My Sky Digital is (still) broken!

Last night, the strong winds were causing channels on my Sky Digital system to become totally unwatchable. At least
half the channels were either severely blocky and breaking up, or totally unavailable, with the message "No satellite
signal is being recieved". Now, since the winds have settled down, I'm still getting the same problem as last night,
with signals from at least half the channels still badly breaking up and blocky, or completely non existant.

I fear that my Sky minidish has been blown somewhat slightly out of alignment with the satellites, and that it's going to
mean a call out from a Sky Digital technician. And that's a £60 call out charge I cannot afford to payout at the moment.

Ever thought of getting on a ladder and having a look yourself?

I sympathise. My aerial wobbles knocking out half of my DTT signals every time its windy.

Its astonishing how easily you can cope without some of them.

At least I don't have to subscribe.

Don't call Sky themselves, at their extortionate prices, just to re-allign a dish.

If you can't do it yourself, get your local aerial installer out, it'll be much cheaper.

However, if you HAVE got a ladder, try it yourself. A gentle push of the dish in the direction opposite to where the wind came from will often do the trick.

It's suprising how wide the angle off the dish can be, whilst still picking up a perfectly good picture.

I have some friends who've just moved onto a canal boat, and they get perfectly good pictures (when moored) with the boat rocking about on the water and the dish just popped on the roof of the boat.

It's true- i'm in Utrecht, The Netherlands- brought my Sky Digital system with me here (original pace).
One day- I tried to put it up on our balcony- jammed it on a metal broom-handle of all things- then just swung it around while looking at the signal meter.... bingo! ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 )

There are LOTS of people out there who will try to tell you it's 'very technical' etc... rubbish. Get a ladder and someone in the lounge to watch the signal strength and quality.

Hope this helps!

DG

Indeed. The trade have to use meters in order to do the alignment quickly and provide one accurate enough for them to attach a guarantee too.

But really, as long as you've got a good couple of hours of spare time, you don't need any equipment at all to do it - just patience.

When doing an alignment, if the satellite you're looking for has some analogue channels on it, then connect an analogue receiver to the dish and use that as your reference - it's much easier with analogue because the picture will appear instantly when you've found the satellite and it's a lot easier to judge the picture quality to get the best alignment.

Since there are no analogue channels on Astra 2, you can't do that, but use the 'singal strength' and 'signal quality' indicators in the Sky box's setup menu to help you.

As Nick said though, if your dish has been moved by wind, all you often need is to give the thing a good knock in the opposite direction. If that doesn't work, then try carefully moving it until you get the signal back; it should be easy if you know the dish is at least roughly in the right place - in the past I have done an entire new installation to get a dish pointed at Thor II without any meters and nearly 3 years later it's still working fine, so correcting your Sky minidish should be no problem.

But also as Nick said, whatever you do don't ring Sky. Firstly, many of their 'professional engineers' have only done the 6 week Sky training course and thus have questionable levels of competence (except of course those who do or did do aerial/satellite installations by trade and thus were qualified before working for Sky), and they also charge ridiculous prices. If you need to get a dish which is already installed aligned - a 2 minute job with a meter - you shouldn't part with any more than £20 for it.

If your Sky dish is on a high place (e.g. on the side of a chimney) then I'd suggest you leave it to the professionals because saving a bit of money isn't worth killing yourself or breaking your bones and ending up in hospital for months on end.

There was a story ages ago in the paper about some army guy that didn't want to pay to have his TV aerial re aligned, and the aerial was on a chimney. He climbed up the roof and eventually died as a rsult of slipping off the roof and falling to the ground.

I can sympathise with you on this one - our Sky Digital has been breaking up since last week.

We phoned sky, and they just made matters worse, so we're getting a mate to sort it out for us for twenty quid!

This pic of my humble abode shows where my satellite dishes (digital + analog) are . . .

http://djgm.co.uk/stuff/where-my-satellite-dishes-are.png

There's no way I'm risking life and limb clambering up a ladder to realign a satellite dish!

I'd sooner pay £60 to Sky than risk my life! Eitherway, I'll get on the phone to some local
aerial installation firms, and get some quotes, Hopefully, they'll be signifigantly cheaper
than phoning Sky Customer Service, to arrange a call out from one of their technicians.

Slightly off topic, but how many Digiboxes can be used from one dish? I'm asking this because some Aerial company are supposed to be putting a dish in a field behind our back garden, to supply 20 houses, which can't recieve DSat because of the angle of the hill, but I wouldn't have thought one dish could supply that many. Is there any limit to how many boxes can be used with one dish?

There is no limit to how many boxes a dish can provide. It all depends on the amount of LNB's which are on the dish. Each LNB can supply DSat to four boxes so the dish would only need five LNB's in theory.

If it's any consolation, my dish has shifted, too, and my aerial bracket has also bent, so crappy analogue pictures as well.

But let what happened to poor Rod Hull be a lesson to you - we don't want any more orphaned Emus.