Sky Signal Quality

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americanbeauty

30 posts

Geek

Topic # 32835 25-Apr-2009 01:32

Hi there,

I live in an apartment building in central Wellington. I have recently had Sky Digital (just the ordinary one) installed. The picture on my TV (32" HD Ready Sony) is OK, but not great. I was checking the signal quality on the decoder (which looks to be an oldy) and the signal is usually between 40-55. It fluctuates all the time.

Could the "poor signal" be the reason for the picture not being great? The Decoder doesn't do component, but I am running it with an S-Video cable into the TV.

I imagine everyone in the whole apartment is running off the same satellite- could this be the reason for the decreased strength and would this result in poorer picture? And if so, any tips on what I should do?

Thanks for answering that. Much appreciated.

Kind Regards.

jen1001

182 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 11

Reply # 209129 25-Apr-2009 07:09

Hiya,

I live in an apartment building in Auckland and kinda had the same issues as you last December. The signal would be quite low and fluctuate a lot (as well as the BER), then after a while the pic would start pixelating until one day, I wasn't able to watch some of channels at all (got a rain fade message). I spoke to one of our neighbours who were also experiencing the same thing.

I remember the knowledgeable guys here saying it had to do with living in an apartment complex, as we only have one dish for the whole building. My issue was fixed though, our body corporate had hired a cabling company to do the Sky wiring work so they sent them over to look at the problem, to find out it was the amplifier that was at fault, so it was fixed . I've never had a problem since then.

I don't know whether your problem is similar to mine but since you live in an apartment building, they might as well be similar.

Jen

Edit: I forgot to say I had contected Sky beforehand and several techs came to check things (including replacing the set top box) and they said because I lived in an apartment building, I would need to contact either our building manager or Sky's MDU unit (they take care of apartment complex issues).

cyril7

6370 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 320

Trusted

Subscriber

Reply # 209132 25-Apr-2009 08:04

Hi, as Jen says the BER is whats important, the box shows that on the right hand side of the signal level screen, it should XXE-4 or better, best is XXE-7, this should releate to a scale of roungly 50% or higher.

Normally there is no drop off in picture quality, its either working properly or its stuttering and major parts of the picture tear up, but there is normally no inbetween of poor pictures.

I suggest you real issue is that your LCD TV is not handling Skys low bit rates very well and they all show up grainy and pixilated around moving parts of the image. If thats the case then you might like to turn off as many of the digital processing features of the TV, also reduce the sharpness, check the STB is in 16:9 mode, and finally an upgrade to MySkyHDi will give better results on the HD channels at least.

Cyril