Sat4Free box not receiving BBC 1 or 2, UTV, E4, etc

number_1

Hi,

I've got a Grundig SD Sat4Free box (bought it in early 2009 if I remember correctly). It coped fine with the recent retune of the BBC channels on Freesat and was fully working up until Sunday night.

However yesterday and today it seems to have lost several channels (BBC 1, BBC 2, UTV, E4 and others). Some channels are still working fine (Channel 4, Channel 5, BBC Three, BBC Four amongst others).

When I go to the channels which are not working the EPG tells me what's on now and next, however I just get a blank picture with no sound. Has anyone else had this problem in the past 48 hours or is it more likely to be a problem with my Sat4Free box?

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that when I go to the signal meter when watching a channel that works (Channel 4) it says I have full signal strength and full signal quality.

John mac

?did you try the plug it out and in again trick?

Sam Russell

Could be the LNB not working with polarity signals. Try the box on a friends dish, and if it works, try the friends box on you dish.

number_1

I've tried using a spare Sky box and get exactly the same problem.

After a quick glance through http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html it seems that all the channels I receive are horizontal polarisation while all the ones I can't get are vertical polarisation.

Would a simple replacement of the LNB solve the problem? Is this a common occurence? I didn't realise that LNBs can fail like this (while still working, sort of!).

I'm asking because we're in an apartment and I don't even know where our dish is, so I'd have to talk to a local company who seem to deal with all the satellite tv installations in our complex. I'd like to replace it myself but I suspect the dish is technically owned by someone else and has multiple outputs for different apartments.

Oh it can happen. The way the box handles the different polarisations is by switching the voltage feeding into the LNB. ~13V for vertical and ~18V for horizontal.