Poor weather poor reception on 512, 585, 180, 506 and 585

[Chodley]

Well yes but he's saying maybe there is also something not quite right at the broadcast end which would cause glitches via all transports.

The sat issue does seem to be this transponder switch though.

HD only needs about 5Mb, remarkably. Though that was a lot back when it was first launched.

I would expect Sky will attempt to improve your dish alignment for free.

[Christine46]

Good point. I agree it may also be a GB News technical problem. I have sent an email to them to see if they have a comment but so far only an automated reply. I am really surprised that they have swapped what must be their heartland of viewers in the North for viewers in Europe. 

[oj01]

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@Christine46 wrote:

Apparently the change of transponder was to enable GB News to broadcast to more of Europe.  This is affecting signal strength especially in the North of the UK. There is a very informative comment earlier on in this thread that has a link explaining what has been done. Some in the North may need a new larger dish. I think this should be at Sky's cost as they have altered things. I think I will be calling Sky to sort this out at their expense.

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Sky haven't and can't alter anything to do with GB News. GB News have altered things. 

However, mine, in Yorkshire, is perfectly fine, which would indicate that anyone affected has a slight dish misalignment which will require an engineer to fix. 

[Christine46]

I now have an appointment with the engineer for tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully that will solve the issue.

[Christine46]

Engineer came yesterday with a really cool piece of technology and made a small adjustment to the dish which apparently was all that was needed. The signal then doubled in strength. Today is rain and picture is good. No breakup at all. 

The engineer was really good and checked the settings and cables including the mini boxes.

If anyone has poor reception on GB News I would recommend contacting Sky. It was no charge and we got a free 2 month Sky Cinema bonus for our trouble. So we had an engineer within 24 hrs with excellent service all round. Very pleased.

[lettice]

Must admit, last couple of days, GB News has been fine.

Very heavy rain yesterday and this morning locally, with no issues.

Not that I get any issues with that from my dish.

Odd thing is that I was monitoring CNN ( on same tp) and had no glitches, others said they did.

Also, did notice a few days back, as mentioned above, that watching the online stream it had similar pixelation, so seems more a backend issue than our dish alighment.

But, maybe a slight misalignment may have made it seem worse  for some customers

[Christine46]

I was really surprised at how slight the adjustment was for the dish. The engineer attached his meter and before undoing any adjustments he just very slightly flexed the dish with his finger and the difference in signal strength was huge. I cannot see how an accurate adjustment can be made without the right equipment. It might be that some peoples dishes are only very slightly out of adjustment but it makes a huge difference in signal strength and may well significantly improve reception.

[Godfrey]

This image illustrates why satellite dishes are required to be maintained within one degree of their optimal position.

[Invisiblename]

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@Christine46 wrote:

"and we got a free 2 month Sky Cinema bonus for our trouble. "

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Just be aware that you may find that Sky start charging you for this after the 2 months is up, so if you dont want to continue with Sky Cinema, make sure you call them to cancel it (has to be a call, can't be done online).

[Christine46]

• Thanks for the warning. 🙂

[Christine46]

@Godfrey That is an amazing chart. It's a good job I didn't get my spanners out! The engineer mentioned that any movement of the dish is multiplied thousands of times at the orbit distance of the satellite.