Sky dish - Possible faulty LNB? Symptoms.

ElectroBlaster · 11 Jun 2013 at 14:00

If I were to assume the LNB has failed on a sky dish, then what are the common symptoms?

We are having problems with two sky boxes, quad lnb (both freesat):

Broken picture
Checkered squares
Frozen picture
Dropped channels (whole groups)

Signal monitors on both boxes are jumping around wildly, up and down and sometimes signal quality drops out completely.

The dish appears to be in the same position that is has always been in, all this started in the half-term break! Hot weather possibly?

Anyone had this before?

cyclops12 · 11 Jun 2013 at 14:26

Got any trees in line with your dish?

I used to get this in the summer months when the trees had leaves on.

ElectroBlaster · 11 Jun 2013 at 14:41

Yes we have a large-ish tree right outside house blocking the window and its pretty packed with leaves!

Looking at it now it does look overdue for a pruning by the local tree-surgeon. Hopefully this is the cause

brucey034 · 15 Jun 2013 at 20:50

ElectroBlaster said:
Yes we have a large-ish tree right outside house blocking the window and its pretty packed with leaves!

Looking at it now it does look overdue for a pruning by the local tree-surgeon. Hopefully this is the cause

We had this problem a while ago, funny thing is Sky only cut off and went funny when it rained, apparently the rain causes extra interference.

After our not so friendly neighbours had their over grown tree trimmed down all was well again.

lucid · 16 Jun 2013 at 21:07

Water is a good signal absorber. I've seen problems with loft mounted TV aerials losing signal level when the roof is wet. It doesn't surprise me that a satellite dish signal would be similarly affected.

stevejigga · 16 Jun 2013 at 22:11

sounds to me like a tree or tree's in the way. It's that time of the year where all my service calls are moving damn dish's where the tree's are getting there leaves.

ElectroBlaster · 17 Jun 2013 at 17:54

Myself, am not that bothered. Well ok a little bit as we are paying a basic sub for sky+ recording and a few groups of channels.

It is the other half! she watches stuff that seems to not work anymore or when it does, its sporadic and glitchy.

Signal monitors are all over the place, the tree outside is off to one side and seems to be out of the line-of-sight of the dish? Seems to improve later on in the evening and settles at night... weird? Noticed it more the other night when the winds picked up. Both boxes were out with no signal at all.

ElectroBlaster · 18 Jun 2013 at 20:11

I need to know something before I call SKY. Things are getting worse here.

To confirm that we could possibly get charged a fee for sorting this out, we are on rolling contract but the ownership of the whole kit transferred to us eons ago! Also no warranty etc.

My partner keeps arguing they will fix it for nowt, I dont believe so... who is right here?

So if Sky do indeed charge what sorta cost am I looking at? if its big then I might aswell get an aerial guy to sort and upgrade stuff, dont want to be locked into another contract just to sort an lnb out.

nantucket66 · 18 Jun 2013 at 20:31

one thing worth trying in the installer menu (if you haven't already) is to turn off the power to the lnb, turning it off/on used to cure my signal issues on a previous HD box.

Phantom Shadow · 18 Jun 2013 at 20:47

How is the dish mounted? Just directly to the house or on the top of a pole? If it is on a pole it could be moving in the wind causing the signal to go all over the place.

We had trees across the road that would block the view of the dish so it had to be mounted on top of a pole at the top of the house to be high enough. The mounting of the pole to the house was not the best and after a view years of the wind working on the screws one day bang the whole thing had fallen off!

DirtyJester · 18 Jun 2013 at 20:57

Phantom Shadow said:
How is the dish mounted? Just directly to the house or on the top of a pole? If it is on a pole it could be moving in the wind causing the signal to go all over the place.

We had trees across the road that would block the view of the dish so it had to be mounted on top of a pole at the top of the house to be high enough. The mounting of the pole to the house was not the best and after a view years of the wind working on the screws one day bang the whole thing had fallen off!

Something not far away, an old dish of mine looked to be in the same position as always, but after the signal completely gave up and I bothered to get the ladder out. I found the mounting bracket had corroded away allowing the dish to drop slightly.

ElectroBlaster · 20 Jun 2013 at 14:58

Just checked a mates dish, pointing in the same direction with the same tree's blocking line of sight! Perfectly fine

So it looks like something is not right at all. Going to get Sky out to sort it. More hassle but its got so bad now we just cant watch anything on the two boxes. Had to use freeview in the living room.