Sky viewing card problems?

[JohnMac]

After over a year of troublefree reception of the free to air programmes with the Sky digibox, I have been having problems in the last few days. The first couple of times, the digibox would switch itself off during the day (curiously enough at 12h12 CET on each occasion) but I was able to restore operation when I came home in the evening.

Following the latest occurrence, I am unable to get back to normal operation. I have found the following:


· When I switch the digibox on I get every time the message
“For your information – Checking the listings – Please wait”. After some 15 or 20 seconds I get a couple of seconds of the Sky demonstration channel and then the digibox switches itself off. On one or two occasions it would just freeze and I had to switch off the power before trying again.

· I then tried with the card removed and had the same message, but this time it did not switch off and I got a new message “Please insert your Sky viewing card”. Without doing so, I now found I could get programmes such as Sky news, and the BBC radio programmes.

· This is now totally repeatable so we are now limited to the radio and Sky news, but cannot receive BBC television etc.

I would very much appreciate advice as to whether this could be trouble with the card itself (I do not think there is an expiry date on it) or is there something more sinister with Sky hoping to locate users who happen to be in the wrong place!!

I received a lot of help from you when I first bought the digibox (especially Rolf, Zansi, 2old etc.) and I would be very grateful for any advice you could give me now.

Many thanks
John

 

[rolfw]

Sounds like a software problem John, it's unlikely to be the card causing the box to shut down, more likely the firmware on the box,

Try a forced update, you need to switch off at the mains, or pull out the plug for a couple of minutes, remove the card, then plug back in with the backup button on the box depressed. Providing that you have the requisite 3 hands to do this, the box should then go into update mode. If you have the box connected by scart there should be a message on the screen saying "Software download could take several minutes, do not disconnect from dish, etc"

When the box is restarted you should have updated to the current and hopefully not corrupt version.

Rolf

 

[JohnMac]

Rolf,

Many thanks for your very prompt response. I will certainly try this evening and hope that clears everything. I will let you know.

John

 

[2old4this]

bear in mind that if you follow Rolf's advice to the letter, removing the card while updating, then you will need to put the card back in before restarting the box. This is because if the box boots without a card, you are restricted in any case to a small selection of just the unencrypted FTA channels (so not even BBC).
If that does happen, don't worry though. Just unplug, insert the card, and restart the box, and it'll then give you the full channel line-up.
2old

 

[JohnMac]

Rolf, 2Old

Many thanks for the excellent advice. Ten minutes and mission accomplished. All is back to normal and my wife back from the ceiling !!

John

 

[rolfw]

Good news John, ceiling bound wives are a real hassle.

Rolf

 

[T_G]

Hehe, upside-down-nagging from 2 meters is even more brain penetrating than the usually 15-degrees-from-below-nagging. Even though the manish brain has over the years managed to develop a certain (even if time limited) immunity from the normal nagging, sometimes... When attacked from above though it (the brain) is "ambushed" and the pain-(in the neck)- barrier is breached!

If for some reason you do have a bad case of wife on the ceiling:

1)Tidy up,
2)give her the credit card
3)Restore the TV ,or whatever other electrical component that confused her (this includes sticking in the plug so it stops the "It doesen't work anymore",
4) buy her a new pair of shoes
5) carry down the bin

so she can come down.

Trick: Any of the above will usually do the trick, even if the reason for her ascend were completely different.


I hope that by remembering these advice you will suffer less next time!

TG