Hi all - Im new here so hope Im on the right track. In October 2011 I purchased 5 Starview S1812 Micro Satellite Receivers. The were sold to us and installed by the guy who installed our Sky in our new home. They were used in guest bedrooms, a guest lounge (we have just opened our 3br Bed & Breakfast), the last on our small TV in the kitchen.
About 3 months ago the one in the kitchen stopped working (pixelating I think the tech called it) we took the one from the guest lounge and put it in the kitchen so know it was the 'box' that was at fault. About 3-4 weeks later it started the same thing, not bad but annoying when watching something! So we checked the other 3 - 2 were doing the same thing and the message on the TV screen was "weak signal".
I called the local tech who came and checked the signals - all good, he made some enquires about these boxes as he hadnt had much to do with them (just replaced a couple when they had failed). He then came back and took them away to the local supplier who "checked them out" and found nothing wrong - hey presto!!! when they were reconnected they all worked! My yech said not to pay him yet, he had doubts.... told me to turn all sets on atlest daily and he would call back in a week to see if they were all still go - 2 days and 2 had stopped working 3 days another failed so I phoned him. He contacted Starview who told him the cables would be loose,so he came back and checked everything and we got patchy signals as he wriggled the cables. Away he went again and called Starview again, they have asked him to send back the 2 worst ones so they could sort the problem. We put the good one that hadnt failed yet in the kitchen and over the last few days it has gone from the odd patch of pixulating? to frequent , almost unusable.
Does anyone have any experience or advice with these - we have opened our B&B but now cant accept any guests as we can not offer TV. Do I bite the bullet and just buy 5 new ones (not the same type) ? They had no written warrenty so do I have any comeback?  (the kitchen one got about 5-6hrs use a week. The other maybe a total of 10 hours each at tops).
If Im going to have to replace them - any recomendations? The reason we went for these small ones was they could easyly be hidden behind the Tvs. 4 of the TVs are wall mounted and we didnt really want to put shleves up.
Lacking tech knowledge we purchased TVs with built in free-view but dahh - it is not available here! (Gore)
Thanks in advance for any help or advice - it is appreciated!