| Hi Folks! Well, it's been over a month since the last newsletter so I hope this one is worth the wait!
Cash machine fraud Sorry that this has nothing to do with satellite TV but it affects all of us so I think it's worth mentioning. For details please see this page: http://www.your-book.co.uk/card_fraud.htm
Plasma Screens >Sirs
>
>Do you sell anything that could help me with a problem.
>
>I am buying (could be was buying now..) a £4000 plasma system but it has
>been drawn to my attention that lip sync is a major issue between sky and
>plasma screens.
>
>I am told that if I can boost the signal so that maximum bit rates are
>coming into the system that this should alleviate the problem.
>Alternatively, a delay unit for the audio may mask the problem. >Are you aware of a solution to this?
>
>Kind regards
>
>Gary We are aware of the problem but not the solution. We do point out the potential problem to people and the answer is "try before you buy". DON'T even think about committing £3000 until you have seen it working with a Sky Digibox. Picture shift can also be a problem. And bear in mind that any large screen is going to show up the "normal" digital artifacts in the Sky picture, far more than a smaller screen.
Interference > >Hi Martin, > >I tried again and downloaded the book, thanks.
> >I've attached a wiring sketch. Just to recap on the problem it's related
> >to picture quality. When the TV input cable from the wallplate is plugged
> >into the input plug on the back of the digibox I get a faint diagonal
> >lined pattern in the background across the whole screen from top left to
> >bottom right. This affects all TV and SAT pictures. When I unplug the TV
> >input lead from the Digibox (but don't need to unplug it from the
> >Wallplate) whilst leaving the SAT input lead in place, perfect picture
> >quality is restored to the SAT channels.
> >I've checked every connection, nothing is loose and no outer wire is
> >touching the core wire anywhere.
> >Any ideas please on the possible reason for the problem. > >Thanks > >David So the problem affects only the satellite channels? And presumably you don't get interference when you connect the Digibox to the TV set using a Scart cable? In that case, you have set the Digibox UHF output to the wrong channel. It comes set to 68 from the factory. Set it to a channel that minimises interference - obviously you'll have to retune the TV. [setup] [401] [select] Martin, I know you must get lots of e mails but this is just one more to say thank you for your diagnosis and cure of my problem. David No more VCRs The days of the video cassette recorder are coming to an end, it seems. The Dixons chain are to stop selling them at the end of the year. For every VCR, they sell 10 DVD players. This could be good news for those few corner shops that still repair VCRs. Business will soon start booming as owners discover they can't buy a £35 replacement. More likely, however, some enterprising Mom & Pop business will import them from China and sell at £200 each. Anyway, if you have a stock of Video Cassettes that you might want to play in the future, now might be a good time to buy a spare VCR or get the tapes converted to DVD (or both). Also bear in mind that cassettes need to be run once a year to prevent the tape from stretching. (top)
ITV2 goes FTV ITV2 became Free To View on Sunday November 21st. This means that you can watch it using a Sky Digibox and an FTV ("Freesat") card. You no longer need a full Sky subscription. ITV is still "in negotiation" with BskyB regarding what to do about its ITV1 channels. Everyone is hoping they'll go Free To Air as the BBC did, but don't hold your breath!
New Scientist magazine Reports Trash those cartoons Parents may soon be able to stop their children watching or recording too many trashy cartoons (US patent application 2004198388). British inventors Matthew Roach and Mark Pawlewski are exploiting the fact that cartoons contain a lot more fast-moving shapes than live TV or even action film. By happy chance, the MPEG-2 video compression format used to broadcast digital TV is designed to analyse motion so it can handle fast-changing sequences. The amount of compression is reduced for animated film so the pictures do not look jerky. The inventors propose software is built into the TV set that will use the MPEG-2 decoder to continually check the kind of material showing. If there is too much animation, the set simply switches itself off for a preset time. Digital pollution THE environment will pay a hefty price for the boom in digital television. Generating the power to run TVs and other video devices already dumps 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere in the UK alone. And this is expected to triple over the next 10 years. The hike will come as more people add the set-top box needed to view digital TV to their home entertainment system. The warning came on 3 June from the Energy Saving Trust, a green campaign group. It says the biggest waste comes in standby mode. Set-top boxes consume around 9 watts while on, but this only drops to 7 watts on standby. The UK leads the world in conversion to digital TV, with 53 per cent of homes now on digital. But Europe and Australia are fast catching up. China wants to switch off all analogue TV before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, putting another billion digital receivers into use. Cost-cutting is part of the problem, according to Bob Harrison, a scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which supplied the figures to EST. He says that while manufacturers of analogue VCRs have reduced their standby power from 8 watts to 3 watts over the past decade, standby energy consumption of digital set-top boxes is actually going up because makers use cheap, inefficient components to keep prices low. "This is knocking all the energy-saving predictions for six," says Harrison. "There will be a major spike in CO2 emission when China switches off analogue." (top)
Television magazine reports Sky+ News From 16 October football fans have been able to use Sky+ to record highlights of any of the day's Premiership games. Viewers watching Sky Sports Football First via Sky+ can use the interactive recording function to capture extended highlights of a team or game of their choice. To access Sky Sports Active, you go to an onscreen menu by pressing the fed button on the Sky remote-control handset. Viewers can record one video stream while watching another game, or record two scheduled streams while watching another previouslyrecorded programme from the Sky+ Planner. Digital pollution THE environment will pay a hefty price for the boom in digital television. Generating the power to run TVs and other video devices already dumps 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere in the UK alone. And this is expected to triple over the next 10 years. The hike will come as more people add the set-top box needed to view digital TV to their home entertainment system. The warning came on 3 June from the Energy Saving Trust, a green campaign group. It says the biggest waste comes in standby mode. Set-top boxes consume around 9 watts while on, but this only drops to 7 watts on standby. The UK leads the world in conversion to digital TV, with 53 per cent of homes now on digital. But Europe and Australia are fast catching up. China wants to switch off all analogue TV before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, putting another billion digital receivers into use. Cost-cutting is part of the problem, according to Bob Harrison, a scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which supplied the figures to EST. He says that while manufacturers of analogue VCRs have reduced their standby power from 8 watts to 3 watts over the past decade, standby energy consumption of digital set-top boxes is actually going up because makers use cheap, inefficient components to keep prices low. "This is knocking all the energy-saving predictions for six," says Harrison. "There will be a major spike in CO emission when China switches off analogue." New LCD Technology Hewlett-Packard has developed a new liquid-crystal display technology that provides high-definition screens in a variety of sizes. Known as Post Aligned Bistable Nematic (PABN), the technology works by placing liquid crystal elements in contact with tiny polymer posts, each less than one micron in diameter, which are printed on a plastic sheet. The liquid crystals align with the posts either horizontally or tilting upwards. When a voltage is applied, the liquid crystals switch from the horizontal position (dark) to tilted (light): when the voltage is removed the liquid crystals retain their position, so no power is required once an image is displayed. The technique is an alternative to the TFT approach. HP claims that A4-sized screens with a 7,000 x 5,000 pixel resolution are possible using the new technology. A 4 x 3cm prototype has been demonstrated recently. Potential advantages are larger, cheaper displays. Development has been going on for several years, but further research and production engineering technology are required. LCD surplus With demand exceeding supply until recently, LCD TV sets and PC monitors have been selling at premium prices. It now seems that, as a result of high investment in new plant by LCI) manufacturers and lower than expected demand, the position is about to change. Samsung, the world's largest LCI) manufacturer, cut prices by 21 per cent in the third quarter compared to the previous three months. LG Philips LCD, the second largest producer, has reported a 20 per cent fall in prices and expects a further 10 - 15 per cent fall in the next few months. But despite a build-up of stock, LG Philips LCD says it has no plans to reduce output. According to research company Display Search, LCD manufacturers produced four million more panels than were needed in the third quarter, resulting in "extreme pricing pressure". Some Taiwanese LCD manufacturers are reported to have delayed or stopped construction of new plants. Samsung plans to open its seventh-generation plant next year, the most advanced in the industry. is should reduce its production costs sharply, enabling the company to sell at lower prices while maintaining profit margins. The plant is a joint venture with Sony. New flat-panel display Canon and Toshiba have announced a joint venture to develop a new type of flat screen for TV sets, known as the surface-conduction, electron-emitter display (SED). It uses some of the characteristics of a CRT to create higher-quality images - the response is quicker than that with LCD and plasma screens. The device is also more energy efficient. For further details see page 72. The plant being set up will have an initial production capacity of 3,000 panels a month by next August, increasing to 3m panels a year by 20 10. Panasonic's plasma advance Panasonic has started to sell what is claimed to be the world's largest consumer plasma display panel in Japan. Model TH-65DX300 has a 65in. screen and features Panasonic's PEAKS (Picture Enhancement Accelerator with Kinetic System) driver. This is a video signal processing circuit that enables 8.58 billion colours and 2,048 shades of gradation to be displayed. It provides up to 3.62 billion colours and 1,536 shades of gradation in low-brightness areas. A contrast ratio of 3,000:1 is provided by the Real Black Creation technology, while Motion Pattern Noise Reduction reduces motion patterning. Panel life is quoted as approximately 60,000 hours. The TH-65DX300 weighs 109kg with stand. Its dimensions are 1.6 x 1 x 0.39m (width, height, depth). Price in Japan is the equivalent of about £11,000. SVP - a new encryption System A new conditional-access encryption system, secure video processor (SVP), has been developed by NDS in conjunction with ST Microelectronics and Thomson Multimedia. It will also prevent illegal copying of pay-TV material. The system works by encoding the programme content rather than the distribution method. Programming distributed with SVP cannot be viewed via an unauthorised device. Legitimate pay-TV subscribers will however be able to watch SVP-protected programming on second sets or mobile devices as part of a new generation of subscription services linked to the system. Abe Peled, chief executive of NDS, expects SVP to be adopted by pay-TV companies from early 2006. (top)
Request for images From time to time a customer will ask me "what minidish have I got on my wall?" Oviously I can't answer this question so what I would like to do is to build up a library of dish pictures so that anybody can look and say "that looks like mine", then read the make and type below it. So, if you have an assembled dish and you know who made it and (preferably) the make/model of LNB fitted, please contact me. You will probably need the invoice in order to know the dish maker's name. Don't simply assume it's made by "Amstrad" or "Sky" or "Pace" or whatever label is on it - none of those companies ever manufactured a dish!
Car for sale Sold. (top)
Happy Customers
>Regarding Customer receipt (Order ID): 3171796
>
>Hi,
>I bought the Manhattan Plaza ST100 FTA
>I was unable to determine if the receiver below had these slots.
>Technomate 5500 D FTA digital receiver. FTA means "Free To Air". In other words, it is not suitable for receiving encrypted channels that require a card. >I would like to exchange this Item and obtain a Satellite Receiver with
>the following features
>
>DVB 2 Common Interface (2 CAM slots ) Look for "2CI" after the model number. >Card Slot
>Scart sockets All UK Digital receivers have Scart sockets. >and it needs to be able to operate a motorized dish. Look for "DisEqC 1.2".
After many wasted hours up the ladder, I finally had to accept that there were no more dish positions to try and that 25% signal quality was as good as I could get. Back to the internet and I eventually found your site, and the first clue that a failing power supply on my Grundig box might be responsible (why didn't anybody else suggest this?). I order the capacitor replacements (which arrived after only 36 hours, despite ordering on a Sunday) and fitted them that evening. Result: 100% improvement in signal quality and we can actually watch digital TV without the picture breaking up, freezing or the sound going. Marvellous! Thankyou so much for solving this problem and for your excellent advice and amazingly fast service. John M.
Regarding Customer receipt (Keep-me): 3155411 Hi, Thanks for your concern and sorry for not responding sooner! The upgrade and repair kit arrived very promptly and I installed it in my (seemingly lost cause) sky digibox that evening. To my delight it worked and for about a third of the price of just getting an 'engineer' to look at it, never mind fix it, I now have a working box again. I have also followed the advice on your site and given the equipment a bit of room to breathe! The only bit I found difficult was the shrink fit sleeving for one of the capacitors, which I only managed to get about half on. Thank you very much for your advice and efficient service. Regards, Steve
Regarding Customer receipt (Order ID): 3193932 Good Morning Thank you for my order which was received next day, excellent service and it was good to be kept informed of progress by Email. Now the technical bit. According to the postcode search we cannot receive freeview in this location, however by entering the map reference into that excellent Wolfbane site (from your "Freeview Bible" eBook) it showed that extreme fringe reception was possible, and I knew this to be the case as I was already receiving from the Wrekin transmitter. (Our "local" transmitter broadcasts Welsh flavoured programs). When a colleague and nearish neighbour asked if he could receive freeview, I entered his map reference and again was rewarded with extreme fringe reception possible. A DAT 45 with MRD and a graded Nokia 221T was ordered from you and when installed gave 50% signal and 100% quality, together with main and alternate channels. So, when living in rural areas like ours I would suggest always using the map reference option. Thanks again, John ps, My own set-up uses a Hauppauge DEC 2000-t freeview box because I thought it may be useful to interface it to my PC. This does not seem to display the text channels and "the red Button" does not work (no BBCi). I thought that this was because I was missing a couple of multiplexes from the Wrekin as I receive the higher channels from our local station, ie I have two aerials and a filter combiner. However, when I tried the Nokia box at this location, text and BBCi worked. Perhaps I`ll throw the DEC away!!
Cust Ord: 3195303 Hi, thanks for your quick service & Saturday delivery of the Metronic 85cm dish. Contrary to stuff I've read, you may be interested to know that I've got this working temporarily in my back room. With a monoblock pointed at 13&19 I get about 1200 channels - with most channels on decent strength/quality. This is through double glazing as well!!! (I will be mounting this outside when weather & time permits!) Keep up the good service, Mark.
Hi I just wanted to thank you for the invaluable information on your website, regarding cutting pin 19 on the scart lead coming out of my tv to my dvd recorder. This has cured a ghosting problem which has been bugging me. Thanks, Lee
Regarding Customer receipt (Order ID): 3188378 I would just like to say "THANKS". I ordered 2 remotes and 2 tvlink's. GREAT PRODUCT, GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE, BRILLIANT ONLINE HELP, PROMPT DELIVERY. "KEEP IT UP". Lee
Regarding Customer receipt (Order ID): 3183465 Thanks for your email regarding the Grundig Relkit it is nice to see that you care enough to follow up your sales of the above. In answer to your questions I received my kit OK within a few days of placing my order and was able to carry out the repair/ modification without any problems. This cured all of the faults I had been experiencing with the Sky box which included jerking and intermitant reception on certain channels ( Bloomberg was one)intermitantly starting up in Monochrome and flashing back into colour also intermitantly resetting itself when changing channel. When the box was cold it was impossible to watch anything until it had warmed up for a least 20 minutes. I should say that I have had plenty of experience in carrying out the procedures required as I was trained in the RAF as a ground wireless fitter in 1959 when all fault finding was done down to component level and had worked all my life since then in telecomms, electronics and computers I am now 66 and semi-retired. However as most fault repair these days is done by board changing it was refreshing to find somone who is still finds the faulty components. The only critisism I would like to make is that of the charge made for postage. My wife is deputy manager of a post office and reckons that a package of that size and weight should not cost more than 50P I realise that there are other costs involved as well but even so. Apart from this I am very satisfied and when you consider the cost of calling out a Sky Engineer who would be unlikly to cure the fault any way it was a bargain! Thanks Again John Postage charges are explained on this page: http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/postage.htm#minimum
Regarding Customer receipt (Order ID): 280908NM Hi Thanks for an excellent service, the parts I ordered on the 9th arrived on the 11th. This has been a lot less hassle that trying to source parts in Colchester. Regards Roy
Regarding Customer receipt (Order ID): 3172351 Delighted to receive your follow-up and equally delighted to reply. I discovered your technical notes re tvLink via the Internet and they were extremely useful in identifying the source of the problem. It only seemed fair, therefore, to purchase the replacement tvLink from you. The price was competitive, too. It duly arrived and a minute I had the remore TV working again with Sky. Just the ticket! Richard
Regarding Customer receipt (Order ID): 3173930 Thank you very much for the very quick delivery of the Sky Remote that I ordered from you. It was ordered on Sunday and arrivied on Tuesday It such a pleasent change to receive such good service from a company these days. Thanks, Tony.
Hi, Thanks for Janet's message. I was able to download both the email books when I got the hang of the system. They are great reads and had difficulty in putting them down. Worth the money twice over. Not so the free Beginners Guide. I print everything out as I hate reading from the screen. The Light Cyan border really was a pain. I print on both sides of the paper but the edges got so soggy that the paper wasn't taken through parallel so I got frilly edges. Still readable of course but why waste your clients ink? I got through HALF a cartridge. MP: Apologies! This has been fixed. I was interested in the Pace Twin set top box before I read 'your' remarks so was disappointed but now have come across two more with hard drives. Panasonic TU-CTH100 (£280 ) and Humax PVR8000T (£180) both have 80 Gb discs. I don't suppose you have any knowledge of them? MP: Umm, no. Anybody? Best wishes, Peter
Regarding Customer receipt (Order ID): 3169060 Hi Nicola! The following were missing from the delivery that arrived on Tuesday: 10 F socket to RF Adaptor @ £0.95 BUT I have discovered that I don't need them after all... If they are wending their way by the scenic route I can find a use for them but if they still languish in the warehouse don't disturb them. I WILL be placing another order today AND I think you are brilliant, I leave the sorting-out in you capable hands. Best wishes to all the crew, tony
Martin, Just to let you know, another satisfied customer. I was having problems with picture blocking and pixelating, mainly on sky sports news, 408. This on a Grundig GDS200/1. I have just fitted relkit33b and all now appears to be well. The thing that threw me was that the picture was worse in cloudy weather, this made me have the dish alignment checked first, but I guess if there is noise in the power supply, then any slightly degraded signal is going to be worse than it might otherwise be. Anyway, great service, Thanks. Keith.
(top) Note: Mediabullet has moved servers From Radio Bullet ( http://www.mediabullet.co.uk/radio/ ): From Sky Digi Online ( http://www.mediabullet.co.uk/skydigital ): (top)
eBook Updates - Installing Sky Digital November 2, 2004 (minor typos corrected).
- Sky Digibox Repair November 5, 2004 minor addition and corrections.
- All eBooks have been moved to a secure server which requires a username and password. Please contact Me with your original Order number and ask for the new download information, stating exactly which eBook(s) you purchased and the EBK number.
http://www.The-Cool-Book-Shop.co.uk | 
