Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

I remember the hassle I had when I bought a new one and a humax box , too much to remember to tell you , but in the end I had to pay someone to come out , think it was about £80 , on top of new telly and new box think the total cost was over £800

Hope it lasts till I leave the planet

Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

Hi Art

Sorry you're still having issues.

Just something I need to check.

Did your TV's previously have FreeVIEW or FreeSAT?

The answer to this can be determined by what aerials your house has.

If you have a conventional spikey TV aerial on your house then it will have been Freeview.

Next thing to check is what cables you have behind your Sky Q box.

I suspect from what you have said that the main aerial feed has simply been unplugged, it will be that simple.

So take a look behind your Sky box and see what cables are now loose and not plugged into anything. My guess is the primary aerial cable from the loft is back there dangling.

There will also be another aerial cable which is the feed back out to all the other TV's. If so the 2 cables just need plugging together.

If there aren't any dangling cables then I guess the cables in the loft have been unplugged OR the booster box up there has had it's power supply switched off. Did the Sky engineer go up into the loft at all?

Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

Actually from what you have posted previously I've convinced myself now that you previously had Sky Plus and Freesat and both were working from the same satellite dish.

Sky being the crooks that they are changed everything with Sky Q.

They deliberately did this to force people down the multi-room extra subscriptions. However there appears to be a workaround.

See here:

https://www.smartaerials.co.uk/blog/...-same-property

"The problem is if you want to keep your traditional Sky+HD or Freesat running at the same time as your Sky Q system it isn’t going to work anymore. Sky are very clever like that! Although they have created a system where your multi-room boxes no longer connect to your satellite dish direct, they instead connect wireless to your main Sky Q box. You may for various reasons not want this system, perhaps the amount that it costs. But do not despair, there are solutions for you!"

Here's the simplest solution:

Sky Q & Sky Off Same Satellite Dish – Including Freesat

"To run Sky Q and normal Sky or Freesat at the same time off a satellite dish. You will need to instead of installing a wideband LNB, install a Hybrid LNB instead. There are couple different makes and models but essentially, they have the same final result. You connect your Sky Q box to a couple of the LNB outputs, usually there are 6. I haven’t come across one with more yet. Then connect your Sky and Freesat boxes to the other outputs. Some of these LNB’s allow you to connect the Sky Q box to any of the LNB outputs and others require you to connect to specific ones. You should check before installing yours which one you have to make sure you’re connecting the right cables to the right places. Also remember to get the skew adjustment set correctly when replacing the LNB as this could lead to poor satellite signal."

Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

Realist, Your head must be done in too with all your research!

Four of my televisions provided Freeview from the Freeview/digital aerial on my roof. One television ran off an old Sky box that my ex partner added to the Sky dish. This provided Freesat only. The main television ran of the Sky dish too to provide Sky tv.

When the men came on Saturday they removed the old dish and put up a new dish for Sky Q.
Earlier today, l did find a loose aerial cable behind the television where the new Q box is. l plugged this cable into the back of this television. I tried the other TVs but no luck. All still stated ‘No Signal’.
I then plugged this aerial cable into another cable coming through the wall from outside but still nothing happened, just the same message.
The men did not go into my loft.

Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

No problem. I love this stuff. I've done lots of this with my FIL's house which had plasma TVs everywhere, Sky Plus and numerous digiboxes and PVR recording boxes.

I have to conclude then that the mains power to your loft booster box has been switched off somehow or the aerial disconnected. There should be no reason the Freeview TVs shouldn't work. If they are seeing no signal it's because the aerial feed has been disconnected or the booster box has been switched off.

You need to get up in the loft to take a look or grab a handy man.

Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

Hi Realist, Thank You. This is where l am up to on this saga today. Try not to fall asleep!

Rooting through the drawers, I found a three-way aerial socket thing and thought l would try it in the back of the main television. I inserted it into the aerial socket on the back of the television and plugged the two spare cables, l found loose, into it.

I went into the next room where the television there is now disconnected from the very old Sky box. At the wall there was a cable coming in that was plugged into the back of the old Sky box. I took this aerial cable from the box and inserted into the aerial socket at the back of the television.
I then started to tune in the television and 30 channels loaded! I did it again and 55 loaded. Some main channels were missing.
When l switched the television on later. All the channels had completely disappeared and it stated ‘No signal’.
The connector on this aerial was loose, so l think that could be the problem there?

Thrilled that l had tuned this television in. I tried the television in my bedroom. Again, success! At first there were about 50 channels. I tried again and there was over 100 channels! Including Sky News!
Tonight, l checked this television again. Some of the channels have disappeared, including Sky News and the picture is pixelated. This afternoon, it was a great picture.

At least, l am a bit further forward but l can’t understand why some or all channels keep disappearing and why they are pixelated?
Have you fallen asleep yet?

I haven’t said Thank You to everyone for helping me with this problem. So Thank You, all.

Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

Hi Arty

Sounds better news.

So . . .

One of these I presume:



You shouldn't need to plug that directly into your TV TBH, better to run a cable from it.

You should have a main aerial feed cable coming out of the wall behind the TV which you should plug it into. Then you should have a length of aerial cable to connect to it which then goes into the back of the TV. Then you want to plug the other loose aerial cable behind the TV into it (which I assume is the cable that feeds other TVs in the house).

You may need some male/female adapters to achieve this.

Understand that you can't just plug any cable into any of those 3 sockets on the splitter. ONLY ONE of those 3 sockets is the AERIAL-IN socket, and it should be labelled as such. You MUST plug the main aerial cable coming out of the wall into that socket. Then you have to connect aerial wires to the other 2 sockets which are both AERIAL-OUTs.

Here's a diagram of what I think it should look like:




Now we must remember that you have a combination of FreeVIEW and FreeSAT by the sound of it (though I'm still not sure if that's true). Remember that these different TV types require different feeds. FreeSAT TVs need a feed from the satellite dish, FreeVIEW TV's need a feed from the conventional aerial on the roof.

So one aerial cable IS NOT going to feed all the TVs as you have found out.

One of challenges then is to determine which of those aerial cables dotted around the house in each room are FreeSAT aerial cables and which FreeVIEW.

Not sure how you will be able to do that but presumably the TVs themselves will tell you. Do you know/remember which TVs were Freesat and which Freeview?


One of the reasons I suspect that you appear to have channels missing is because FreeSat and FreeVIEW are different. They are similar but they do have differences so some channels won't be available on Freeview and some not on Freesat.

The main challenge is to identify the PRIMARY AERIAL FEEDS in your house for both FreeSAT and FreeView.

I would guess that behind the main TV is a FreeSAT main feed, but probably no Freeview feed there.

The FreeView main feed might well be in a different room.

Or indeed there may be FreeView cables in every room where you have a Freeview TV (by which I mean dedicated cables coming from the loft).

A key thing to look for here is if there are any other rooms (other than your main TV room) where there are 2 aerial cables coming out of the wall. If there are then that is probably where your Freeview main feed is coming out and also where the cable goes back out to the other TVs.

Sorry if this sounds complicated !

Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

Note also that in the picture above it might well be that the 2 "blue" cables there could actually BOTH be main aerial IN feeds, one a Freeview feed from the roof aerial and the other a Freesat feed from the dish.

I'm afraid I can't tell you.

What you could do to determine it is to unplug everything from the back of the main TV including the Sky box and then just plug one of those aerial cables into the back of it and try to tune it. ONE of them will allow the TV to be tuned is my guess and once done you will know if it is a Freeview feed or Freesat feed (assuming you know whether the main TV is Freeview or Freesat).

Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

I think you are spot on Realist.

I had Virgin Box and a Freeview aerial linked to all the rooms in the house by a little box fed from the output of my Set Top box.

Last time the set top box was updated to a new model, this would no longer work as Virgin said the new STB didn't provide the output signal required.

After trawling the net I found another type of box and all is now working again.

The new little Box is a Labgear MRX700 and it takes feed from Virgin & the Freeview aerial.

Re: I Think I’ve Made A Huge Mistake, Getting Sky Q.

One more thing Arty

Check all of the aerial cables in each of your rooms.

If they have metal screw connectors at the end then they are satellite dish cables. If they are just simple plug in type connectors then they are co-ax cables from your roof aerial.

The former are for FreeSAT the latter are for FreeVIEW.

That should help you determine which TVs are which.