16-12-2011, 10:55 PM
I thought you may be interested in the problems I have experienced with a Sky HD box as a non-contract customer, and those of others I have helped.
The first issue seems to be that poor quality electrolytic capacitors have been used throughout the power supply. The faults I have experienced have been the inability to boot readily once powered down and up again and an increased reluctance to come out of standby mode.
This fault appears after 4-5 years and is easy to diagnose because the tops of electrolytic capacitor cans begin to bulge (switched mode high ripple currents?). The capacitors are mounted vertically in the power supply pcb and a replacement board will presumably get you another 4-5 years. My solution was to replace all 15 capacitors with better quality components and the problem has not returned.
The other problem seems to be that the tuner plug-ins lose sensitivity over time and you get the 'no signal is being received' message. This somewhat stupid design requires a strong signal on both tuner inputs for the receiver to work. If one signal is low or absent, then you lose all video information which is not very helpful.
I spent a lot of wasted time on this one until I solved it by elimination. I first changed the LNB and both cables to the dish with no improvement. I then swapped over both tuner modules and this made no difference. I then replaced both tuner modules (they plug in) with those from another receiver with a known hard disc problem and all was Ok again.
I think this problem can be spotted early on by looking at the on-screen signal display in the setup menu. When the tuner starts to fail, the 'signal strength' remains good, but the 'signal quality' starts to reduce until the picture disappears at around 50% on the bar graph.
So my thoughts are that if you have no Sky box contract and don't want to pay stupid money for another HD box, then it may be worth changing all the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply first and seeing if that fixes the problem.
Also, it may be worth noting the 'signal strength' and 'signal quality' values regularly over the months (bearing in mind that bad weather wiil affect the readings) to give an idea if the tuners are starting to fail.
This box appears to be made to a price and in my opinion, is not of the best quality or specification. For example, a signal that is of insufficient 'quality' to make the HD box work is fine when fed into my Technomate 6800HD receiver, so presumably this fine piece of hardware has a tuner which is much more sensitive than the Sky HD box. The box is made by Thompson by the way.
To be honest, I spent many hours trying to resolve issues which were fairly simple in nature. The complete blanking of a picture when the signal level is insufficient does not help either.
I hope these pointers may prevent folk from wasting a lot of time like I did.
The first issue seems to be that poor quality electrolytic capacitors have been used throughout the power supply. The faults I have experienced have been the inability to boot readily once powered down and up again and an increased reluctance to come out of standby mode.
This fault appears after 4-5 years and is easy to diagnose because the tops of electrolytic capacitor cans begin to bulge (switched mode high ripple currents?). The capacitors are mounted vertically in the power supply pcb and a replacement board will presumably get you another 4-5 years. My solution was to replace all 15 capacitors with better quality components and the problem has not returned.
The other problem seems to be that the tuner plug-ins lose sensitivity over time and you get the 'no signal is being received' message. This somewhat stupid design requires a strong signal on both tuner inputs for the receiver to work. If one signal is low or absent, then you lose all video information which is not very helpful.
I spent a lot of wasted time on this one until I solved it by elimination. I first changed the LNB and both cables to the dish with no improvement. I then swapped over both tuner modules and this made no difference. I then replaced both tuner modules (they plug in) with those from another receiver with a known hard disc problem and all was Ok again.
I think this problem can be spotted early on by looking at the on-screen signal display in the setup menu. When the tuner starts to fail, the 'signal strength' remains good, but the 'signal quality' starts to reduce until the picture disappears at around 50% on the bar graph.
So my thoughts are that if you have no Sky box contract and don't want to pay stupid money for another HD box, then it may be worth changing all the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply first and seeing if that fixes the problem.
Also, it may be worth noting the 'signal strength' and 'signal quality' values regularly over the months (bearing in mind that bad weather wiil affect the readings) to give an idea if the tuners are starting to fail.
This box appears to be made to a price and in my opinion, is not of the best quality or specification. For example, a signal that is of insufficient 'quality' to make the HD box work is fine when fed into my Technomate 6800HD receiver, so presumably this fine piece of hardware has a tuner which is much more sensitive than the Sky HD box. The box is made by Thompson by the way.
To be honest, I spent many hours trying to resolve issues which were fairly simple in nature. The complete blanking of a picture when the signal level is insufficient does not help either.
I hope these pointers may prevent folk from wasting a lot of time like I did.
