Sky + Vertical line Ghosting on Amstrad box

Greamec

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HI all,

Managed to get Sky + installed this week for £99 , could not belive the battle I had with them considering I have been with them on the full package for five years. I was pushed to ( " I want to close my account " ) which made me nervous as I like sky a lot, but after a couple of very long phone calls they offered a refurbished box which lucky for me turned out to be a new one as the chap who installed it only had new ones.
Got to say sky plus is great BUT !!!! :suicide:
I did not notice it at first but when you look close at the screen I can see narrow vertical lines ghosting across the screen .
I am using good quality scart leads and have tried unpluging everything except sky but the lines are still their, I am out of ideas and I am not looking forward to ringing up sky and complaining about a problem like this without having some AMMO ie hopefully some information from you guys.
PS. I did not have this problem on my old box.

Best regards
Greame
 
I believe a lot of people have noticed this on the Amstrad Sky+ if you do a search you should be able to come up with some more posts. I have the Amstrad Sky+ box but have never noticed any vertical lines :confused:
 
Thanks for your reply john, I did a search but can only find two other posts on this subject that do not help much , can you point me in the direction of some more please.
Has anyone ever solved this problem?
R's Greame
 
The problem you describe;

'vertical lines ghosting across the screen'

If they're moving (left to right by any chance?) it may well be a ghost image of what ever terrestrial channel your TV is set to.

Try selecting an untuned in channel on your TV and then view your AV Sky picture again.

If the lines have gone, you can achieve a permanent cure by removing pin 19 on the TV end of your scart lead. This should prevent the terrestrial 'bleed through' you're observing.

Bear in mind that vertical banding (fixed rather than moving) can be an undesirable trait of Amstrad '+' boxes, and a swap out is unlikely to cure it if your TV highlights this.


Hope that helps.
 
Hi Emm ,
Thankyou for your help, I tried changing the TV channel like you said but it seems that my problem is with fixed lines so the box may be the problem. Do you know why this problem only happens for what seems to be a small ammount of users.
Thanks again
Greame
 
had the same problem on two amstrd boxes, second one failed because of hard drive problems. I moaned to sky and they sent a 3rd box which was a pace, no problems at all. Maybe a call to sky with a failed drive report and complain about the banding will get a pace for you too, worth a try. Anyway keep bugging them I am sure if they have to visit you enugh they would rather supply a pace box to get you off their backs.
BTW how did yu get the £99 deal? my neighbour has tried and tried with no success
 
I would be interesting to know what other equipment people have who are experiencing these vertical lines. I have a Panasonic television and so far have not noticed any of these lines.
 
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your reply, I think sky must have tightened up on the £99 for existing customers and I think I was very lucky. After a lot of moaning the girl I spoke to mention the possibility of a second hand box for £99.00 but they had none in stock so she said to ring back in a week.
The next day I thought why not try it on and I rang Sky plus sales and said that I wanted to take up the offer of a refurbished box , she went away and came back saying how much were you offered a refurbished box for ,(interesting I thought) I thought should I try lower than £99.00 but decided to say that I had been offered £99.00 and she said no problem we can do that . I was then asked do I want multiroom and I said NO, she said no problem but when the installer come I must tell him that I do not want multi room.
The installer came and I told him I did not want multi room so he rang up his sky engineers department ( not sure if they have to do this for every job or if there is a potential problem) and they said that the install was not to go ahead. I was mad and asked to speak to the manager who was not budging from the point of view that the £99.00 was an offer that must include multiroom (he was a jumped up **!!!**! ) :oops:
So at this point I started taking names, the installer was a star saying that he wwas in the area all day so if I get it sorted he would come back.
I called sky customer services and was ready to close my accout, explained what had happened and that at this point sky have two choices 1.) give me the offer for £99.00 and probably not here another word from me for another 5 years or 2.) close my account and refund my £99.00. The women phoned back telling me the enigineer would be back and £99.00 was fine.
All in all I was on the phone for a couple of hours really getting messed around, the whole process is set up to grind you down and get your wallet out. This was a small victory for loyal customers, Sky realy do not understand that concept but they do know the powerful position they are in which is a shame.

Anyway hope that makes sense
R's Greame
PS shame about the vertical lines though
 
JohnG said:
I would be interesting to know what other equipment people have who are experiencing these vertical lines. I have a Panasonic television and so far have not noticed any of these lines.

Hi John,
My TV is a Sony KV28LS60.
Would it be a 100 hertz related problem?
 
My Panasonic is 100 Hertz. One thing that could be relevant is that I'm not sending the RF signal through the Amstrad box, that goes straight into the TV.
 
I am not sending it through the Amstrad either, good thought though.
Must be the Amstrad box then. LOL
 
Sounds like you're seeing the banding that is unfortunately a 'feature' of Amstrad+ boxes.

It appears that some TV sets accentuate these lines more than others, hence your inconclusive searches.

Adjusting the contrast and/or brightness settings on your TV may help to make the banding less obvious.
 
Thanks again Emm, I did adjust the contrast to high and that has helped.
I think I will try for a new box, I wonder if they will upgrade to the 160 hard drive version for a fee? Do they have this problem?
R's Greame
 
Greamec said:
...I wonder if they will upgrade to the 160 hard drive version for a fee?...

Only a 'phone call to Sky will answer that...Let us know what they say (ie how much etc) if you decide to go that route.

Greamec said:
...Do they (Sky+160) have this (banding) problem?...

Don't know. Bear in mind that this is a new product (from Thomson in fact) so may well have teething problems...
 
I doubt that they will upgrade you to the 160 box for free, I have had this problem for 3 weeks now. I have phoned Sky on 3 occasions and had a different reply each time. I spoke to someone on Friday that seemed to know what they were on about, he told me that this was a known problem that comes about with 100Hz tv sets, as previously noted, some worse than others. The worst part was that he told me that he could not send an engineer out to see me as there was nothing that could be done as the box was not malfunctioning. I told him that they could send out an engineer with a Pace box to replace the Amstrad and he told me that he was not authorised to do this. He gave me the email address for customer services and told me to take it up with them. I sent them an email on Saturday but I have had no reply yet. :mad:
 
What Television do you have ?
 
Its a Philips 28PW9526

It's 100Hz and about 3 years old, no problems with my previous Panasonic digibox, only with the Amstrad. :(
 
It's not just 100Hz televisions that are affected. My 28" Sony Wega also exhibits the annoying vertical lines from the Amstrad box, and it's a 50Hz set.

Only had Sky+ installed two days ago so I'm going to call Sky tomorrow.

J8NTS.
 
It's to do with the cheap parts Amstrad has used in the power supply bit of the box. Using RGB makes it stand out worse. I got my box swapped for refurbished PACE box. Much better. The engineer said it is a known problem and Sky are trying to sort it lol.
 
Decided not to wait until tomorrow and called Sky just now. The lady was very sympathetic but ultimately could offer little other than booking an engineer to have a look. She said it was the engineers call as to whether the box needs swapping, and even then it could be another Amstrad. I declined as I didn't see the point of taking another day off work for this.

Alternatively she said I could cancel my contract and approach an independent local agent that might have a supply of Pace boxes (apparently independents often do). I don't have any idea how much this would cost or the trouble it would be.

Does anyone here have confidence that Sky can/will do something about this problem? I'd like to keep Sky but my gut feeling is that this problem is here to stay, so I'll probably cancel.

J8NTS.
 
Does anyone have any screenshots of this problem ?
 
Interesting this one, I had a similiar problem on NTL to cure it I ended up using a high quality scart to a component convertor and feeding via the amp (feeding it via the amp is irrelvant since it just switches component). I know people don't have plasmas and component feeds, but my point is - is it worth trying high quality scarts to try and resolve the problem and making sure the tv is set to RGB? The other point is, amstrad seem to be using crap quality components to build the boxes.

BYTW I now have sky+ and it is upconverted and I have no problems - I also have a normal sky box (multiroom) feeding a panasonce 15" LCD with a normal scart and don't see any banding or have any PQ problems (apart from comparing it with a component fed PW6 downstairs).
 
I suffer with the Amstrad Sky+ line problem on my 50hz Toshiba.
 
JohnG said:
Does anyone have any screenshots of this problem ?

Here goes. Please excuse my poor photography.

Note that the vertical lines are much more apparent when the image is moving rather than still (the picture moves but the lines remain static).

J8NTS.
 

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