Something strange happened the other day!!!

[crewmeal]

I was watching ITV1 on my digital TV the other day when all of a sudden there was some sort of signal interference with sound failure and little squares popping up on the screen. I checked the wiring and connections and found no problem - even checking the aerial socket and no joy. I even changed the wiring from the wall to the DVD player, still no joy!! Then I realised my phone wire was within an inch of the TV cable and causing intereference. So i rerouted it and all is well.
I didn't realise broadband signals could interfere with digital TV signals. As you have to have a phone link to the sky box its worth rerouting the cable away from any TV wires!!

[Whirlygig]

I had a similar probelm when I had Sky installed. My home phone and broadband was working fine until the Sky box had to be plugged in. This caused my Broadband to drop out. Now, since I can live without TV more easily than I could live without a computer, I called Sky.

They suggested that, given I don't (and never will) use Pay to View, I could disconnect the Sky box from the telephone. This I have done and everything's fine.

Cheers

Whirls

[bjkeates]

Did you have an ADSL microfilter connected between the Sky box and the phone line?

If you've got a broadband connection, ALL equipment using the line must have a microfilter between it and the socket. Not just the socket to which the broadband modem/router is connected.

[Bushfiva]

Yes, broadband can be noisy. Plain ol' Annex A covers around 26 kHz to 138 kHz. The various flavours use everything up to 2.2 MHz, over domestic wiring that was never designed or shielded for it.

Not only does ADSL affect nearby stuff, nearby stuff affects ADSL. Keep yer cables separated when you can.

Incidentally, the little squares are how digital TV signals show interference/lack of strength. None of the gradual degradation you get with analogue.

[RossEA]

We recently got upgraded to two Sky+ boxes a few weeks ago. Before that we had one standard sky box and dish and our broadband worked no problem with this. When the sky engineer came to install the two Sky+ boxes in the house he used the existing setup to replace the sky box and installed a whole new setup for the second sky+ in a different room.

The engineer forgot to place a microfilter between the second installed sky+ box, the result, our broadband kept cutting out every 5-10 minutes and it was doing my head in.

We bought 2 microfilters off eBay for the all expensive price of £1.99 and I fitted one of them into the connection of the Sky+ box! No problems, our Sky and Internet work perfectly fine along-side each other, and we can even use the phone at the same time! Thats 3 things on one line! Nice!

[nano404]

Ahh, Area-51 mis-placed one of their test planes (UFO for civilians) again. They do it quite often, no need to worry!:ok: