Sky - understanding signal strength

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allstarnz

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#14538 8-Jul-2007 21:00

Can anyone explain what info below determines the singal strength?

What's a good and bad signal level?

What's BER and how is it measured?

TIA

tallPete

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#77372 8-Jul-2007 21:26

Hi allstarnz,

It has been a year since I had sky, and the software looks like it has been updated since, I am not a sky tech or installer, but :

BER stands for Bit Error Rate. This is what determines signal strength. Back a couple of years ago, and they probably still do, they told the Sky installers to look at the last part of this number - the exponent part, or the 07 part, to determine signal strength. The bigger this number, the better the signal strength.

If you know a little about maths, you'll see that this number is actually nn * 10^-7 , the smaller the -7 is the smaller the error rate. e.g a if it was -8 or -9 this is a stronger signal.

Although in the screen shot you have provided, it says 0.0 * 10^-7 which is still zero!! That doesn't make much sense to me, but no doubt the installers know that when the last part of this number is 10, then the signal is a lot better than when it is a 2 or 3!

Cheers,
Pete.

richms

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#77377 8-Jul-2007 23:17

That means no errors, generally it will sit on that and drop briefly to something e-04 or e-05 when it has a single error occasionally.

Strength doesnt really matter since the carrier to noise is determined at the dish, if you split it, you lose as much signal as noise, so the difference is still the same, once you drop more then about 20dB thru splitting it etc or cable losses then there may be more noise picked up, but in general, in a household install its never an issue.

Richard rich.ms

allstarnz

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#77382 9-Jul-2007 01:09

thanks for the replies guys.

if i were to split the signal, which one would I check to make sure the picture quality won't drop too low? Signal strength, quality or level?

richms

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#77383 9-Jul-2007 01:52

Nothing, it will be fine. If you start to see errors that end in e-03 then you are having problems that are on the verge of showing themselves - your a long way from that.

Richard rich.ms