Communal sky dish - channel receiving errors

[anenmarietierney]

Hi,

My mum has a communal sky dish for the development she lives in. Within the past year she has had two main problems.

1. Many channels can no longer be recieved.
2. The receiver changes channels unaided.

In December she changed from having an original sky player box to sky plus. These problems ahve continued despite the new reciever. Sky have adviced that the problem is the communal dish so she would have to get this fixed (£600 per household) or get an individual dish. Could someoe please explain to me why the dish would cause this problem?

Cheers,
AM

[PaulSky]

It could be dish alignment, LNB failure, hardware failure between the dish and the individual satelite receivers. You mum should be contacting the company maintaining the dish to get it sorted as a lot of flats are not allowed individual dishes if there is a communal dish in place already.

[anenmarietierney]

Can you tell me what an LNB failure is please?

[Smithy99]

The LNB is the part on the dish at the end of the pole, looking towards the dish. On a communual system these are a bit more complicated internally than a standard LNB as the split the signal into certain options.

I can in no way see why £600 per flat would be the case, even if there were lots of flats that is way out there and someone is just throwing figures about to put her off.

If it is the LNB it would be affecting everyone, has she asked any of the neighbours if they have the same problem? an LNB swap would cost no more than £150 assuming access to the dish is not to difficult.

If it is the main splitter equipment then this may be more but sertainly no more than £600 all in in fact depending on the amount of people it serves it could be £100-£200.

She needs to see if anyone else has problems and then contact the landlord or the people who maintain the equipment, sometimes it is actually rented from them, if it is all repairs should be free.

[anenmarietierney]

Thanks Smithy. I think the reason it would cost so much money is that some of the road would have to be dug up for new cabling (it's not a flat that she lives in but an old hospital that has been redevloped into houses). The access to the dish is simple as it is in the car park.

She has spoken to her close neighbours and non of them use the communal dish.

I think I'll contact the factors to ask for more details.

[Smithy99]

The only reason you would need to dig up the road is to replace the cables, I doubt very much it is the cables at fault, a simple hardware swap would use the existing cables so the only thing needed is a headend swapout or a new LNB which is even easier and takes minutes and also requires no extra cables.

[anenmarietierney]

Ok .Thanks for the info. I will speak to the factors.

[Kenedin]

Factors will always try and pull a fast one on people they think don't know any better. My mother is also in a development, and the factors have been left in no uncertain doubt as to my stance on their responsibilities. They're quick enough to take the monthly charges, not so quick when it comes to proper maintenance. A simple inspection of the dish and LNB will probably determine where the fault is. Is anyone else in the development getting reception problems?