow some of the discovery methods such apps need, so it must be Android.

I use “Fing Network Scanner” on my iPhone/iPad.
Available from the Apple app store.
 
I use “Fing Network Scanner” on my iPhone/iPad.
Available from the Apple app store.

Yes, I have Fing on this iPad.

Do you have a Fingbox? I keep meaning to buy one, but missing the special offers. Perhaps it will do more with a linked Fingbox...

But the Fing app on its own, is working a level down from WiFi Analyzer, telling me what devices are on my router, while WFA shows me what’s competing with my router for the airwaves. So these are complementary Apps, and having both is useful.

But I can’t walk around my house with Fing, and have it tick-tick-tick fast where WiFi is strong, and slowly where it’s weak, like WFA can. Sure, Fing has the three level bars, or at least the iPad does. But these don’t tick, and they are just indicators, not the dBm meter of WFA.

And I can’t see all the competing WiFi signals in my home and outside on a dynamic graph on Fing,

Or see which router channels are crowded, and which are relatively free, so I can switch to the best one.

If you have an Android device, download and try the (free) WiFi Analyzer Classic.

I think you will be blown away by what you can do with it.

And while you can get Fing on Android, Apple won’t let you have WFA, or anything like it, on iOS.
 
Try WiFiman by Ubiquiti.
 
Try WiFiman by Ubiquiti.

Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded this on my iPad, and it will certainly give Fing a run for its money.

But again, it doesn’t go ‘above’ your connected WiFi to tell you about other routers in range, nor give you that all-important signal meter for finding your hotspots and hotspots, like WFA does.
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded this on my iPad, and it will certainly give Fing a run for its money.

But again, it doesn’t go ‘above’ your connected WiFi to tell you about other routers in range, nor give you that all-important signal meter for finding your hotspots and hotspots, like WFA does.
If you tap the WiFi you want to look at in the list it gives you the signal meter with audio beep.
Is that what you are looking for.
 
If you tap the WiFi you want to look at in the list it gives you the signal meter with audio beep.
Is that what you are looking for.

Yes, but only on Android - like Fing, it’s not there on the iOS version. OTOH, Fing doesn’t do any of that on Android even though it could, so it is outclassed on Android by both WiFi Analyzer and WiFiman.

But it’s not intuitive to find that signal meter on WiFiman, and even the blog introducing it just shows that it’s there, without explaining how you access it, and I can’t find any Help for it anywhere.

Not sure what it does that WiFi Analyzer doesn't, beyond the speed test I have with Ookla anyway, and doesn’t have the channel rating, or the Help, so for me WiFi Analyzer still has the edge.

But both are free, so we can have both - horses for courses :)
 
I had a mesh network issue when first getting Sky Q & mini boxes. Specifically this was with a Sonos mesh network. I have to change Sky Q to specific channel that Sonos wasn't occupying as Sonos couldn't be changed.

Use a wifi analyzer to check the channels each system uses and separate them.
 
After pressure from my son, we decided to get Sky Q last week. Ours is a quite large house, spread out over various levels with a dedicated ATMOS cinema room on top of a double garage at one side of the main house. A lounge where I wanted the Q Mini Box to be installed is on a different level on the opposite side of the house. Both rooms are some distance from the router which is in an office right at the top of the main house. Unsurprisingly I anticipated we would have potential connection issues and so attempted to alleviate problems by establishing a 'seamless' wi-fi signal throughout the house using TP Link powerline adapters. I've been using these successfully for a while to get wi-fi in the main rooms, but some were older than others and wouldn't mirror the router's passwords etc., so I bought new ones ....and it worked! The Sky engineer was perhaps as surprised as me when it all seemed to gel. So I was happy......until we watched TV in the cinema room that night. My AV kit includes an Epson 9300W projector and the picture was bloody dreadful. I had read on this forum that others had managed to get the 2160p 8 bit output settings within the Q box to work, but despite several attempts, these 2160p settings would not initiate - all I could achieve was 1080i and the picture was much worse than my old Sky+ had been. I reluctantly decided to telephone Sky to take the Q away and reconnect my old kit....but just before doing so, I had a brainwave. An OPPO 103 and Sky are connected via HDMI leads into a Marantz 7704 processor and a third HDMI lead takes the picture signal out of the processor 'Monitor 1 ARC' into the Epson's WiHD transmitter to wirelessly send the picture to the projector. This third lead looked a bit flimsy compared with the others, so I changed it.....and thank goodness I did! The 2160p 8 bit setting immediately initiated and the picture sprang into life on the screen with UHD viewing options now available in the menu. I'm delighted with the picture quality and the Atmos sound on live football is rather good. So having an Honours Degree in Stating The Obvious......I almost fell foul of the most basic of mistakes with this - sometimes seemingly insurmountable problems can be sorted with the simplest of remedies.....So is Sky Q worth having...? Well despite the mini box dropping out once or twice, usually when browsing on a tablet, I'm happy with it and glad I made the switch.
 

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