Sky starts test on Optus 10

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411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3336995 29-Jan-2025 13:48

Spyware:

LookingUp:

I'm using a non-Sky Sky decoder, and just found that all my HD channels are not working. After much faffing about with our dish I did a satellite channel re-scan and now have them all back. I'm guessing that those channels moved, and that if I was using the official Sky decoder it would have received an update to reprogram them.

Fantasy based thinking.

???. Before a channel re-scan, the signal strength on HD channels was basically a sinewave chopped off about 2/3 up - i.e. short humps of signal with gaps in between. SD channels were fine. I had this on 3 decoders (inc. one with a dish I didn't touch), and all of them came good ONLY when I rescanned the channels on them. Reboots etc. made no difference. Do you have a better explanation? I KNOW that I have to rescan channels when Sky add/remove/move them, which they do sporadically, but that's usually just Olympic channels or other fluff that comes and goes.

I was just looking to provide clues for the OP, so am somewhat mystified by your comment. Glad to hear any better explanations.

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JPNZ

1520 posts

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#3336997 29-Jan-2025 13:50

Handsomedan:

I've noticed a marked degradation in picture quality of late - I wonder if it's a result of the destabilised orbit of the satellite.

Watching the NFL coference finals on Monday and ESPN had an awful screechy audio blip/clipping every 30 seconds or so. I switched over to TVNZ+ which had sharper PQ and no audio issues

Panasonic 65GZ1000, Onkyo RZ730, Atmos 5.1.2, AppleTV 4K, Nest Mini's, PS5, PS3, MacbookPro, iPad Pro, Apple watch SE2, iPhone 15+

Spyware

3728 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#3337001 29-Jan-2025 14:06

LookingUp:

???. Before a channel re-scan, the signal strength on HD channels was basically a sinewave chopped off about 2/3 up - i.e. short humps of signal with gaps in between. SD channels were fine. I had this on 3 decoders (inc. one with a dish I didn't touch), and all of them came good ONLY when I rescanned the channels on them. Reboots etc. made no difference. Do you have a better explanation? I KNOW that I have to rescan channels when Sky add/remove/move them, which they do sporadically, but that's usually just Olympic channels or other fluff that comes and goes.

I was just looking to provide clues for the OP, so am somewhat mystified by your comment. Glad to hear any better explanations.

How can Sky move channels when nowhere to move them to. 95% of dishes can see D2 fine, maybe only 80% can see Optus 10 - Sky have chosen not to use Optus 10 for primary service.

So where have the channels been moved to?? Are you saying that they have moved transponders??

Spark Max Fibre using Mikrotik CCR1009-8G-1S-1S+, CRS125-24G-1S, Unifi UAP, U6-Pro, UAP-AC-M-Pro, Apple TV 4K (2022), Apple TV 4K (2017), iPad Air 1st gen, iPad Air 4th gen, iPhone 13, SkyNZ3151 (the white box). If it doesn't move then it's data cabled.

RunningMan

8911 posts

Uber Geek

#3337023 29-Jan-2025 16:58

A pretty good article on RNZ https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/540282/falling-short-customers-told-they-should-get-sky-tv-discounts

Sky TV said it expected about 5 percent of its Sky Box customers, or 20,000 to 25,000 had been affected by the inclined orbit of the satellite

kiwifidget

"Cookie"
3362 posts

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#3337142 29-Jan-2025 21:39

I've had my Sky dish adjusted and an extra cable run to the distribution box, and can now get ch888.

Is that all I need to check for?

Delete cookies?! Are you insane?!

fe31nz

1207 posts

Uber Geek

#3337156 29-Jan-2025 22:50

kiwifidget:

I've had my Sky dish adjusted and an extra cable run to the distribution box, and can now get ch888.

Is that all I need to check for?

It would have been if Sky was still intending to switch to Optus 10 at 156E, but today they have changed their minds about that - presumably because their channel 888 testing showed that too many customers would not be able to receive Optus 10 without fixed or new dishes. So they are going to be using a different satellite at 160E, but no-one seems to know what satellite that would be as there does not appear to be a suitable one available, and nothing new is being launched soon enough.

After seeing the news today, I did a channel scan on the normal multiplexes on D2 and there have been changes. Channel 888 is now being broadcast on D2 on 12456 MHz, replacing an Auxiliary HD test channel. I have not checked to see if 888 is still on Optus 10. All the Sky Sport Pop-up channels seem to be gone, as are the Sky Sport 1 UHD test channel and all the Sky Box Office channels. Al Jazeera has been moved to 12519 MHz. TLC is gone, whatever that was.

Oblivian

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#3337158 29-Jan-2025 23:18

"the living channel". Diy central.

Apsattv

2378 posts

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#3337169 30-Jan-2025 02:52

Channel 888 that was on OPtus 10 was renamed a few days ago to channel 999 (yes you can still select it on your box) 999 is for Commercial installs. But who knows since they keep changing plans.

Are you certain 888 is also on 12456H not sure why that would be there? since its the Freeview transponder.

Rentakill

82 posts

Master Geek

#3337178 30-Jan-2025 07:53

fe31nz:

Klathman:

I think I'm making a little progress, but it's still a little broken.

I found that if I change my LNB settings to 10750 high and low and set the switch to 11300 (I'm not sure if this is the right setting, though), I can access Optus 10. The odd thing is that if I have both D1 and Optus 10 configured on the same card, then it seems to only be able to access Optus 10.

I played with the DiSEqC settings, and none of the options seemed to do anything. The MediaPortal options are weird, though (None, SimpleA, SimpleB, Level1AA, Level1AB, Level1BA, Level1BB).

Since I had enough cards, I split them, with half using a switch setting of 0 and the other half using 11300, and pointed to the appropriate satellite.

This seems to work, but I can't change from a channel on one satellite to the other all that quickly. In fact, sometimes, when I try to switch, it fails to tune in to any channel for about a minute and then starts working again.

I guess this will at least mean that when the change comes, I can make it work, but this in-between time might be a real pain.

If your Sky dish is anything like mine, there is no way to get both 160E and 156E at the same time. My dish has two throats, one pointed at 160E and one at 156E. For 160E, the 22 kHz tone has to be off, and for 156E it has to be on. Either way, only one throat will be active at at any given time. I am unsure if there are actually two LNBs, one per throat, or just one LNB and the throats are switched ahead of the LNB. But either way, there is only one LNB that is active at any one time feeding signal down the aerial cables. I have two sets of aerial cables, but 22 KHz on either of them switches the throat and both cables get signal from the currently selected throat.

To get Sky from 156E by turning on the 22 kHz tone, there is no standard LNB type that you can select in your software to do that. What works for me is to select the "Universal" LNB type (common in Europe). A true Universal LNB has two local oscillators (LOs), with different frequencies, and the LO being used can be switched from the low frequency one to the high frequency one by sending 22 kHz tone. On a standard Sky dish like mine, there is only one LO, and in my case it is a 10750 MHz one. It gets mixed with the incoming signal, so if you are trying to tune the Sky mux on 12267 MHz, the 10750 LO is mixed with that and you get two heterodyned signals at 12267+10750=23017 MHz and 12267-10750=1517 MHz. There is a filter that blocks all the high frequencies so the original 12267 MHz signal and the 23017 MHz signal are blocked and only the 1517 MHz signal is received on your DVB-S2 card. That is within the receiver range of DVB-S2 cards and it can be tuned to that signal to receive that multiplex. But the range of frequencies that your DVB-S2 card can receive is limited, and is less than the range of signals that are avaialble in many parts of the world. So with a "Universal" LNB, there is second (higher frequency) local oscillator that you can turn on using the 22 KHz tone (which will also turn off the lower frequency LO), and that then brings higher frequency signals from the satellite down into the range that a DVB-S2 card can receive. For a Sky dish, there is only one LO, and the 22 KHz signal switches the dish to the second throat pointing to 156E. But all the DVB-S(2) software out there does not have an LNB type that matches this, so you have to fool the software into doing what you want. By selecting a "Universal" type LNB, the software has settings for the low and high LO frequencies, and a "switch" setting that tells the software when to switch to using the high LO. When you ask the software to tune to a frequency, it will work out which LO frequency is needed to be able to receive that frequency and will turn on or off the 20 kHz tone as required.

For our purposes, there are two ways to use such software with Sky dishes. The method I am using is to set both LO frequencies to 10750 and change the switch frequency to turn on or off the 20 kHz tone. If the switch frequency is set very low (0), then the 20 Hz tone will be on, and if it is set very high (99999), the 20 kHz tone will be off. This is what I am doing at present - I change the command line LNB settings for my minisatip software from "-L 10750-10750-99999" to "-L 10750-10750-00000" to get 156E. To do that, I have to stop and restart minisatip, so that is not a good solution if you want the software playing or recording from Sky to be able to select between the two throats. I have not met any recording software that allows you to specify the 22 kHz tone signal on a per channel basis.

The other possible method would be to set the switch frequency to a number that is higher than the maximum Sky frequency on 160E, for example 12800 MHz. Then you would tune to the 160E frequencies to get those muxes, and tune to frequencies above 12800 MHz to get the 156E muxes. You would need to calculate the frequencies to get the 156E muxes based on the 12800 MHz switch frequency, and your recording software would have to use those "false" frequency numbers. I think that would work, but I have not tried it as I do not need to be able to select between the satellites in my MythTV software. When Sky tells us it is now changing over to 156E, I will just change the minisatip settings to use 156E and re-tune to the new mux frequencies.

One other possible way of controlling the 22 kHz tone is if you are using SAT>IP protocol with your tuners (as I am with minisatip running my DVB-S2 tuners). With SAT>IP, part of the URL you can add is to control pilot tones, which I think means the 22 kHz tone in our case. So you could manually add "plts=on" in the SAT>IP URL for a channel on 156E. But there would be no checking to ensure that "plts=on" URLs would not be use at the same time as "plts=off" URLs, so if any tuner was running with a "plts=off" URL and another tuner was started with a "plts=on" URL, the "plts=off" streams would stop as the throat got switched to the 156E throat and the 160E signal was lost. If you were doing this, you would set the LO switch frequency to 99999 so that the software always thought it was using the lower LO and would calculate the frequencies correctly - there would be no need to calculate "false" frequency numbers.

Sounds pretty Complex.

Here's something to consider.

I'm just using an 8 Port Output MultiSwitch which allows Two separate V/H Inputs.

I've just strapped on another LNB for D10 right on top of my existing D2 LNB.

D2 is fed into the H Pol Tapping of the Multi Switch (As Sky is on H Pol on D2), and D10 V pol is fed into the V Pol Tapping. (As Sky is on V Pol on D10)

As far as the receivers concerned. it's seeing just one LNB.. No need for 22Khz Switching.

So when i call up D2 Sky/Freeview the Rx uses H Pol D2.. And if i call up D10 Sky the Box uses the V Pol D10 Signal.

All Receivers around the house require just a Retune. Job Done.

fe31nz

1207 posts

Uber Geek

#3337549 30-Jan-2025 22:11

Apsattv:

Channel 888 that was on OPtus 10 was renamed a few days ago to channel 999 (yes you can still select it on your box) 999 is for Commercial installs. But who knows since they keep changing plans.

Are you certain 888 is also on 12456H not sure why that would be there? since its the Freeview transponder.

Sorry, it looks like I transposed 2 digits typing that. Channel 888 is on D2 on the 12546 MHz multiplex.

geek3001

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#3337819 31-Jan-2025 16:51

I recall a few years ago being advised by Sky each year, that there was a regular risk of loss of satellite signal in the afternoons for several minutes, usually around 1pm to 2pm, during the March and September equinox period, roughly the 21st of each month.

This was due to the Sun, the satellite and NZ's relative position, being in a line that resulted in RF noise from the Sun being far higher than the RF signal from the Satellite, such that the RF noise from the Sun completely swamped the satellite's signal for several minutes, leading to loss of satellite signal.

If this temporary loss of signal around the upcoming equinox period is still a thing, in addition to a wobbly satellite, then I wonder whether all Sky satellite customers can expect afternoon service disruption around 21 March.

fe31nz

1207 posts

Uber Geek

#3337936 31-Jan-2025 23:23

Sky has been moving channels again - I think it probably happened yesterday as my MythTV box had a couple of failed recordings then on affected channels. So today I scanned all the D2 Sky multiplexes again and got these changes:

Sky Arts 12456 to 12349

Colors 12734 to 12349

TLC 12734 to 12349

ESPN2 12734 to 12581

BBC First 12546 to 12581

CGTN Documentary 12734 to 12608

Channel 888 12546 to 12707

ID 12546 to 12707

Real History 12546 to 12519

Rialto 12546 to 12519

Fox News 12546 to 12519

Most of the above changes kept the same stream IDs (PIDs), but ID, Real History, Rialto and Fox News have new PIDs, presumably due to clashes with the PIDs for existing channels on their new multiplexes.

There was also one PID only change, where Sky News had its PID 1904 renumbered to 1903, in line with Sky's apparent new policy that the last digit of all PIDs for a channel should be the same - I would guess that someone did a typo at some time in the past to give Sky News the 1904 PID instead of 1903.

As a result of these changes, 12546 MHz and 12734 MHz are completely empty - they have no channels now. So I wonder why - could those transponders be failing?

Apsattv

2378 posts

Uber Geek

#3337944 1-Feb-2025 02:18

If they do plan to use a reconfigured Measat3a in the same slot, its not possible to test transponders while skys still using them on D2.

I really hope Measat3a isnt the replacement plan. The skew problem will cause more issues than the wobbly sat did.

skyplonk

451 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#3338027 1-Feb-2025 14:11

https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/360563707/about-20000-sky-tv-viewers-have-experienced-disruption-help-way

The satellite that we have now chosen as our primary satellite is being drifted by Optus to the correct orbital slot, 160 degrees East, of the equator.

“We expect this drift to be completed in the coming weeks,” Sky said.

Optus has not so far identified what satellite is being moved to temporarily replace D2 or what functions it had been providing for other customers.

However, the time-frames suggest it is being moved from relatively far afield.

“Optus has secured third-party capacity and has procured alternative satellites for our customers to provide continuity of services,” a spokesperson said.

Sky cautioned on Monday that there remained “inherent technology and logistical risks to the successful migration, some of which are outside Sky’s control”.

PolicyGuy

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#3341873 12-Feb-2025 11:33

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, mods please move if there's a better spot

Space Logistics’ contract with Intelsat for the IS-901 CVS is scheduled to end on March 30, 2025, and Space Logistics now seeks authority to perform mission extension services for another GSO satellite.7 For its next mission, Space Logistics plans to dock the {Mission Extension Vehicle} MEV-1 to the Australian operator Optus’s D3 satellite for an approximate seven-month mission to reduce the inclination of the Kuband Optus D3 satellite, thereby extending its operational life.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=39714.0;attach=2356502;sess=65336

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