After a year of trouble-free reception, our Sky TV kept disappearing, roughly at the same time as the volcanic ash cloud arrived. Since then it has sometimes been perfect for hours or minutes, then the signal quality disappears (and the signal with it) for seconds, minutes, hours or even days. I've changed the LNB and the cable (for a professionally made-up one) but to no effect. I've adjusted the dish for the best possible signal (which is sometimes excellent; 100% strength and 80% quality). Has anyone had the same experience? There have been suggestions that the ash might affect signals, but it seems far fetched to me, after all these weeks.

Thanks for any replies,

David

Where abouts are you. It may be relevant if it is related to atmospheric problems. I am in the Hautes-Pyrenees and have had no problems with the signal.

I have lost a number of channels, but that is poxy sky buggering about with what you can see with an old, un-subscribed Sky card. Gits!! Might have ti bite the bullet and get a Freesat box instead.

I'm in the Loire Valley, Martin, near Saumur. We have a fully subscribed card and should be getting all the channels.

David

Forget volcanic ash, it won't be affecting anything. If it were you can be absolutely certain to have heard about it before now !

Down here in SE Dordogneshire with a standard 60cm Sky dish I have no trouble whatsoever other than during our occasional biblical downpours.

I'm intreagued by your comment "sometimes excellent; 100% strength and 80% quality", that says that sometimes it isn't and it really shouldn't vary significantly on a regular basis.

Who installed your LNB and has it been skewed correctly, it should be at roughly 7pm looking at the front of the dish.

It's possible that your box could be a bit sick and one answer to that would be borrow one from a friend, or do a temporary swap, and see if the problem follows the box.

Hi, What is required to get Sky services in France?
When we stayed at a B&B in Languedoc-Roussillon we were able to view Sky as if we were in the UK.
The house we're buying in Limoux has a Sky dish already.
We have a Sky subscription in the UK.
Someone said all we have to do is take our UK Sky box with the viewing card, connect it all up (in France) and then keep up the Sky subscriptions in the UK.
Is it really as simple as that?

Regards,
Colin

Yes

Wow, great! thanks for the reply.

Thanks for all that. In reply to Im and Er, I meant that when it is working, we have 100% strength and 80% quality (which is easily enough) but then suddenly the quality falls to zero, and the strength to varying by the second to between 80 and 100%. It can keep 'blipping' in and out for hours, or settle down to a long period of 'on' or 'off'. However, it has been 'off' for about 36 hours now. I don't know much about the equipment, but I'm not sure how a sick box would produce that effect. As for alignment, I don't think that would produce such radical changes.

As for the sub-thread, you need to make sure that any correspondence goes through a UK address.

David

I would get your dish re aligned even here in the mountains 100/100 is possible and the Ash would have to be pretty dense to block the signal. There have been enough windy spells to know that it needs tweaking.

Sick dying boxes tend to be show zero signal syndromes. Considering the last bout of snow was wet heavy again re alignment is most likely what you need.

If you have had both the cable and LNB replaced then it is hard to see what else could be causing such rapid, regular, and prolonged, signal fluctuations.

I agree the fault doesn't sound typical of box failure but nevertheless I would still try another one, or take yours somewhere else, to conclusively eliminate it. It's the quickest and easiest test to do and you'd kick yourself if you spent hours fiddling with your dish etc. only to find it was the culprit after all.

For the information of everyone who was kind enough to try to help, it was the digibox that was at fault. A second-hand one from Ebay has done the trick. Our only problem now, is that the sport and film channels won't work, with a 'wrong card for the box' message, and of course we can't phone Sky to have them reconciled. Has anyone tried the 'Sky in France' services that advertise themselves?

David

I am not worthy to give advice about such technical matters when compared with the great sages who have already helped you! However, if you mean that you need to pair the box to the card, then just call sky in the UK and they'll do it in a couple of minutes. That's what we did when we got our new box. I always use my english mobile in the hope that they think I'm in the UK but don't know whether that's necessary. I'm taking no chances though!

Martin, I had an old card that got progressively less useful. I replaced it from a chap on ebay in feb with a sky freesat card which works in any skybox. It cost just 20 pounds plus postage.

Hi Dennerlymum,
Thanks for the advice, I'll take a look. Cheers.

Before we left UK, we cancelled our sky package and took our box and card with us to France. We get a lot of channels with not a penny to pay. Not so long ago we thought, this is it, the channels started to disappear, the screen was coming up as no longer receiving, panic struck as we could not get any channels. We were advised to pay £20 and get a UK address. Another solution was suggested that the sky was set in it's memory, so to sort that, was to unplug from the mains and switch on again. We still are missing some, but not the ones that matter."GREAAAAAAt", it worked.