How to escalate Sky issue. One of their engineers broke our system...

Sam_Brown

headpin said:

You are only assuming that the Sky engineer my have caused your issue. Without any concrete evidence (loose wires, cut cables, etc. visible) then why should Sky just accept that it was caused by their engineer and push you in front of everyone else? If it does turn out that they caused the issue (how will you know and prove that?) then you can ask for a credit for the period without a service.

can you not go and look in the “tight” cupboard to see if there are loose cables or the like apparent that may then point you in the right direction? 

As above it boils down to one bit of kit. Neither side is taking responsibility for it. The engineer mentioned about a new connection not being earthed properly but it wasn’t going to cause the issue we have seen. End of the day from sky’s point of view I agree where you are coming from but come on... it’s too big a coincidence for me to think the loss of service isn’t related to the work the sky engineer did in the cupboard the day before we noticed we had lost connection. Like you say though as far as sky is confirmed they don’t care. I did try and work with them but they refused to budge on setting up a joint visit to get to the bottom of it.

thanks for all you helpful advice 

JJ_Egan

On sale on Ebay  listed as  Genuine Sky Unitron dcss-422

rtho782

I think your issue is as follows:

Pre Sky Q, or with Freesat, the signal down the cable could be one of four combinations, depending on voltage from the Sky HD box or Freesat box, and the presence or absense of a 22khz tone:

High band, Vertical polarisation
High band, Horizontal polarisation
Low band, Vertical polarisation
Low band, Horizontal polarisation.

A normal Freesat Sky Plus or Multiroom subscriber had an LNB (the bit on the front of the dish) with 4 outputs, each of which could be switches to any of the above 4 modes. A Sky+ box had 2 inputs, and could therefore record 2 channels at once.

A Communal antenna uses an LNB with all 4 of the above outputs fixed, going into a single box, that then has an arbitrary number of outputs for each flat, each of which can be switched as above.

Now, assuming your LL had this system set up before SkyQ was a thing, he will have specced it for 1 or 2 outputs per flat. So, if there are say, 8 flats, he might have chosen a 16 port switch for this, meaning 2 for each flat.

SkyQ they wanted more tuners, but didn't want more cables. As such, SkyQ uses the following 2 signals:

Wideband, Vertical polarisation
Wideband, Horizontal polarisation

Wideband being the combination of the old high and low bands. This allows an arbitrary number of tuners as the box, between the two cables, receives all the channels at once.

This means, that from the LL's 16 port switch, that Unitron dcss-422 is needed. It takes up 4 ports on the LL's 16 port switch, and outputs 2 wideband ports for you, passing the 4 ports on for someone else (which are now fixed outputs, not suitable for someone else to run any sort of box from, but you could run another unitron dcss-422 box from).

Suddenly, there may not be enough ports for all the flats. If 7 people have Sky+ or Freesat+ (not skyq) and the 8th one gets Sky Q installed, this system cannot work, as the Sky Q only leaves 12 ports for the other 7 boxes that need 2 each.

It may be that this is not Sky's fault, and not the Landlords fault, and possibly not resolvable, short of an entire system upgrade, that the LL may not be willing to do - he provides a community satellite dish as per your contract, that does support Sky+HD and Freesat, the fact that Sky have come out with SkyQ that requires more than he has ever supplied isn't really his problem.

mwarby

Sky shouldn't be touching the landlords system at all, especially if there aren't 4 ports per flat. To do so puts everyone in a bad situation, should the landlord be forced to upgrade(after all its unfair that some flats can get Sky Q but others can't), should a tenant have an install broken in order to fix someone else's system (the landlord might have left a few spare ports in case any went bad, what's he to do if these have been taken)