Any Sky/TV Engineers

My lovely new telly that I bought is not giving me the lovely picture I want. I have tried several (millions) of adjustments but although I can get a reasonably good picture its not as good as the test picture. I deduce from this that the problem is not the telly but the signal. Sometimes the picture is pixelated and also I cannot get the true colours. According to the trouble shooting manual this is due to weak signal. On checking the sky box the screen states the picture quality was 60% and the strength was 90%. Could this be the problem?. Does the quality of the scart lead make any difference as I was told to buy a lead that cost about £30 to which I said fook that.Before anyone asks I cannot get the store to sort it out as the telly came from Sainsburys with the weekly shopping. Maybe not such a smart move.

I'm not an engineer or expert but in my experience, how's normal TV (i.e.Terrestrial digital signal)?
As far as I have seen, a 'Sky' branded box and a cheaper TV above 32" always have poor quality pictures. Sky know this and this is why they promote Sky HD so much.

A good quality scart lead will make a bit of an improvement, but as far as I'm aware it will be a combination of all 3 pieces of equipment.

If normal TV is ok then it'll be the Sky box/signal. If normal TV is also a bit pixalated then it's the quality of the TV it's self.

I presume your not using Sky HD as you mention scart leads. Use the scart lead you are using to plug into the dvd player and see what the picture quality is like with that, if its good you know it isnt the scart lead.
Whats the picture like on digital freeview? Our TV gives a better picture on freeview than from the Sky box and as for the HD signal,well its good but not worth an extra £10 a month.
The thing to remember with TVs is the higher the scanning,the smoother the picture. they usually start at 50hz,60hz then 100hz. Sony do a 200hz and Panasonic do a 500hz (but i havent won the lottery yet).
Your Sky signal has a bloody long way to go to get to your TV set so there are a lot of variables- bad weather,snow and rain; good weather,too much UV or IR rays; solar flares and asteroid belts causing radiation and any other bull pooh the person on the other end of the 0844 number would like to fill you with. And after 30 mins on hold at 44p per minute the solution they give you is "unplug the box from the wall ,wait 30 secs then plug it back in". As you may guess Im not a big lover of Sky as they have destroyed the football league by enabling clubs to pay such stupid wages .
And if you support Ipswich you have my sympathy-Jimmy Bullard is scum and the quicker Ipswich get rid of him the better.
But anyway I hope you get your TV signal sorted

ditch the scart socket and use a hdmi cable that'll give you an immediate improvement even when you are not using hd.my mum had the same problem and the hdmi cable sorted it

part of your problem is that your tv is hd and when it gets a normal tv signal it has to make up the lines in the middle as it will try to upscale the standard image to minimize pixilation and that lined effect that you see if you swap to your txs built in free view player you see that you get a lot better picture than through a scart lead of the normal Ariel. as it has been mentioned using a hdmi cable from your sky box will improve the quality but you will still not get the best picture quality from your hdtv on normal terrestrial channels as they are broadcast at at 480i to 560i depending on the provider and your telly is designed to handle 1080p so normally your tv has to generate a whole extra picture to fill the empty space if this makes sences as the image has to cover twice he amount of rows the screen.

for other things to look at see here
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=18580

poor signal will cause it to do that,and stop the picture at times etc......if you only got 60 % quality then it needs adjusting,another 40 should make the difference in getting it pixelated....

mines cable,long story short i had same thing happening because of poor and weak signal

Same here, we had sky a while ago and it was forever pix-elating and freezing, a bit like buffering, so binned it for cable with the HD 40" TV and no lag great picture and HD, occasionally though there is a blip in the transmission usually about once a week around six in the evening strangely enough where for a minute or two it freaks but 99.9% of the time is fine so a small price to pay, oh and HDMI cables are the waty to go :wink:

Sky had too many variables affecting the signal and quality.

I use an HD tv with standard Sky box and picture quality is excellent.......but, some Sky b'cast channels seem weaker than others and frequently pixelate. Switching the Sky box off for a few moments usually does the trick.
The 0844.. helpline gives advice like removing the subscriber card and inserting it upsidedown into the Skybox for a few minutes then returning it to normal - hmmmm (was that on 1st April???)

You could try cleaning the plugs on the satellite cable despite you having really good quality and signal strength values.

Have a look at:

dishpointer.com

enter in your post code and the map will should your street and the direction line across the map of the direxction your dish should be pointing at.
Make sure you select the relevant batch of Astra satellites - should be the 28 odd degree East set.

Thanks for the replies, I will try another lead and see if that helps and also unplug the box for a while. What sort of strengths do other people get on your sky boxes as Dave thinks mine are good.

My readings are about 60% and 50% - which I understand are as best as can be expected for the northern latitude I live in.

loads of problems with sky.......ditch it and buy a satelite kit from B&Q .....connect to your sky dish and setup.....picture is better and the best thing is its free...and i believe they do a HD free sat kit as well .....i originally bought for the caravan,,,but was so bleep off with sky used it at home instead

Keep getting signal freeze and mega pixelation on a standard sky setup..Thinking its the reciever causing that as signal is showing the reciever to be recieving 70 percent & 70 percent which is more than enough..Reciever is a standard sky box and is now 6yrs old so guess its getting on a bit now. Glad someone mentiones a retailer name for satalite systems..Didn't expect B&Q to crop up though. I know where i'm off to this week now. You guessed it B&Q

if your with ksy then just ring them tell them your thinking of leaving then for a cable and they will give you a 250gb or 500gb hd box for free and then you get the bbc and itv sh4 and 5 free in hd and the rest plus the new ksy plus boxes you can record lol

i got the hd channels for a year for 2.50 a month when i commented on the poor service and was tempted buy the offers on the tv