New satellite, loss of channels

General Discussion
41

This is a well known effect due to the presence of "side lobes" As well as the main UK spot beam there are secondary beams each side of the main beam and a sharp null region between those 2 beams which lies exactly over Catalunya and SW France parallel with the Pyrenees..the presence of this secondary beam means reasonable reception along a line passing roughly through Mallorca, Valencia, Madrid.....There is even a third much weaker beam roughly in the direction of the Canary Islands..

You can see this side lobe effect with a torch or car headlamp where you see a bright spot then a ring of darkness then a ring of light a ring of darkness etc...

42

My suggestion is that it's likely to get worse as the summer progresses and temperatures increase. Good reception is affected not only by received signal strength but also noise.Noise is just random unwanted signal All electronic devices such as your LNB generate noise and the amount increases as temperature increases. Your dish picks up noise as well as wanted signal, and this noise can come from many different sources..space itself, the sun, the moon, nearby mountains,the ground and so the actual location of a dish can affect how much noise is picked up. At the end of the day if you continue to have problems the only solution is a larger dish, better LNB,accurate dish & LNB alignment using a professional meter which can measure the amount of signal relative to the amount of noise picked up .Once the receiver cannot distinguish between the signal and the noise the picture breaks up or is lost completely.Today signal levels have not changed at my location but the amount of noise has increased. It's also worth mentioning that the signal level meter on the typical receiver measures not signal strength but signal plus noise and there is no way of telling how much noise is present using such a meter....

43

Hi Tony, according to our satellite chap the signal is going to be reduced again in November, that is why we are holding off getting a new one..coz at 900 odd euros this is a lot of money.

44

Thanks Elaine… SCREAM frankly. Wimbledon next week too!

45

Same here in Pays Basque. No channels in morning, gradually come back during the day. Installer has no ideas, just rely on Filmon for rest of time.

46

What on earth is happening? Beautiful weather in the Var today (83) and BBC gone on all channels, ITV on most & what’s left us pixilated so it’s Sky news or nothing. Anyone else? This is the worst it’s been to be honest.

47

Ok I will try that when we get to that stage. Thank you for the information.

48

The actual website is: https//activatemychannels.sky.com/activate

You'll then be asked to sign into SKY after which you just enter the required info about your card & new box.

If you don't have online access to your account, you will first need to create a SKY ID and sign in.

49

Oh heck how do I do that , Does it matter that we aren't in the UK? Thank you for the info.

50

Claire OK that's a genuine Sky box and you will be able to receive all the BBC,ITV1,Ch4 HD channels as they're free to air..

I think I have the same basic SKY subscription as you ie documentary channels, GOLD etc but I have a SKY+ HD box...no extra charge for SKY+ recording facility..

You will have to "pair" your sky card with the new box to get the channels you've subscribed to and that can be done online...

51

I have ordered this one,http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005RYCLP6/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I see that when I was getting the link for you it is an HD box so hope that will work Ok with my standard card. major opinion on the inter-web says it will but there are as ever some who say otherwise.

52

There is a company called "skybox" which manufactures satellite receivers in the far east, but nothing to do with SKY UK, and Amazon sells boxes made by that company so I hope you haven't ordered one of those if you have a sky subscription..I'm not sure that they even receive the freesat 7 day EPG..

53

For me personally it's a skybox as we have a family pack sky subscription, no movies , no sport . We have sons who are addicted to History and Discovery. So hence the skybox and not freesat.

54

I'm just curious.....do you mean a "skybox" or just a satellite receiver "freesat"?

Luckily for me, I live further north than most of you who are having the problems. I have the cheapest freesat I could find at the time, probably 3 years ago....triax SR/110. I have been amazed at how well it has behaved to be honest. I started watching this thread when I was convalescing in the UK. I decided to invest in another box while I was there with the HD capabilities and recording as it happens. To date however I have not needed to do anything at all.....the old adage "if it ain't broke...." I do intend to get it setup eventually but for the moment I'm too busy counting my blessings (phew!!) I bought a house where I did (charente)

My sympathy goes to all those affected by the recent changes.

55

We have been having sporadic pixalated reception over the last 2 weeks on BBC's 1&2 and ITV mostly during daytime. I have been mulling over the reasons and was wondering out loud if it was perhaps our ancient skybox when dad said that they weren't loosing anything except in heavy rain, they live 4km from us and have a sSky plus setup no HD. He offered to lend us an old straightforward skybox of his which is considerably newer than ours. I tried it this morning, interestingly the 90% 80% quality strength reading on Our box dropped to 80% /80% on the newer box but the TV picture returned on everything except Channel4 +1, a small screw twist to the head got us to 80%/90% and that channel returned also. So I have ordered a new box Via Amazon just a plain Skybox Not HD or Plus. Hopefully It might be even better.

56

Update. Just tried again, ITV player now works but not BBC I Player. Dunno what I did tho' :-)

57

Just tried a similar thing with a "Chromecast" thing which the salesman assured us would work! Damned if I can make it send BBC or other Iplayers to my tele. I can send U tube stuff so it's sort of working. Probably me, anybody tried one? Maybe I'll give the WiDi a go!

58

Hi all - promised to post an update about using WiDi in case of interest to anyone who wants a free-to-use streaming alternative to satellite TV.

We're at the Gers/Landes border (near Aire Sur L'Adour), have a 1.0/1.1m dish and both Humax HDR and an old SD Skybox. We generally get all channels most of the time, but must be at the margin because we lose HD and some of the harder SD channels when the weather/cloud-cover is bad.

Because of this, I wanted an alternative source to get BBC/ITV/4/5 etc for free. Like most people, I don't like watching TV on a laptop, don't have a dedicated PC hooked up to the TV and don't like having cables snaking across the lounge floor. So I wanted a wireless solution to mirror what is on my laptop on our telly.

I'm a Google Chrome user, so the first thing I did was to install the Media Hint extension for Chrome, which takes about a minute to do. It's free to install and, if you leave it switched 'on' (which has no impact whatsoever on bandwidth) you don't need to subscribe. If Media Hint doesn't work for you, try Hola instead. With Media Hint installed, BBC iPlayer. ITV Player, 4OD etc all work perfectly, as do Netflix US, Fox, Pandora and so on.

The only expense I have gone to is the purchase of a WiDi receiver for my telly. I went for a Netgear 'Push2TV' PTV3000 - it cost about £40 on Amazon, is about half the size of a deck of playing cards and plugs into a HDMI port on your telly.

I checked that my laptop was WiDi-compatible beforehand, by going to the Intel WiDi website and downloading and installing the latest WiDi driver.

With iPlayer/whatever running fullscreen on my laptop, I have three keystrokes to 'project' it to my telly.

How good is it? The image is not as crisp as HD TV channels, but is at least as crisp as SD channels. BBC iPlayer, ITV Player and other live TV plays fluidly, Netflix can be a bit jerky if the camera is panning, but is good otherwise.

My recommendation - this works for using iPlayer etc for live and catchup TV with little compromise to viewing quality. It's free to use, has a small one-off cost for the WiDi receiver. It's very easy to use and is a neat, wireless solution. It's not as good or convenient as regular TV, but it's probably as good as many of the subscription services that people have mentioned earlier in this thread. Make sure your laptop is WiDi compatible before ordering a WiDi receiver. WiDi receivers are (usually) also capable of receiving a signal from Android devices using Miracast, but I haven't tried that, so can't comment.

59

Yep....free installation....but we paid well over the odds. We did so because we didnt have time to do otherwise, we dont live in the apartment...we let it for holidays and its advertised as providing UK TV and we have guests next week. We needed a quick fix...and this was it. You can buy the MAG boxes for around £70 in the UK. We will pay for the service only when there are clients at the flat. Not ideal...but as we are in a 2nd floor flat with view directly to the mountains....and the Tramontane blowing, we couldnt have a larger dish.

60

If this is what I think it is, the box is priced at about twice what it should be, and the service is about 3 times what it should cost. Did they send a technician to set it all up for free or what? If not, I'd better get down there & start installing systems at a more competitive rate.