No terrestrial tv and no freeview channels

[Middlewood]

About 4 years ago whilst renovating a barn from scratch I had all the cabling installed around the house to provide terrestrial tv and sky for distribution around the house. At that time I had a vision of a cinema room which was to be High Def with a view to purchasing equipment in due course. All the cabing runs to this one room which now houses the sky+ and skyhd. When the sky+ was origially installed, everything was fine. A magic eye connection to the main living room worked fine and all tv's around the house could receive sky channels as well as terrestrial tv.


The distribution problems began when I had Skyhd fitted. I only wanted HD in the cinema room and to act as a multi room but since the installation I can no longer recieve terrestrial tv on any of the tvs around the house and seems to have disappeared !! Despite not requesting HD distribution around the house it appears I can now receive HD on all tvs as well, so in essence TV's in the house only recieve 2 channels, one being from the Sky+ and the other from SkyHD. To be honest its been like this for a while now but as the kids are getting older and moan alot more they wanted their own independence within their bedrooms so I have today purchased TV's for them with built in freeview. As expected, when it came to carrying out an auto search for channels, the only 2 found were for both the sky boxes.


To assist anyone willing to offer advice I can provide further information in respect of the sky box setups. The Sky+ box is Thomson make and has cables connecting to all 5 sockets ie Dish Input 1 & 2, RF Out 1 and RF Out 2 and Aerial In. The Sky HD Box is made by PACE and has cables running into Dish Input 1 & 2 and one cable connected to RF Out 1, RF Out 2 & Aerial In and both unccupied.


Im hoping the solution is fairly simple but for anyone wishing to reply, Id be grateful for advice in "simple" terms!!


Thanks in anticipation.

 

[satelliteman]

Warm welcome to the forum.

I guess the problem is RF connection trouble and possibly the need to set the SkyHd receiver to the correct RF channel that was used with the old sky receiver.

UHF Aerial >> Aerial IN
RF1 >> to Main TV (optional as you will have a direct HDMI connection)
RF2 >> relay feed to Distribution / IR amplifier.

There is an RF power supply option you need to also switch on.

 

[rolfw]

If you're getting a signal from one of the boxes around the house, but no Freeview, then you have a problem with the connections. You must have a terrestrial aerial feed linking into the first sky box, then out of the first sky box into the second sky box, the terrestrial will then be carried around the house. It may also be that your distribution amplifier is powered by the Sky box, perhaps you could post some photos?

 

[Middlewood]

Thanks for the advice so far but as I am very much a novice in this field, Im not sure I understand what you both mean (sorry for sounding thick!)

 

[satelliteman]

As mentioned above, is there anyway you can take some pictures of your set up; in particular the cables and connection at rear of boxes.

 

[Middlewood]

Sorry photos aren't brilliant but the boxes are enclosed in a cabinet. Hope this helps.

 

[rolfw]

OK, so the Sky HD which is feeding around the house has no aerial input, if you want to watch the output from that box around the house, plus the terrestrial channels, you need to take the aerial cable out of the Sky+ box and put it into that box, or take a cable from the output of the Sky+ box into the aerial input on the HD box.

 

[Middlewood]

Thanks for the advice rolfw and I will try what youve suggested...but whats puzzling me is that as it stands both sky boxes are distributed around the house and the UHF aerial goes to the sky+ box which used to also send a terrestrial signal around the house prior to Sky HD being fitted, so surely changing the UHF aerial to the SkyHD box will not change anything and ill still recieve onlt 2 channels namely both Sky boxes. But as stated, I will try what you suggested and let you know the outcome.


Thanks again.

 

[Middlewood]

Some progress !! I tried the following changes :


1. Took the UHF aerial out of Sky+ box and connected to Aerial In on the SkyHD Box. This resulted in one of the bedrooms picking up most freeview channels but no terrestrial TV and Sky+ coverage. The other bedroom picked up Sky+ ONLY.


2. Whilst keeping the UHF Aerial in the SkyHD box I also disconnected the cable to RF Out 1 on Sky+ Box and connected to RF Out 2 on SkyHD Box. After carrying out Auto scans on both bedrooms TV's, the bedroom which had most success previously seemed to pick up more freeview channels, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 but NO BBC Channels and also picked up Sky+. The other bedroom again did not find any channels other than Sky+.

Any other suugestions.

Thanks in anticipation.