| Gill and I are heading off to Crete for a couple of weeks in the sun. However, the Sales team will still be here to handle your orders and you can get technical help from our volunteers in the discussion forum. Will somebody please buy my wife's car? It's a nice, nippy Toyota Corrolla in excellent nick. If you don't want it, email the page URL to all your friends in the UK. Thanks! I've been busy this month. I bought a camcorder and used the software that comes free with every new Apple Mac, to create a tutorial video on DVD called "Installing a Sky Minidish". I don't have much time before I go on holiday but I've burned SIX copies - on special offer at just £5.95 plus £2.50 post and packing plus VAT = £9.93 When I return from holiday I'll start the real production batch and the price will go up. So, if you want one of the six copies at this price, you must order it before 8pm on Monday 29th August. Click HERE for more information.  LNB skew adjustment | Dear Martin, For the last few days I haven't been able to get a signal. My neighbour says I need to adjust the LMB skew but I don't know where to look for it. Is it the thing that hangs below the dish? (Photo enclosed). Roy B.
Herts. | | Roy, The "skew" is the rotational position of the LNB. This is normally set by releasing the clamp screw then rotating the LNB body to give the best "signal quality" indication on the Digibox menu screen. It will always be a clockwise rotation (looking at the front of the dish) from the vertical cable hanging straight down. However, judging from your photograph, I suspect that something more than skew adjustment is needed - possibly a little welding. | 
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Key2Recoveries Several people have reported receiving demands for money from a company called "Key2Recoveries". Typically, they will be demanding £2.99 plus £25 collection fee for a pay-per-view film that you allegedly watched. If you receive such a demand, from this or any other company, don't panic. Make sure you get it in writing then take it to your local Trading Standards Office for advice. You might like to read the discussion about it, here: http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=258209
Goodbye CT100 Since the manufacturer, Raydex, was taken over by another company, CT100 has become harder to obtain. We have no reached a point where we simply can't buy it at a sensible price in 50m and 100m reels so we have removed it from our catalogue. However, we have always stated that H109F is just as good and it's cheaper!
Headphones for Hard of Hearing My wife has a slight hearing problem. which results in her repeatedly asking the question 'What did they say'. This is not helpful for domestic harmony. Have you - or do you know of - a device which would enable my wife to listen to the television via variable volume headphones while I listen to it normally? John Yes, our old "Pye" TV had a headphone jack socket in the front panel. I used to use it after everyone had gone to bed but I wanted to watch the midnight movie. If your TV hasn't an audio-out socket, it knocks that idea on the head. However, as analogue TV broadcasts will soon be switched off, you have presumably already installed a Freeview digital terrestrial receiver or a Sky Digibox. That makes life easier since these boxes usually have audio (left and Right) phono sockets at the rear. Failing that, there's a Scart socket to which a Scart adaptor can be fitted in order to provide audio sockets. Then all you need is a suitable headphone amplifier and a pair of comfortable headphones or earphones. We can offer you our Headphone stereo amplifier (stock code AV01575) which comes with a suitable adaptor and 5 metre lead. Price £33.95 plus postage (£5) and VAT. The amplifier has tone and volume controls which your wife can set for her own comfort level. Her listening levels will not be affected by your TV remote but, of course, they might vary if you change channel, so the amplifer should be placed within easy reach. The amplifier comes with a (safe) 15 volt transformer that requires its own mains socket so make sure there's one available. This item is not (yet) in our on-line catalogue, since there's not much demand for it, so please check with our Sales office on Monday to confirm price and delivery. There is a massive choice of earphones and headphones. We could certainly supply a good quality set but here's some advice: It's a personal choice which depends on wearer comfort, audio quality and price. You really need to get your wife to try out various types at a Hi-Fi store. If you buy these things by mail-order, you are taking a risk that they will be uncomfortable to wear for long periods or will sound awful because they are not designed to cope with the high volume levels that you wife may need. Getting Rid of Sky PIN (This is an edited version of an interesting discussion on our Forum). Hi there, I don't expect miracles but I have decided to contact you as I could really use any help you can provide. Basically, I live in Madrid. I have a Sky digibox - pace ds430N - with an Irish Sky card. I was hoping to be able to get the Irish channels in Madrid but have since found that I need a 2M antenna to be installed which is not straightforward due to logistical problems - in the end I have a 1.2 metre antenna installed. When I look at the signal strength & quality, they are pretty much not even close to 10%, the digbox says no signal found but the fact is that I do get the South signals which is OK for me. I brought the digibox to Ireland (as I found it didn't work at the beginning), tried it on my brothers TV (he had the same box) and discovered that as the card had not been used for a month or so they had de-activated it. It was reactivated following a call to SKy and I brought it back to Spain with me. The main advantage of this trip was that the first "all channel" screen showed all the channels and what was happening on each one. This avoided that I had to tune in each channel. What I discovered was that if the power went then the digibox had to recover this information and as it said "no satellite signal" all I had to do was to go to the "Add Channel" part of the menu and select the relevant transponder freq & Polarisation. Once I had obtained one or two of the channels and selected one of them with the "Other Channel" part of the menu, and left it on for a period of time, then the digibox re-acquired the main channel page again. So now I come to my problem - about 1 month ago, I found that in order to access channels on the "Other Channels" part of the menu I now had to enter a PIN. This was not there before and I am certain that this is preventing the Digibox to re-acquire all the channels. It is a real pain as anytime the power goes, I now have to find every channel manually and install it in the other channels part of the menu. ANY IDEAS HOW I CAN GET RID OF THE PIN?? Just before you tell me, I know I can ring up SKY and ask them to remove the pin but ringing up Sky from Spain is not a good idea I think! Any feedback would be gratefully accepted. I haven't come across this problem previously and, if YOU didn't enter the PIN in the first place, then I guess it must be a result of memory corruption. If you don't know what the PIN is (you don't say) then nobody can help you except BskyB who can set it to its default value via satellite transmission - provided that you can receive the default transponder (sounds as if you can't). I suspect that your problems stem from using a dish that's too small. Have you tried entering the default transponder parameters for the south beam? BTW the signal readings you are looking at seem to be for the default transponder. You should use the Manual Tuning menu to enter the south beam transponder parameters in order to see the signal readings for that. I know that your next question will be "what are the south beam transponder parameters?" Well, I don't recall but I think I documented them in my eBook "Installing Sky Digital TV" - but they may be out of date so if anyone else knows the answer, now's your chance to say! Martin Many thanks for your quick feedback. The PIN that I use is of course the last 4 digits on the back of the card and that always works i.e. the default one. Currently I just go to the "add channels" menu field, type in the relevant south beam transponder frequency & polarisation and it finds all the channels that are linked to that transponder. To look at these channels, I then go to the "Other channels" menu field, it asks for the PIN, I type in the PIN and I can then see the channels that I found earlier. I can get each of the south transponders by typing in each appropriate frequency and the polarisation. > I suspect that your problems stem from using a dish that's too small. Have you tried entering the default transponder parameters for the south beam? No I haven't although I assume that it starts on the default transponder frequency - see below for what I'll do One last point to mention is that for some reason I lost this problem a few weeks ago for about 5 days. In that case, I followed my approach above i.e. add channels, go to "Other Channels", selected e.g. UKTV Style, stayed there for 20 minutes and then the all channell menu appeared. It just seems to me that the PIN is preventing this which is why I was looking for a way to get around the problem. Certainly the antenna is small but the fact that I can tune individually each frequency and see a perfect picture suggests that this is not the problem. I've seen this PIN problem mentioned several times as a consequence of the new software download thats been going on. Assuming you have the new s/w, go into the new parental controls in the services menu, and disable any age restrictions that are set. If there arent any, set one, save it, then unset it. save the changes, and the problem should go away. Theres any easy way to see if you have the new version of the software. From any channel press 0 on the remote control. If a small speaker icon with 3 dashes after it pops up on the lower left corner of the screen you have the new software. (this is in preparation for radio stations being moved over to 4 digit numbers later in the year) .....After all there has to be plenty of space for new shopping channels to launch on Sky. I've got a long list of channels in the planning, and its depressing how many new shopping services are coming. South beam default seems to be 12.129 V. This site may be useful for more info: www.satelliteforcaravans.co.uk Analoguesat Hi there, Firstly the website address you gave me Ross was really useful and what I found interesting was that the box located at the bottom of that webpage defining how to get the channels where your digibox fails to recognise channels even with a test signal is the approach I applied below (and have been applying for the last few months). So to make a long story short, I managed to get rid of the PIN. Here is how I did it : - I put my digibox to standby and then unplugged it to allow it to forget all the possible changes I had made to it i.e. add channels etc - I switched it on and then went directly to services to change the default transponder - I changed the default transponder to the south beam default (12 129V) - I proceeded back to Add Channel menu selection and added a number of different channels linked to various south beam transponders - When I went to the other channels menu - the PIN was not required any more. I selected one of my channels - a few minutes later, I was able to go to the All channel selection and indeed all my channels had re-appeared. To add to the above, out of curiosity, I changed the default back to the north transponder and the PIN problem re-appeared. My guess is that Analoguesat was right in his suggestion to disable all the parental controls but for the case of the north transponder as default as I couldn't access the menu uption to "UNLOCK" all channels because I didn't have all the channels (it started searching and then said no signal found), I couldn't therefore disable them. Thanks both to Ross (Analoguesat) and Martin for your help in this matter. Another problem successfully resolved. One final thing to add - next week I'm going to connect my digibox to a friends 1.8 meter antenna to see if I can receive the Irish channels here in Madrid. I'll reset my box back to the north transponder default and I'll have a look to see if the PIN problem exists when I receive all the channels with the larger antenna. Any results I get I'll add to this topic to allow it to be as complete as possible. (top)
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Happy Customers Just a word of thanks rather than a question. I got your delivery this morning of a Loft Box, cable and connectors. I expected the installation to take all day (or longer) but with the help of your diagrams and E-Books I was done in a few hours. Everything works as described on your website and my two sons are thrilled to have MTV in their rooms while my wife is extremely happy with being able to change channels on the digibox while in the bedroom using the TVLink. The quality of the terestrial images in the rooms are much better than the RF signals we had previously, probably due to the quality of the cable and connectors which I chose with the advice on your site. A good, informative website and obviously a good company. Thank you. Ralph T
Regarding Customer receipt (Keep-me): sa19515053440 Congratulations! Thats what I call service, I ordered a 10m. phone ext. lead around 1530hrs yesterday (14/07/05), postman delivered at 0820hrs. this morning (15/07/05). Brilliant! Cheers, JW ( Pity you could'nt reply to my email address @aol. I had to give you my sons email and he forwarded your confirmation to me, complicated or what-hope you can receive from aol?) We receive messages and orders from AOL but our replies to AOL often get trashed. It's important that AOL users set their receiving preferences correctly and that they "whitelist" our domains at visionaids.co.uk, telepart.co.uk and satcure.net.
Shopping cart order number: SA21009055537 Equipment made by: Grundig Sky Model number on label or rear panel: none What I want to know (plus any other relevant information): I have purchased an Easy Jack telephone extender from you plus extra extension. I have used these to connect my Sky boxes despite the fact that I have Broadband and one Grundig box. I did use a telephone socket which has no phone attached to it. I also fitted Broadband filters. Everything seems to work and Sky say they are receiving signals from both boxes. The Broadband did go down initially but came back when I re-started the computer. Thank you! From karen b Thanks for the feedback. If you could let us know the Grundig model number and the layout of your telephone wiring, it would be most useful. Meanwhile we still advise customers that our wireless telephone extender is generally NOT compatible with Grundig Digiboxes or with ADSL.
Dear Martin, Great! I have soldered all capacitors and everything works now 100%. Everybody who owns a Pace MSS500 should order the Relkit10. Great work from your side. The packege was here in about 4 daxs (England-Austria) Everything works great! Congratulation! Thanks a lot The Pace MSS500 with positioner is a great receiver and now I can use this great analogue unit again. Alexander F Thanks, Alexander. I'm amazed how many people still use these analogue receivers. (top) From Sky Digi Online ( http://www.media247.co.uk ): (top)
eBook Updates - "Freeview Bible" June 26, 2005 MAJOR UPDATE! July 6th minor update.
- "Piping TV..." June 16 minor update.
- "Installing Sky..." July 25, 2005 minor update.
- All eBooks have been moved to a secure server which requires a username and password. If you can't access it, 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(s).
http://www.The-Cool-Book-Shop.co.uk | 
