Getting Sky Installed

venomx

Hi
I asked my landlord whether i can have a sky mini dish fitted and they said i'd have to use a communal dish ? On the block of flats ( 6 seperate apartments ) there are three mini dishes, are these " communal " dishes or not ?

Thanks

E30M3

venomx wrote: »

Hi
I asked my landlord whether i can have a sky mini dish fitted and they said i'd have to use a communal dish ? On the block of flats ( 6 seperate apartments ) there are three mini dishes, are these " communal " dishes or not ?

Thanks

Do you have a tenants association or equivalent you can ask?
I would also expect sky to have the answer to this too?

venomx

Thanks. I'll try and contact them.

When/If the engineer comes round, will he ask to speak to the block management / landlord or is that for me to do ?

venomx

Landlord says I need a communal dish, however there is none.
4 of the 6 flats on my block have a sky dish.
Very confused where to go from here.

Neil_Jones

Communal dishes are supposed to feed all the flats on a block from one dish. If there are already four dishes up they can't all be communal.

Look at where the dishes are pointing (it'll be in an easterly direction) and find the outside east wall closest to where they are pointing to, normally most (but not all as it depends on other buildings in the area) communal dishes are installed at the "closest" point to the satellite orbit usually in a top corner and will often have a big box with loads of cables coming out of it that go to the flats and one that goes to the dish.

All of that being said check behind your TV for a satellite connection point, because some buildings do have communal setups that hide the cables from the outside but these tend to be older ones that only have one feed which sort of defeats part of the point of having Sky as you wouldn't be able to watch one thing and record something else. More modern ones with the twin feeds are usually tacked on and have cables on the outside walls and any that are sky Q capable will almost certainly be cabled from the outside unless the building is literally brand spanking new and thought was given to it during construction.

Easiest solution really is just get Sky to stick one up when they come if you need one. If it needs to come down then tell the landlord to show you where the communal system is. you can't connect your box to something that doesn't exist!

venomx

Thanks @Neil Jones

I will call my landlord up again monday and try to explain there is no communal dish, just 4 seperate ones.

If they don't allow me to have a dish then i'll probably give it a miss, last thing i want is to have to take the dish down and then have to terminate my Sky TV contract and have to pay £hundreds

Neil_Jones

The communal dish is the responsibility of the landlord and whoever installs it when it packs up, so if you're being told you need to install one something's wrong somewhere as a communal system that only feeds you isn't a communal system. In that case you may as well just stick a normal dish up.

If you have no joy consider looking at Now TV instead - various Sky channels as a streaming service down your internet connection, you just buy monthly passes for them which are almost always on offer somewhere.

venomx

I've had nowtv in the past and didn't really like it. would much rather have a sky box.

I have to abide by my landlords rules else it will just go against me wouldn't it ?

iniltous

venomx wrote: »

Landlord says I need a communal dish, however there is none.
4 of the 6 flats on my block have a sky dish.
Very confused where to go from here.

Chances are the 4 existing Sky customers didn't ask the landlord if they could have Sky, so never got the 'use a communal dish' statement, AFAIK, Sky use a blanket statement that you as the applicant are responsible for checking if a dish is allowed, so if they turn up they will assume it's OK, and that you checked , brained permission if it were needed and they install the dish, Sky don't check that you checked.
You could do what your neighbour's have done, take a chance that the landlord or building management, if they ever found out , wouldn't insist you remove it after its fitted, presumably if they did , the existing 4 dishes would also have to come down.
Personally I do think 'dish blight' is best avoided , and Sky ( if I remember correctly) would install a communal system in if requested , but I don't know if they still do that with Sky Q, but that point has passed.

Neil_Jones

Sky will do communal SkyQ installations but there are other independents who will do them too. Permissions are required to stick a dish, distribution box, cables and the satellite connection ports in each flat, its not a five minute job.

Dish blight might be best avoided but realistically not all existing dishes are removed. They probably should be but they often aren't. Most people aren't aware that they need planning permission to put a dish up if there are more than a certain limit on a flat complex already, but similarly most landlords aren't aware of them either. I can drive by various council blocks where I live and see literally six dishes next to each other and a communal one on the side of the same building.

venomx

Just sent a polite email to the block manager. Explaining there is no communal dish, however four other tenants have their own. Not likely it will be a yes, but at least then i’ve tried.