Sky Q Box Stuck on Amber light / Sky Soundbox [My Journey]

[kerrfoxhound]

Hey guys,

Just a quick one sharing my experience with the, shall we call it, Amber light of death. Some of you have experienced this as I sought out your invaluable advice whilst troubleshooting, but actually came across something that had not been brought up and that might help somebody else out there. 

Basically, what happens is for whatever reason, probably software, your box locks up and cannot get out of the standby mode. It will often reset back to red light and go back to orange, displaying the "Hello, we will be up and running in a few minutes". But no matter what you do (Turning off for 2 mins and rebooting, performing a software update by turning on and holding standby button on box, pressing 1+3 on your remote... everything), your only solution is to get in touch with Sky and get a new box.

Or is it?

I got my new box today 2 days later by DPD which is pretty good going, and I just set it up. In horror, the box would stay on the amber light. I thought, ABSOLUTELY no way, does lightning strike in the same place twice. How can I get ANOTHER faulty unit straight out the box. So I done what I should have with the first box. I removed the HDMI from the Sky Soundbox to the Sky Box and used the HDMI for the Nintendo Switch. (So now my Sky Q 1TB box is going straight to the TV) Bear in mind, I swapped the HDMI out for a brand new one, so it was not a faulty cable...

I noticed on the startup guide it states that HDMI should be connected before booting the box, so I assume the signal has some influence on the software. And alas, BOOM, the box came out of standby and it booted to the welcome page...

I think there must be some issues with the Sky Soundbox and the HDMI connectivity and this should be displayed within the help documentation. After I was up and running, I turned off the soundbox and rebooted it, and reconnected the HDMI cables to the Sky Q box and it's all back to how it was before... But I do wonder then if my 1st box would have been sorted if I had done the same steps. 

Bit frustrating, but I'm back up and running again so... Enjoy. Just please, if you come across the Amber Light of Death (ALOD), and you have a soundbox, try stripping the connection and run a HDMI straight to the TV.

Hope it helps someone 🙂

[SpikeyT]

Rejoice.   The soundbox reboot worked and now the sky box reacts to the remote again.   Shame we replaced old box when it probably didn't need it 

[LouLou111]

Sky engineer set up yesterday all ok he said my sound bar and sky would work together but now stuck on Amber and can't get any normal channels I. E bbc etc to work??

[Hello+Helen,]

Sky a box stuck on orange and appears frozen. Can't watch any program. I've turned on and off and left off for a few hours. Still not working 😢

[Tom-W19]

Hi Hello+Helen,

I have escalated your post to our Community Messaging team who will invite you to a private chat shortly and help you with this.

Just look out for the blue bubble to start the conversation.

Here's more information on how Community Messaging works - https://community.sky.com/t5/Did-you-know/Escalating-a-post-to-a-Sky-expert/ba-p/3711147

[Lisa-P1987]

Update – We are still looking to help you Hello+Helen,. If you need our support let us know and we can re-escalate to our chat team. Your invite has been closed now. Thanks 🙂