Do you remember recently, l started a thread in this section asking for advice about recording boxes and you were all very kind and gave me great advice.
I went to Curry’s to look at the Humax recording units. A Technical man there gave me great advice but advised me to go back to Sky and negotiate for a better deal.
He said, for the same price (£210) that l would pay for the Humax box, l could have Sky for quite a while plus more channels and peace of mind, if the box went wrong.
This l did and again they quoted silly prices. I asked to be put through to the ‘Cancellation’ Dept and of course they offer everything to keep you.
After much bartering, l got the Sky Q box, a new Sky dish and installation for a one off payment of £20. I got the basic Sky entertainment pack for £10 a month.
On Saturday, the new Q box and dish were installed but l don’t like the set up or the picture quality l had with my Sky plus box.
Worse than anything is, l have televisions in every room and none of them work anymore. The screen states, ‘No aerial signal’.
I rang Sky yesterday, and was told to change the resolution to 720 but the picture seems dark and after a while my eyes go funny and sort of strained! It is a Panasonic Plasma tv, the picture is usually brilliant but now dull and not vibrant anymore.
They are sending an engineer out in May and l will have the option of going back to my old Sky plus box or l suppose, just keeping the Sky Q box and no television in any other room.
Multi room box was offered at an extra £13 a month but that’s ridiculous.
Any advice would be appreciated. I hate all this worry, of thinking what l should do.
Ray, I am not sure. Maybe, the normal digital aerial was connected to the old dish?
I have heard words like LNB and the new dish doesn’t have one of these.
I just thought my televisions would be connected to the normal aerial and l would receive the signal from there via the aerial socket in the wall?
Sorry to hear you are not happy with your choice Art. It’s always difficult deciding on something like this because despite any advice you get, in the back of your mind, you know that it is always about the company extorting as much money out of you as possible.
Your ordinary terrestrial TV reception has absolutely nothing to do with a Sky box. Terrestial TV (freeview etc) requires an ordinary TV aerial up on the roof pointing towards your nearest transmitter station.
Sky uses a satellite dish pointing “up” into space and uses a different cable.
If your terrestrial TV is no longer working it means they have unplugged something that you previous had in place.
If you have TV’s in every room them I am guessing that you must have somewhere a “signal booster” box. I use one of these to get a great signal.
Some simple questions.
what is plugged into the back of each of your TVs?
Do they each have an aerial cable going into the back of them or do they have some kind of wireless device plugged into them?
You will only have one terrestrial TV aerial on your roof and there will only be one cable coming from it. So if you have TV’s in every room that means that somewhere that single aerial cable is being split into lots of other separate cables, with one leading to each TV. Do you know where that point is? Are you aware of any aerial box where the main aerial cable from the roof goes in, and where a load of other cables come out?
What TV were you previously watching? Was it Freeview?
If so you MUST have had a Freeview digi box of some kind to decode the aerial signal. Where is that digi box now? Is it still plugged in?
All in all I think you will regret buying Sky. Engineers will be concerned with making your Sky box working. They won’t have any jurisdiction over anything else you have.
With Sky you have no idea what service you are paying for which is why I have always refused to have it. By this I mean, whilst you know you have bought a basic package, there is absolutely no guarantee what is transmitted in the basic package. Today it could be Sky A, B, C channels. Tomorrow Murdock can (and probably will) change it to something else. That means if you bought a package thinking you’d get programs A,B and C you could find they move to other channels tomorrow which are no longer covered by your package. THAT is how Sky get you from the basic package to the crazy situation of paying £30-£80 per month for other packages.
All depends what you want though. I stick with Freeview and whilst it has nothing like the breadth of content that Sky does it is free. I have no monthly charges at all. zero.
Ray, I think this must be the problem.
Here are sketchy bits of what l remember and know.
When the original Sky dish was fitted for Sky plus. It had a quad LNB. Chris my ex partner, fitted two extra leads to the dish to allow an older Skybox to work in another room. It had no card in it.
Later we had an extra bedroom and kitchen/lounge extension built and all had a tv aerial socket fitted.
The builders put a ? booster box in the loft, so that same channel Sky could be played on the tv in the kitchen. I could get Sky news on the tv in the bedroom, without a Sky box if that is a clue?
Realist, l’d say in comparison to what some people pay to get Sky, l have a great deal. My sister and husband pay £110 a month for the whole Sky package but that includes WiFi and their landline. I tell them, they are still paying too much.
I was going to go with Freeview but l like Sky Atlantic and Sky Arts that l can’t get with Freeview.
I would never pay the big prices you quote. In fact, me being with them for so long, they reward me by giving me big discounts.
I do not have any wireless devices attached to the televisions. All the televisions are digital. I’m thinking now that maybe, the ordinary aerial must have wires attached to the booster thing in the loft?
That’s fine until Sky Atlantic and Arts move over to a different Sky Package. Then you’re stuck with the choice of quitting Sky, or buying a more expensive package. I’ve never understood how Murdock can get away with offering a “service” that he can change at will. Imagine going to a Chinese restaurant and paying for Set Meal A having chosen that because of what it contains, and then finding that they bring you a load of other dishes that aren’t on Set Meal A. We wouldn’t stand for it in any other life situation, so why do people keep putting up with it with Murdock ?? If you could buy specific channels rather than packages then that would be ok.
Yep. Undoubtedly the booster box is also a splitter. Main aerial cable goes in the back, and lots of other cables come out the front, each one going to a separate TV in the house.
The Sky engineer will not have touched your booster box. That’s Terrestrial TV which he doesn’t care about.
If your TV’s are all digital then that means they have their own Freeview decoders inside them, which means you didn’t need (and presumably didn’t have) any separate set-top digi box for Freeview.
So all those TV’s need to be able to see Freeview is one of those aerial cables plugged into the back of them.
Can you check that is still the case?
Are there any other cables plugged into them (except the main TV which must also have a Sky cable going into it)?
Well I’m glad I found out now about the lack of a TV socket on a Q box. I’m wondering how my niece is getting on with it, as she had it installed when the family moved back into their house from renting one in the country.
This might be of interest to you. You need to get the mini set top box to piggy back to the main one, to have the signal sent to other TVs. It says the first one is free, then you pay for others.
I’d be devastated if my Sky + HD box were to break down as I think they are being phased out.
Sky no longer offer the Sky + HD box but refurbished ones are relatively cheap on eBay. Sky dropped the TV-OUT connection to force people to take multi-room subscriptions and the mini boxes cost £99 after the first one.
Sorry to hear about your plight Arty, I can’t possibly help because I wouldn’t touch sky with a barge pole, I reckon you need to watch an awful lot of telly to warrant those sorts of prices and quite frankly my dear…(where have I heard that before?) I think at my age ‘time’ is far too valuable.
I do watch telly in the evenings but I’m so tired it’s just nice to get the weight off my feet and I’ll always find something of interest on freeview…Somewhere…I mean…Jesus! There are over one hundred channels…There must be something worth watching…shouldn’t there?..:shock:
