Grrrrrrr Bloody sky box (1 Viewer)

[Tezza]

Good evening

Please be patient, longish story

When we bought our current van we asked the good folk at Vanbitz to reinstall our Oyster Caro digital sat system and to wire in for the sky box as well as our FTA box.
It worked but we had problems at the time and were told it's because the box was set to double feed rather than single. (what ever that meant)
Anyway found out about the double/single feed and changed it over but whilst away at Easter we still had issues where the box said receiving no signal, couldn't understand and didn't have the knowledge to delve into it, so put it away and used FTA instead.

Then yesterday I realised we are away in two week and the finale of Game of Thrones is on, so have to take the box, it's the only thing I watch and don't intend to wait a week to see it, so we changed the box in the house today to single feed, box initialised and we were good to plug into the van.
Plugged it in, same message, receiving no signal, as before tried both feeds Vanbitz put in on the FTA box and both worked so no issues there, we then looked up on intaweb and found we had to change the frequency settings, so we took a deep breath and did it, success, we had the sky prom page, but no channels.
We dropped the dish and restarted it, low and behold we then had channels except for bbc2 and a few others, then we switched the TV to the FTA box to check all was OK there, which it was, then switched back to the sky channel where we had now lost every channel we had earlier but gained the ones we lost BBC2 etc.
The neighbour has a satellite meter and said our dish is only reading 32% signal strength, and by the time we had given up, we had the original channels back and lost BBC2 again, so frustrating I have no idea what is going on or why it's happening, so much for plug and play type of thing.
Can anyone shed any light on what might be my issue.
also, my magic eye isn't working, it was before, but I'll google that now to see if I have not turned something on or what ever might need to be done.
Apologies for the long mail, think I got all the details in.

Oh, my FTA box was set to look for frequency 10.773 symbol rate of 22 so changed it to the frequency 11.778 and symbol rate of 27.5 as per the sky recommendation.

Tezza

 

[Satandpcguy]

Firstly, the Sky default transponder frequency is 11778 v 27.5 2/3
This is the frequency the sky box looks at when booting up, as it download the channel list and associated frequencies from that frequency.
You should not have to change this frequency to any other.
And as that frequency carries Sky EPG data, your FTA box will not be able to make any sense of that data at all, so pointless in doing anything to your FTA receiver with that frequency.

If your Sky box had the Sky promo page - channel 998 - then it managed to get the signal from 11778 and load up as normal.
It will also be able to get all the other channels that use the same polarisation group as 11778 - ie vertical high.

(Only as it would simply be impossible to only get Sky channel 998)

If no other channels, then it is not getting the three other polarities - vertical low, horizontal low, horizontal high.
Which normally I would suggest either an LNB issue or a cabling issue.

But if you say your FTA receiver is getting all other channels, then perhaps you have changed the LNB settings on your Sky box ???
Changing these setting's makes the boxes behave in very strange ways.
So go to the LNB settings page, and press red to set them back to default. Save, and reboot the box.

The correct settings are:
- 9.75 for the low frequency.
- 10.60 for the high frequency.
- The LNB power supply should always be set to on.
- The 22KHz Command should always be set to on.

If these settings are not correct, then the SKy box is not sending the correct instructions to the LNB, and so the signals the LNB is sending the receiver are not what the box is expecting.

And if your dish is mis aligned, and giving low signals as per you neighbours meter, then realign the dish, check the LNB,and check the cabling.

You turn on magic eyes via the RF settings page - make sure power is set to on, and your magic eye is on RF output 2, as rf output 1 doe snot have a power out so does not supply power to the magic eye, so it will not work.

 

[Tezza]

Many thanks for your reply, everything you say has been done, except the magic eye and I did have that in the wrong port, so this is now sorted. The reason I changed the frequency is 10773 is the default settings the fta box is set to. When we did change we had more success than before but not perfect. I think I will call Eddie to see if they can sort it out as this should be so simple and clearly something is not right.

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[eddie]

Hi was it a new system we supplied, or was it swapped from another Motorhome?

If so, did it work the same on the previous setup?

I am assuming that it is a single LNB system?

When you say it works on the FTA box do you mean the one built into the Caro controller?

Does the box work OK in the house?

 

[Tezza]

Hi Eddie, it is a system which wAs swapped from my other van to the new one. the sky box was never used in the old van but when we bought this van we wanted to be able to take sky with us, hence we had the extra connections put in.

We have changed the sky box to single feed and it works fine in the house and the FTA box works fine in the van, they just don't seem to want to work together

 

[Tezza]

Hi Eddie thanks for getting back, just to be clear, I am in no way saying this is a vanbitz fault it,s clearly a set up issue that I am not sure how to rectify, the reason I said I would contact you is you are the experts in this field and can probably fix it with your eyes closed.
Also yes the fta box is the one that came with the system.
Also yes the FTA box is the one that came with the system.

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[Satandpcguy]

Are you disconnecting the satellite feed from the FTA box and reconnecting it to the Sky box?

Or are you keeping the FTA box connected and splitting the feed cable, or using the FTA box as a "loop thru"?

In which case, with two receivers switched on at the same time, and the signal feeding thru the FTA receiver or a single cable being split to two receiver , then is that FTA receiver is powered on, and on a channel, then all the signals will not make it thru to the sky box.

Again, goes back tot he fact there are 4 frequency groups.

for example, if your FTA box is on a vertical low channel, and you connect the sky box to the same feed, then only vertical low frequency channels will make it thru to the Sky box.

Some FTA boxes do feed all 4 frequency groups thu, some don't.

 

[Tezza]

Thanks again for your time, yes we are keeping the FTA box plugged in, we have two cables to use one is in the FTA box and the other for when we use the sky box (I wasn't aware I had to unplug it) I.m unsure what the set up is split or looped as it was done for us when we had the system reinstalled.

 

[Ivory55]

If satellite is this complicated I will stick with radio 2 . Haha

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[Satandpcguy]

So if your system has two feeds from the LNB, then one cable should go to the FTA receiver, and the other to the Sky box. And there should be no problems using the Sky box on its own cable. (You could swap the two cables between the two boxes to make sure both work with the FTA receiver)

And if your system only has one feed from the LNB, and you are keeping your FTA box powered, at the same time as your Sky box is powered, then that is the problem, and why your Sky box is getting limited channels.

 

[Tezza]

Ok, many thanks again for your time, I will have to wait until next weekend now to try the system again, yes we only have 1 feed from the LNB and two cables to use, so basically if I turn the FTA box on to power the dish, unplug the sat cable, plug my second lead into the skybox, the sky box will then give the dish all the settings it requires to find the satellite and all the channels and bingo all sorted?

 

[pyro]

My £90 Slingbox/wi-fi (+ unlimited 4G via local sim when required) is getting all the channels from home perfectly and without the irritation of Sky earning a penny in the process.

The added bonus is perfect internet

Living the dream

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[Tezza]

To be honest we didn't ever take the sky box as we don't watch much TV, but thought as we are paying for it and the new van was having the system reinstalled might as well have the extra connections put in and make use of it. As said in my original post only reason for the rush this weekend is I didn't realise we were away when the GOT finale is on and I am an huge fan so cant miss it.

 

[Satandpcguy]

yes we only have 1 feed from the LNB and two cables to use, so basically if I turn the FTA box on to power the dish, unplug the sat cable, plug my second lead into the skybox, the sky box will then give the dish all the settings it requires to find the satellite and all the channels and bingo all sorted?

Yes. One cable feed to one receiver and all should be working as it should.

 

[Tezza]

Many many thanks for taken the time to explain and help.

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[eddie]

Just seem the further messages, don't forget to use the Sky box you have to use the AV button on the Oyster digibox remote to switch the Signal throughput