SKY connection HELP!

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Shin

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Ultimate Geek

#10956 21-Dec-2006 19:59

Hi

I just moved and everything was great until I find out that I cannot find SKYconnector in the house.

On the wall, instead of SKY connector, there are 3 of common TV aerial output jacks!
(I found out one of jack is actually TV aerial jack, and two others cannot tuned by TV)

But I do remember there was sky decoder on the lounge and dish is installed outside alright.

In my old house I used common LNB output jack to connect dish to my decoder(Pace820 that is)

I try to call SKY to get tech down here, but obviously they're booked out until next Thursday. hopeless for this Christmas!

I only can suspect that previous owner actually made SKY connection into the wall(he built the house 3yrs ago) and arrange the output as normal TV outlet, but no proof since he's gone to Australia.

Please help how can I know whether one of these common TV aerial output jack is actually SKY SAT signal or not.

Or, is there some decoder actually use normal TV aerial output jack as their SAT signal input?

It's very urgent, I got whole bunch of friends come to my new house this Christmas, without TV how can I keep them gentle and social?

Many thanks!

cyril7

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#56114 21-Dec-2006 21:44

Are any of the wall sockets F type, can you take a picture maybe, are you certain there is a dish on the house.

Cyril

Shin

274 posts

Ultimate Geek

#56118 21-Dec-2006 22:03

Yes, there is dish just right below of the UHF antenna.

The three sockets on the wall all looks like above.

grant_k

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#56127 21-Dec-2006 23:29

Shin: This is the same situation I faced when recladding our house. Most of the Sky installers like to take the easy way out and they just drill a hole right through the wall of your house, then pass the cable through and bog up the hole with silicone. Not very pretty but it works. When it came time to reclad our house, I removed this cable and drilled some holes in the internal wall framing so I could hide the cable properly and terminate it with a wall socket.

What you will need to do is buy a Male Belling-Lee to Male F-Type adapter cable.

All of this assumes that your Sky Satellite dish actually connects to one of your Belling-Lee wall sockets.

To tell which one, you should be able to get a multimeter and select it to the lowest OHMS range. A standard TV aerial should read as almost a short circuit (say 1 to 5 ohms if my memory is correct) whereas the Sky Satellite dish (and its LNB) should read somewhat higher than that, probably 100 ohms or more I would imagine.

Is that correct Cyril?
(my memory is a little hazy on all of this stuff).

cyril7

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#56139 22-Dec-2006 07:34

You should not use a Belling Lee (PAL) connector for the Sky Lband IF as the BellingLee is not rated for the 2GHz of the LBand IF. I would remove the Face plate and attempt to clearly identify which coax goes to the dish. It may be that behind the BellingLee connector in the faceplate infact has an Fconnector behind it and the Sky cable is terminated their, if thats the case I would remove the cable from the Face plate and presumably the BellingLee to Fcon mech and pull the cable thru the face plate. Get and extention Fto F cable and female F adaptor if nessecary to extend the cable.

All of this assumes that one of these cable go to the dish. Sky installers normally do not like to break the cable and prefer the cable goes directly in one uncut piece from the LNB to the STB. This reduced their chances of having to make a revisit if a connection goes wrong.

Shin I think if you still have not worked this out that you need to show more detail of whats behind the face plate.

Grant is correct if you use a ohms meter you will find that any antennas will most likely give a short circuit, where as the LNB may give some vague reading depending on the polarity from the meter that you offer to the LNB.

Cyril

grant_k

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#56156 22-Dec-2006 11:18

cyril7: ...I would remove the cable from the Face plate and presumably the BellingLee to Fcon mech and pull the cable thru the face plate. Get and extention Fto F cable and female F adaptor if nessecary to extend the cable.

Mastertrade and other electrical suppliers sell these mechs labelled with "SKY" so that is why people use them.

I know that in theory you should not use them, but in practice they work perfectly fine and provide a tidy solution which allows the cable to be neatly terminated at the wall socket instead of dangling out. It's a pity that the previous owner took the adapter cable with him. He should really have left it in the house and then this problem wouldn't have occurred.

Shin

274 posts

Ultimate Geek

#56197 22-Dec-2006 17:37

Thanks Cyril and Grant.

Now I detach the face panel (it was screwed with square head bolts, bit hard to find right tool to unscrewed), and find out the all 3 of the cables are actually F type sockets and it's been converted to PAL socket.

So I went DickSmith and bought 2metre PAL<->F type cable and try on decoder.

Sadly, the decoder can't lock any signal and I tried every room in the house, but same result.

So now I got other questions, is there any "auto scan" feature or "default mode" for decoder to find out whether there is actually any signal at all or not.

I tried advanced menu, but I have no idea with such as "LNB power supply" "KU band" "Sat selection"

Please please help I only have two more days to Christmas!

P.S Yes I have tested cable itself and it is working perfectly.

cyril7

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#56198 22-Dec-2006 17:47

One thing to check is what LNB do you have, is it one with a round radome cover or oval. If it is the round one check the Low band LO freq is 11300MHz, if its the oval dual throat one is should be 10750MHz, the High band LO freq should be 11800MHz.

And you have a Personal Message.

Cyril

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Shin

274 posts

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#56208 23-Dec-2006 00:10

cyril7: One thing to check is what LNB do you have, is it one with a round radome cover or oval. If it is the round one check the Low band LO freq is 11300MHz, if its the oval dual throat one is should be 10750MHz, the High band LO freq should be 11800MHz.

And you have a Personal Message.

Cyril

Thank you so much Cyril! you're a life saver!

I tried 10750/11800 with oscillator setup(?) then yes!!

Now I got a much healthier problems such as it looks relatively dull with new HDTV set and how to decoder to show 4:3 contents to 16:9 tv with sidebar. (I'll make another thread for this)

Anyway, thank you so much Cyril and Grant, I hope very merry Christmas for you guys!

Cheers!

grant_k

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#56210 23-Dec-2006 00:22

Great news Shin!

I'm glad to hear you got it working. Your previous house must have had one of the old LNBs with single throat so your decoder was set accordingly. That explains the problem you were having.

I'm glad to hear the adapter cable worked OK. I have previously used such a cable and didn't find any problems with it.

Enjoy your Christmas and have a great New Year.

It will be much better now you have Sky TV working

Shin

274 posts

Ultimate Geek

#56214 23-Dec-2006 02:03

Grant17: Great news Shin!

I'm glad to hear you got it working. Your previous house must have had one of the old LNBs with single throat so your decoder was set accordingly. That explains the problem you were having.

I'm glad to hear the adapter cable worked OK. I have previously used such a cable and didn't find any problems with it.

Enjoy your Christmas and have a great New Year.

It will be much better now you have Sky TV working .

Yes, indeed. ;)

Funny thing is that my "new" house is 3yrs old and SKY dish was installed when it was built, but my "old" house was much older but SKY dish was installed only last May to watch Worldcup.

Anyway merry Christmas and happy New Year!

richms

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#56258 23-Dec-2006 19:38

Sky are going around swapping out old lnbs to the dualies, they called mum up to arrange a time out of the blue a month or so ago. Now the thing drops out frequantly on some channels, but she sees no reason to call them back since its not too bad, and who am I to argue...

Richard rich.ms

cyril7

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#56267 24-Dec-2006 08:07

It should definitely not drop out, I would call them back, sounds like either its a faulty one with a dodgy DRO or most likely its skew alignment is incorrect. Sky are currently running two cross pol transponders on the same frequency, this will cause any incorrectly skew aligned LNB's to have high errors on those transponders. There is no excuse for a incorrectly aligned LNB, especially if only recently replaced.

Cyril

richms

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#56313 24-Dec-2006 22:53

Yeah, I have told her we should have them back, but its a case of not wanting to bother them because its not too bad in her opinion. Will wait for it to rain and see if that changes her tune....

Richard rich.ms

Shin

274 posts

Ultimate Geek

#56578 29-Dec-2006 22:56

Arrr... I don't know what to say any more...

My SKY decoder can't lock signal again!

It's still got signal level of 62 with LNB power supply on but can't get any lock with every frequency given.
(without LNB power supply, signal level drop to <30)

All I did it was try to test whether there is SKY signal on another room so I moved decoder around but failed, then I back it original position but it also can't get any lock at all.

Should I consider decoder is faulty now or am I missing something here?

I really feel depressed now.. why it happens just before holidays?

And my original post was gone because there was timeout... it's second post.. what the....

Please help...

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now it works again with setting of none-11300mhz combination and completely power off for 30 secs.

How come it happens? it likes teenage girls, different everytime, is it really a machine?