No signal with freesat+ box

Indefinite_Article

Hi,

We've tried to get a decent signal using both Freeview from aerial sockets and freesat+ from a dish, without any success. Anyone got any ideas, please?!

Details:

My girlfriend has just moved into a new house, which has a dish and aerial together on a roof mounting (ie hard to access). There are wall mounted aerial sockets in two rooms, twin cables with F-connectors (we believe used for Sky by previous owners) and a single heavier coaxial cable with no connector, that also appears to run down from the roof. I believe the aerial lead runs into the loft where there's an unpowered splitter box to feed the two wall sockets. The television is an older sort of flat screen analogue that has been working fine with the Freeview recorder at the previous house.

We tried hooking up the Freeview recorder to the aerial sockets but got so poor a signal that even the basic channel information wasn't reliably received and no picture or sound on any channel. Q: might a booster box be worth trying with such a poor signal, or a waste of time?

We decided a freesat box might be the easiest solution, as well as providing extra channels and iplayer (but do you need internet for the latter??) and bought a Sondstrom box, hooked it up to the twin leads. Result: no signal strength at all on step one of the setup, so presumably no chance of finding frequencies or channels.

Alignment of the dish looks ok so far as one can tell by looking and comparing with others. There is a band of large oak trees within 50 metres or so - is it possible that they could block a signal entirely? We know the previous occupants had a decent reception when we visited about a month before for measuring, etc. (June 2013)

So now we don't know whether to take the box back for a refund and get a booster, or pay someone to check the dish alignment or even go for an internet streaming system (haven't got internet set yet!). Anyone tried the Roku box?

Thanks for any ideas!!

Indefinite_Article

...what I said above wasn't entirely true: with the aerial connection we did sometimes get a single channel that was watchable but it varied as to which channel appeared each time we retuned, and it stalled occasionally

almillar

Easy question first - yes you'll need to connect any box to the internet for iPlayer etc.
Now, you've got through a lot of the diagnosis yourself already. The dish (and aerial) are pointing roughly the right way. Looks like you've got a twin feed to the dish, a single aerial lead, and another aerial looking lead - this would be used to take the picture from the Sky box out and into the bedroom or something. Are you sure you haven't mixed those two leads up, as they could be the same, but only 1 goes to the aerial. Try both in the back of the Freeview box, and swap the connector over if necessary. If the previous owner wasn't careful shifting stiff out, they could have yanked the Freeview box out, and taken the connector off the end of the cable. THIS cable, I guess, is more likely to be the aerial cable...
If that doesn't work, at the splitter box, can you unplug the aerial, and the lead to the living room, and connect them to each other? This will remove the splitter as a possible cause.
All 4 satellite connections that you have should be going straight up to the dish, with no splitters or anything involved. All I can think of is either the dish is out of alignment (It's pointing at a tiny object in space, it needs to be accurate!), there's a cut in the cable somewhere, or the trees are indeed affecting it. Neighbours with dishes might be able to tell you...

mcfisco

I'm wondering if the previous owners haven't removed something, maybe a switch box from the roof space?
Try to get into the roof space and trace a pair of the cables from the room below and follow them

Can you see if there are 4 cables exiting the LNB on the end of the dish?

Enterprise_1701C

Can you get to the LNB on your dish to screw in a loose cable and run it straight to your Freesat box while it is connected to a TV? At least this way you will know if the LNB is receiving the signal

Indefinite_Article

Thanks to all for your suggestions - especially almillar, who was bang on with comments about where the leads go. I'd naively assumed that the single lead coming in was the same as the one I could see coming down from the aerial. Wrong! That one had been cut off at ground level, possibly simply to allow the other lead to run out and go upstairs to the bedroom, as almillar suggested. So, with renewed hope I installed a connector on the severed lead and ran an extension coax lead in through the window to the freeview box. Result: still no signal!!

In answer to one of the questions: I can only see two leads (ie one twin cable) coming from the dish. It's too high to access without proper roofing ladders, so we may have to call in an 'expert'..

In the meantime.. girlfriend went to get a booster box to see if that would help amplify the feeble signal we got from the wall socket, but came back with an indoor aerial. This, I would have thought, would be hopeless, but it actually gave the best result, but still not watchable. At least it suggests that there is some signal available, just no connection to any of the receiving equipment. It also went back and we returned with a 20dB booster, but that didn't do any good either.

Next step may be to reconnect one of the two(!!) aerials in the loft to the splitter box (or a lead directly downstairs, if I can get the right connectors). Does anyone know if it was common practice in the late 90's to link separate aerials to individual sockets rather than use a splitter box? Just wondering why else there would be two aerials in the loft...

Thanks again!

almillar

Two aerials into one cable doesn't sound very useful to me. Are they both pointing the same way? Trial and error will be the way to do it!