Problem with sky HD box

T

trev1978

Member
My Satellite Setup
1.25m motorised dish, 1.85m prime focus fixed, spiderbox 7000, technomate 5400USB super
My Location
Ballymena, Northern Ireland
Hi all!

Over the past couple of weeks I have been experiencing somedifficulties with my sky HD box. Allchannels are listed on the epg but when I try to select some I am getting themessage ‘no satellite signal is being received’. Initially I thought that my dish had got knocked off a bit withrecent storms. However I have checkedwith my meter and it is bang on. Alsowhen I am on a channel that I can receive and check the signal reading on thesky box I am getting virtually two full bars on signal strength andquality. My freesat HD tv is alsoconnected to the same dish and there has been no problems with it. I have also renewed all the connections butit has made no difference and I checked the output from each of the 4 lnbconnects and they are fine. I triedringing sky but they were of no use- they only wanted to charge me £60 forsomeone to come out and check my installation and I already know that the dishand cabling are fine.

I then thought that perhaps my box was no longer providingthe 18V to switch the lnb from vertical to horizontal polarity. However when I checked the channels that Icannot get it is a mixture of horizontal and vertical polarity.

The only other thing I can think of is that my 16 month oldson had developed a liking for pushing the buttons on my tv equipment!! I know whenI installed the HD box I had to press and hold a combination of buttons on thetop of the box to force a software download. It is quite possible that he has managed to achieve this. If he has done this and the download was interruptedcould this have caused the problem? Ifso what should I do?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. It could be that I need a new box but I justwant to exhaust all the possibilities before facing this!!!

Thanks

Trev
 
Which frequencies are missing? You may be getting external interference - before they were moved some of the music channels were notorious for having problems with dect phone equipment.

And whats the make of the box, some makes are notorious for having poor quality components in the power supplies.
 
Interrupting a Forced Download shouldn't cause a problem as the new firmware is cached & parity checked before replacing the pre-existing version.

And I very much doubt a child could disconnect the box from the mains, wait several seconds, then press the front panel Backup button and hold it there for several seconds whilst at the same time plugging it back into the mains.

More likely to be a duff Thomson Power Supply.
 
As mentioned in the earlier posts, your symptoms are indicative of a faulty power supply, you can phone Sky and tell them that you are moving over to Virgin as your Sky HD box is playing up and you can't afford a new one, the result of which will probably be a replacement box for the price of a service call. Or, you can send your box off to one of a few companies who can repair the power supply with decent components for around the same price.

I've just got my HD box back from digirepairs.co.uk, they arranged for pickup of the HD box and returned it within four days, plus you get a box which should outlast most brand new ones.
 
Thanks All,

I can confirm that it is a Thompson box which doesn't sound good!!

Trev
 
Thommo = almost certainly power supply capacitors failing.


Things WILL continue to get worse until the box fails completely.

Pop the top off and have a look at the capacitors around where the power cable enters the box (cylindrical components with Y or T embossed in the top) Their tops should be totally level but chances are some of them will be bulging.

Switch off & unplug everything before taking the top off & keep your fingers well clear of the circuit board - the components can hold a nasty charge long after its unplugged.
 
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