After factory reset on Humax Foxsat HDR problem with quad LNB feeds

[Sampaguita]

Hello Forum.

I have a quad LNB on my dish which uses two feeds to my main RX Foxsat HDR and the other two feeds go to guest rooms each with an old single feed Skybox.

They all worked OK until I made a factory reset to the Foxsat and retuned all the Freesat channels. Foxsat works fine but now the two other RX are showing a message that no signal is being received.

I plugged the Skyboxes into the Foxsat feeds and they work OK, so it is not a problem with the receivers and I assume it must be a problem with the LNB settings.

Does anyone have an idea how to resolve this problem. I could get a new LNB, but my gut feeling is that the old LNB is OK.
Any ideas are appreciated.

 

[ozumo]

It can't be an LNB settings issue as the Sky boxes work when connected to the Foxsat feeds - the Sky receiver doesn't know (or care) which of the four LNB outputs it is connected to, they all provide the same signal. Does either Sky box show a signal strength reading in the settings menu when connected to their usual feeds?

Changing the LNB would be the usual way forward but also check the cables and connectors first for water ingress and corrosion.

 

[rolfw]

What was the purpose of resetting the foxsat? It may be relevant.

If you switch off Foxsat at the mains, do the sky boxes then work on their existing connections?

 

[Sampaguita]

Thank you for your replies. there was no signal at all shown by the auxiliary receiver.

However I followed Rolfer's suggestion and switched of the Humax at the mains, went back to the spare Skybox and lo! it now works. and signal is coming through. I switched Humax on again and signal is still coming through to the Skybox. To make sure I switched off power to the Skybox and rebooted and it still works as well as the Humax. Thank you.

I suppose it has something to do with the Humax setting up the LNB to it's specifications, it uses the Freesat EPG (TV Guide) whereas the Skyboxes are using the Sky EPG which includes Freesat channels as well as others such as CNN. It would be useful to know what actually the fault was. I had already tried unplugging both the cables coming into the Humax and checking the Skybox feeds, which still didn't work. Funny how something as simple as leaving the cables in and than unplugging the box resolved the issue.

To answer your question why I reset the Humax, it was a soap opera sequence. We had guests in the room with an (very) old Thomson Skybox which was picking up signal but if you changed channel it stopped working and put up an error message. so I switched it out with the (not quite as old) Pace Skybox, which worked fine. I noticed that it still received CNN which is no longer on Freesat, so I used manual tune on the Humax to tune in the CNN transponder, worked Ok but as you probably know it doesn't come up on the main EPG an somehow all the EPG settings got messed up, so I made a new Freesat scan and that was when the feed to the auxiliary Skyboxes crapped out. I then made a factory reset to see if that would resolve the problem but it didn't.

Glad that I didn't go ahead and get a new LNB! Now just need a replacement for the Thomson. Lots of inexpensive Freesat and Sky boxes on ebay any recommendation for a low threshold non HD model (I am in Italy) ? That's why I had the Thomson as it was rated a very good fringe area STB.

 

[rolfw]

Sounds good, although it could still possibly be an LNB problem, I had a call a couple of years back and the customer was periodically losing signal on the sky box with certain channels. Turned out the LNB was leaking signal from one input to another and whenever the second box switched to a high band channel (sending the 22khz tone) it would also change the port for the main Sky box to high band.

 

[Sampaguita]

Sounds good, although it could still possibly be an LNB problem, I had a call a couple of years back and the customer was periodically losing signal on the sky box with certain channels. Turned out the LNB was leaking signal from one input to another and whenever the second box switched to a high band channel (sending the 22khz tone) it would also change the port for the main Sky box to high band.

Yes my gut feel was that is was a switching problem with the LNB. I also read somewhere that Thomson STB's were prone to interference on LNB's. Whatever, glad that the hack worked.