topic Re: Signal strength and quality in Sky Q

Signal strength and quality

stephenmallon — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:52:30 GMT

my signal strength is 70 and quality is 60..but sometimes dips lower.
I no longer receive TNT sports . My dish is quite low and was installed tht way. It's been fine for 3 years but ok for all other channels.

do I need to get an engineer out?

Re: Signal strength and quality

Laing1 — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:19:02 GMT

@stephenmallon wrote:

Hi

my signal strength is 70 and quality is 60..but sometimes dips lower.
I no longer receive TNT sports . My dish is quite low and was installed tht way. It's been fine for 3 years but ok for all other channels.

do I need to get an engineer out?

@stephenmallon It might be worth while to get your dish checked out for alignment

Re: Signal strength and quality

nigea99 — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 17:05:56 GMT

@stephenmallon wrote:

Hi

my signal strength is 70 and quality is 60..but sometimes dips lower.
I no longer receive TNT sports . My dish is quite low and was installed tht way. It's been fine for 3 years but ok for all other channels.

do I need to get an engineer out?

hi @stephenmallon

One thing you need to know is that on SKY Q the signal quality info does not report on the channel you are watching but instead a specific transponder set in an engineer's menu.

As different transponders can be very slightly different in angle/strength the signal quality may show as OK in the display but may be slightly out

Signal Quality is the key metric

Regarding height of the dish, as the Satellites are approx 22000 miles above the equator an extra few meters at this end has no bearing.

With low dishes, however, the chances of something blocking part or the whole signal are higher (i.e. lower down the higher the chance of high sided vehicles etc or trees being in the way - or even for very low dishes people or animals passing - my motorised dish in my rear garden is low enough for this but not a problem for me)

Re: Signal strength and quality

stephenmallon — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:56:13 GMT

Yeah there's nothing new blocking the dish in terms of trees etc. it does seem to be pointing towards a wall and there's big bushes either side . But always kept it the same when the dish was installed 3 years ago.
im presuming I'll just need to get an engineer out and let them see. Don't want to be hacking away trees and bushes unnecessarily!!

Re: Signal strength and quality

Godfrey — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 17:14:31 GMT

@stephenmallon A few years ago I compared the indicated default transponder signal quality of a nominal Sky+ receiver and my MK3 Sky Q receiver, as you can clearly see the Sky+ receiver was much better at displaying the actual signal quality, and the quality of the signal being fed to my Sky Q receiver had to have deteriorated quite significantly from its optimal quality before the indicated quality fell below 90.

As a typical Sky Q receiver requires the quality of its signal to achieve at least a measured Modulation Error Ratio (MER) of 11 dB for long term stability, which would equate to a quality reading of 90, your signal quality reading of 60 suggests to me that the aim of your satellite dish requires it to be carefully optimised once again.

Sky+ / Sky Q Receiver Signal Quality with respect to measured MER quality

Sky+ Tp4 Signal Quality Sky Q v3 Modulation Error Ratio

90 90 15 dB or over

80 90 13.5 dB

70 90 12.5 dB

60 90 11.5 dB

50 80 10.9 dB

40 70 8.7 dB

30 60 7.9 dB

20 0 6.3 dB

A typical Sky+ receiver requires the transponder signal MER quality to be at least 8 dB for long term stability.

A typical Sky Q receiver requires the transponder signal MER quality to be at least 11 dB for long term stability.

Godfrey.