Tv aerial problem

sahj

Ok... heres my problem!

When we moved here 6 years ago we had some sort of 6 way tv booster (transmitter?) box fitted in the attic.
Having Sky tv fitted we never bothered using our own aerial.
Upstairs we have a tv with a freeview box in my daughters room and that works fine.
We have just bought a tv with freeview for the dining area but we cant get any channels- analogue or digital. Although it says its found 2-5 analogue channels but they are very blurry and seems to be just channel 5.
Husband went in to the attic and checked this booster box and found that on the cable marked TV 4 that the end pin wasnt sticking out like it was on the other cables. He pulled the cable further through so the pin stuck out but that didnt do anything.
I tried plugging the new tv in to the aerial in the lounge and managed to get some digital channels but it could not pick up ch1,2,3,4,5, cbeebies, sky sports news etc- just the vague channels like Dave and a music channel.

Any ideas on what to do next or is it time to call someone out? With neither of us being very knowledgeable I thought it was best to ask here first incase we are missing something obvious!

Oh and a further query... is there anyway of using the signal from the Sky box - obviosuly not for sky channels, just to get the freeview to work.

Thanks for reading and apologies for my lack of technical terminology!

Hammyman

Possibly that booster channel is duff. Try changing the cable that did go into TV4 into one of the other ones.

There is no way of using the signal from the Sky box to get freeview to work as you're wanting it to.

sahj

Thank you, will give that a try and report back!

sahj

Tried and it didnt work.

Any other suggestions?

LucianH

You say your daughter's TV works fine. Have you tried the new TV in your daughter's room (plug in using exactly the same cables as your daughter's one)? This will rule out any probs with the TV.

victor2

Try the new TV on the aerial lead that you know works for your daughter's TV.
If it doesn't work there but the daughter's TV does then the problem is likely to be with the new TV's receiver, or you're not tuning it corrrectly. Not all tuners are equal - some work fine with a weak signal while others require a stronger one.

toastydave

Hi,

well i can think of a few things,

first take the new tv upstairs and plug it into the Arial in you daughter's room and perform a tune, if all is ok then you know the tv is fine, and it wont have to struggle to tune itself on a week signal.

Second if this works, try to find out which wire from the amp in loft goes to your daughter's TV. (unplug the signal cables in turn with your daughter's TV on, until the signal goes)

once you have done that connect the wire from the dinning room to the output that should go to your daughter's TV, and check the reception in the dining room again, if it works fine now, you will need a new amp, if the problem is still the same, you have a wiring fault somewhere between the amp and your dinning room

sahj

Thank you for the replies.

Will try the suggestions 2moro evening as my daughter is sleeping now and I dont want to disturb her.

Will update 2moro.

T_T_2

I can only comment on one specific part of your question, the bit relating to 'Can I use my Skybox as a Freeview box?'

Put simply the answer is yes, you can use a digital sky receiver to view most freeview channels. I know this because we cancelled our sky subscription well over a year ago (hundreds of channels and never anything on! ) But we can still receive the channels that are free, and we can still use the sky tv menu to see what is on.

sahj

A half update!

Tried the tv upstairs and it found all the channels and was picture perfect so its not the new tv!

Got to wait for husband to get home and then hopefully we can put the downstairs cable in to the point where daughters tv was and hey presto!

Just hope its not the actual cable - that seems like a costly and messy job.

Inner_Zone

T_T wrote: »

I can only comment on one specific part of your question, the bit relating to 'Can I use my Skybox as a Freeview box?'

Put simply the answer is yes, you can use a digital sky receiver to view most freeview channels. I know this because we cancelled our sky subscription well over a year ago (hundreds of channels and never anything on! ) But we can still receive the channels that are free, and we can still use the sky tv menu to see what is on.

Wrong. Just because you can receive the free channels it does not make them Freeview as Freeview is only available by a terrestrial aerial. A Sky box will receive Freesat or Freesat from Sky with white card if no longer subscribed or purchased as a FTV card. Freeview, Freesat and Freesat from Sky all have different channels lineups with some channels being on one and not the others.