3 Sky Q Boxes in3 months

[JohnBradlum]

Weill it's one way to get Sky Cinema for free..

Anyway had the same set of faults on 3 boxes over 3 months and it is still happening.

There aren3 faults.

1. TV screen goes black. Turning off and on by the remote gets you back.

2. Blues screen "Technical fault with the channel". The back button returns you to the program but then 1 occurs about 30secs later.

3 The recording randomly resets to the beginning resulting in deja view!

3. When watching a program with a bit of delay the output locks up. The channel picture is frozen. You can scroll back and forth on the time line but the picture is frozen. You can change channel but the picture is frozen. Power off and on results in a shrink frozen picture in the top left of the screen. Full power off at the wall is the only remedy.

In all cases the stored program is lost.

Signal is good. Connections solid. Internet not great but useable. Issues generally occur in the afternoon. Box on standby when not in use. Just got the Sky Q box. Very little recorded. No issues watching Paramount or iPlayer. Usually watch Animal Planet, Discovery and BBC.  Anyone recognise these faults and had them fixed please?

[TimmyBGood]

---

@JohnBradlum wrote:

Anyway had the same set of faults on 3 boxes over 3 months and it is still happening.

---

Three different boxes are incredibly unlikely to have a similar but unusual fault independently.  As the common factor, has the LNB and dish cabling been investigated?

[JohnBradlum]

T

On the first visit an Engineer checked out the dish and tweaked the signal but the fault persists. Agreed identical faults in the Z

Hardware is unlikely. All three issues are most likely software issues caused by our innocuous use.

[TimmyBGood]

@JohnBradlum 

Q is now a decade old, with very mature software and millions of users.  Personally I'd guess there's some local factor causing your issues, which aren't usual.

[JohnBradlum]

Mature or not the software is not coping with the problem. As a former software engineer working in avionics we had problems surface after 15 years in service. We have a very simple set up and it is possible there is something in the dish and or cables and or internet but after 4 visits and 3 boxes is there any chance another visit will fix it unless it is by someone with comprehensive diagnostics? It's possible these faults do occur with others but as they are easily fixed they don't get reported?  I personally could live with them and so could others  but my partner will not  We never had problems like this with the plus box in 10 years.

[TimmyBGood]

---

@JohnBradlum wrote:

We have a very simple set up and it is possible there is something in the dish and or cables and or internet but after 4 visits and 3 boxes is there any chance another visit will fix it unless it is by someone with comprehensive diagnostics? 

---

You can persist in trying to arrange that, but realistically Q is now approaching end of life as a platform and Sky has lost a significant percentage of its experienced 'engineers' with the ongoing switch to streaming platforms.

It's not unknown for weird symptoms to be caused by water penetration of the LNB or dish cable, so that might be something to investigate, and perhaps look at the power supply arrangements too.

[JohnBradlum]

Well we are finally hopefully getting fibre to the property in the next few months so maybe we will go to Sky Glass. 

[xenon81]

Do you use Sky for broadband or another ISP? Some people have reported similar problems when using BT/EE hubs.

My Sky Q box had a spell of responding very slowly or completely locking up a few years ago. I discovered a Roku streaming stick was causing the problem, as Sky was fine as soon as the stick was removed. It could be something near your Sky box is causing the problem, even if the device isn't connected to the Sky box in any way. 

[JohnBradlum]

we have BT broadband and it's not the best. There are no firestick devices though I usually have a working android tablet in the room. I shall try removing it.

[xenon81 · Accepted solution]

It won't be the tablet but is quite possibly the BT router based on the previous topics on here about EE/BT routers causing all kinds of issues with Sky Q. 

[JohnBradlum]

So I turned off the router today and we did not have one bkack or blue screen. The paused recording remaned patchy so I suspect the hard drive has issues and given that its likely second hand we will hopefully live with it. So I think the BT router was the issue.

Thank you.

Roll on Fibre!