Club Arnage

Anybody else having trouble receiving Motors TV via sky digital???

Are we getting into techno babble here Skydigital is that like freeview?

Coming through loud and proud.

I can get it , but its also the only channel I have problems with. The picture and sound quite often freazes and it can stay that way for hours. Go up or down a channel and come back to it and it comes back ok, but can look up again whenever it feels like it.

I used to have that problem on quite a few channels. A TV engineer told me it was static caused by the sattelite reviever being directly on top of the DVD recorder. I put anti static mats between the units and havn't had any problems since. Worth a try.

Chris, this may be a symptom of a slightly out of aligned dish.  I have a 60/70 dish (larger than the standard Sky minidish and have a very strong signal and noise ratio).
Motors TV (plus a couple of others) come from one of a cluster of 4 satellites providing the Sky coverage.  Your dish may be weekly receiving this satelite.

Out of interest, are you on the original Grundig Sky digibox?  These have been known to fail after 2 to 3 years.  One of the symptoms of a failing digibox is drop out of a number of channels.  I lost Eurosport to freezing and 'snow'.  a new Panasonic digibox fixed this problem.

More info here http://www.satalogue.com/

Our Amstrad unit starts playing up about every six months and the trick is to unplug it for a couple of minutes to empty the memories and then on reboot everything sorts itself out.  We also have a menu option to show signal strength and error rate, have you tried that

Thanks for all your advise
Raised the elevation of the dish slighty and watched the 1000k's of Silverstone in relative peace.

Highlites Tuesday 8-10pm

My Grundig keeps dropping the signal and needing the power off reboot routine. Takes longer to moan about than to do. but I am pi**ed off 'cos I only had Grundig after fighting the Sky installers that wanted me to have the Amstrad...

That antistatic mat sounds a good idea, I'll try it.

But I don't lose Motors any more than any other channel.

 :)


bill

Bill,
How old is your Grundig?  Usual life span is about 3 years - that's how long mine lasted.
Symptoms of death? - dropping channels and needing rebooting!

Sounds as if that is its time up then.

Do SKY get you another or are you stuck with the one you have, I wonder?

Must ask them, but I bet it's agonna cost me...

 :(

Thanks for the info Steve.

You don't have to buy from Sky.  Go to your independant TV / Aerial / Satellite type shop or do a bit of reading in that section in W H Smiths (NOT top shelf).
All you do is buy a new box, wire it up as the old one, then phone up Sky's customer services to advise them you have a new digibox.  It will have a unique code number (a bit like a mobile phone PIC or SIM number).  They will 'do something' their end and you will be wired for sound (and vision).

I now have a Panasonic box (well recomended in the mags).

Motors TV was the first channel (that I watch) I lost in the 'van in France, and that only 100 miles from Le Havre.  The further south I went, the more channels I lost - that's with an 85cm dish. 

I have to say that I didn't spend a great deal of time setting the dish up, and most times it was after the 'refreshments' taken after setting up the caravan.

DB

Look up one of the many sites on the Astra satelite etc.  The Sky (2D) footprint just about goes as far south as Le Mans for a small dish.  Looks like you'll need a metre dish in the Dordogne. 

Motors TV appears to be on Astra 1G, which may be a smaller footprint/less power.  It was painful getting any further.

So if I buy a box and a dish, without a Sky card, can I watch the free channels, such as Motors, Eurosport and the German porno channels?

Lorry, in that case, you may be better off avoiding Sky / Astra altogether and (after checking what channels are on the other satellites) buy a Eutelsat / Hotbird / Intelsat / whatever set up.

For those wanting cheap satellite parts / dish / box / satellite finder etc, Lidl are selling these items from 1st September.  See their weekly specials
http://www.lidl.co.uk/gb/home.nsf/pages/c.o.20050901.index