Sky Stream streaming glitches

[Pincomar]

I have been a Sky Stream customer for several years. I have two pucks. One on the TV in our sitting room that is wired directly in to our Internet Router. This device works seemelssly and I could not be happier.

The second puck is in our bedroom. It is used for 30 minutes a day (at most) in the morning while we are getting dressed. Since the very beginning, this puck has suffered from regular sound and vision 'glitches'. We get good sound, but a still picture or sometimes a blue screen and a please wait message. It hasn't really bothered us because we are rarely sat watching the screen full time. However, having recently been using this TV more, these gliches have really started to nag at me and I have made a determined effort to fix it. Sadly, so far, I have failed!

My initial assumption was that this was a wifi issue. I bought a pair of the latest TP-Link Ethernet Powerline adapters and am using them (not wifi) to connect to the second puck. WiFi is OFF on both my pucks. I am using a brand new Cat 8 cable to link the puck to the powerline adapter (at both ends). Running a Netflix Speedtest shows that I am getting about 68mb on the second puck. Until the arrival of Fibre to the Premises (this year, I hope), this is the best that is availablle here. It more than enough to support our main TV downstairs.

I read somewhere that it could be a poor quality HDMI cable that is the cause of this. I have just switched to a different cable, but to no avail.

So, I have done everything I can think of. Anyone got any further ideas? Could the puck be faulty?

Thanks.

Mark.

[PSC133]

Have you tried temporarily swapping the pucks around to see if the issue follows it.  If it does this could indicate a faulty puck.

[Pincomar]

Hi, 

Yes, thank you very much. I must admit that after having clicked send on my previous post, I realised that I should have done exactly what you suggest. I have now switched them. That is a bit of a fiddle because of different sound/screen resolutions, not to mention the hidden dust piles that I am expected to clean up in the process.

That said, initial (very quick) trials suggest that has fixed the issue. That doesnt make much sense to me, but if it fixed the issue....

I will report back in a few days after some further trails.

Thanks again for your (excellent) suggestion.

Mark.

[Exiled-in-HH]

When you report back in a few can you confirm the Netflix speedtest at both location😉

[Pincomar]

Well, I admit it, this is very odd, but swapping the boxes appears to have fixed this issue. I achieve similar download speeds on both boxes using Netflix's speed tester (68 Mb/s - the best available here today, but they are installing fibre to the premises in my village as I type!). Both boxes deliver consitently smooth sound and video.

It does leave me pondering the question, why? Swapping the boxes did mean they were both unplugged for 10 minutes. Was this what was required? 

Anyway, all fixed. Thanks for the comments and input.

Mark.

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@Pincomar wrote:

Well, I admit it, this is very odd, but swapping the boxes appears to have fixed this issue. I achieve similar download speeds on both boxes using Netflix's speed tester (68 Mb/s - the best available here today, but they are installing fibre to the premises in my village as I type!). Both boxes deliver consitently smooth sound and video.

It does leave me pondering the question, why? Swapping the boxes did mean they were both unplugged for 10 minutes. Was this what was required? 

Anyway, all fixed. Thanks for the comments and input.

Mark.

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Its possible it was the 10 min unplug. There are some issues that a brief one or two minute unplug seems to cure, but i've seen examples were people have had to unplug the devices for about 10 minutes for some issues to resolve themselves.