Transponder down for some channels.

[Anonymous]

Hi all. 

I have previously lost access to the following frequencies: 

11626 V DVB-S QPSK 22 5/6 which broadcasts these channels:

• MTV (UK feed)*
• MTV (Irish feed)
• MTV HD
• Comedy Central HD
• MTV 80s
• MTV 90s
• Comedy Central Extra
• Nick Loud House (Irish feed)

11426 V DVB-S2 QPSK 29.5 8/9 which broadcasts these channels:

• S4C HD*
• TLC HD
• Viaplay Xtra HD*
• Quest HD
• TalkTV HD*

(* UK only)

I'm in Ireland. I had an engineer out today and they said that the transponders are down and Sky are trying to fix it. The "MTV transponder" has been down for over a year, with the "Quest HD transponder" going down in the last month.

The engineer said he could switch around the cables, so I could get these missing channels but I would lose others like RTÉ.

The engineer said he is going to email Sky about the issue and if he needs to come back, he'll let me know. The engineer said this is currently a very common problem and is going to jobs about this issue quite regularly.

Clearly these are not a priority to be repaired, but when are these going to be fixed. Why am I paying €45 for Sky (Signature) when some channels are missing?

[Godfrey]

@Anonymous   Looking at my own personal reception of Tp61 and Tp116 , and the Sky hosted technical reception information webpage for their engineers, these transponders appear to be being received exactly as expected.

The channels on these transponders that I subscribe to are also being decoded with no problems, but that is with a subscription to the UK channels, I have no way of decoding the Irish channels.

So, it is hard to understand why your engineer is suggesting 'transponder' transmission faults are responsible for your problems.

Nor can I understand why your engineer made this statement;

'The engineer said he could switch around the cables, so I could get these missing channels but I would lose others like RTÉ.'

Godfrey.

[xenon81]

Yes there's no problems with either of those transponders. Seems like the engineer perhaps couldn't determine the cause of the problem and just made up some nonsense. 

However you mention 11141H, but then list channels including MTV HD, Comedy Central HD, MTV 80s/90s that are on 11626V. There are no problems with that transponder either, but can you confirm which/frequency channels are affected? 

[Anonymous]

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@xenon81 wrote:

Yes there's no problems with either of those transponders. Seems like the engineer perhaps couldn't determine the cause of the problem and just made up some nonsense. 

However you mention 11141H, but then list channels including MTV HD, Comedy Central HD, MTV 80s/90s that are on 11626V. There are no problems with that transponder either, but can you confirm which/frequency channels are affected? 

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Apologies, I meant "11626 V DVB-S QPSK 22 5/6" for the MTV/Nick/Comedy Central channels. I updated the post. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I contacted Sky earlier this evening, and the Area Manager is coming to my house tomorrow to look at what needs to be done to resolve the issue. Will update after. 

[Anonymous]

The Area Manager was here just a little while ago. 

He asked me what yesterday's engineer did (as I described above), and clearly looked disappointed. 

He took the cables out of the box and put them into a device to check for signals. He showed me a photo he took of the frequencies where each frequency was green for good or red for bad. There was 3 red lines. So 3 frequencies were not being received. I have a non-Sky box in another room, which is checked the satellite cable in this device too. 

After that he went outside and looked at the satellite dish (he didn't have a ladder). When he came back in, he asked if the yesterday's engineer got a ladder and looked at the dish, which he didn't.

He suspects that the dish has been blown out of alignment. He said that the cables going from the dish to the box are "sub-par" and need to be replaced. The LNB is also to be replaced.

He said that Sky cannot upgrade the cable from the satellite to the non-Sky box as it's not Sky's. Perfectly understandable. But he said the issues should fix both boxes. But he said the satellite alignment and LNB should fix the non-Sky box too.

He will organise another call-out for an engineer to fix these.

So, it's not a 5G mast interference nor a transponder issue (which I knew beforehand). To be perfectly honest, if yesterday's engineer did what he was supposed to do, the Area Manager wouldn't have needed to come out today. 

Seriously, he was a lovely man and I felt like he really wanted to get to the root of the issue and actually fix it unlike yesterday's engineer. Really thorough too. Faith in Sky being restored.

Hopefully, yesterday's engineer gets retraining. But that's out of the scope of this thread.

[Anonymous]

Update:

Yesterday (18 July), the same engineer came out and realigned the dish, replaced the cables from the dish to the Sky Q box and replaced the LNB. The problem still persists. 

Today (19 July), another engineer came out and he changed the satellite dish and he was able to get the MTV/Comedy Central channels (mentioned above) working, but it's not a 100% signal as it's pixelated every so often. He got the signal up to 80/90  (signal strength/quality) instead of the average 80/60.

This engineer is going to report back to his manager as they need to investigate. I'm beside a 2/3 story apartment block. But the apartment block was there before I got Sky, so that shouldn't be an issue. I suggested to today's engineer that the apartment block may be interfering with the signal, possibly the signals bouncing off the house and apartment block, but he said that it has the line of sight and it shouldn't be an issue. 

[Anonymous]

WE HAVE A RESOLUTION!

Today (26 July), an engineer came out. This man was determined to get it fixed. He was pumping sweat and he said he was starving as he didn't have lunch. He was here at around 11:30am and left about 2pm. 

He tried changing the Sky Q receiver to see if the issue persisted and it did. 

So after all his checks, and trying different things. He really was thorough and checked everything. He asked would it be OK to move the dish to the front of the house and to move it down a bit as the signal was there in that location. I said that was OK. (The dish was originally at the front of the house but on the side. )

This worked! All my channels are back! WOOT!

[Anonymous]

This is the satellite positions before and after. For some reason, this fixed the issue. 

Satellite - Old position (Google Maps)

Satellite - Old position (Google Maps)

Satellite - New position

Satellite - New position

[Skyqusrprsn]

Too right, quest glitching, but not the ads! Sky , I am paying for a service, so provide ir

[Invisiblename]

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@Skyqusrprsn wrote:

Too right, quest glitching, but not the ads! Sky , I am paying for a service, so provide ir

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As in "why don't you read the whole thread, issue was sorted by moving the OP's dish"

[Chodley]

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@Skyqusrprsn wrote:

Too right, quest glitching, but not the ads! Sky , I am paying for a service, so provide ir

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02:13 - Did you post this by accident in your sleep?