There's some really great tips on this forum, but they tend to be a bit spread out. So I thought it might be useful to answer some questions which seem to come up a lot, and put them all in one place. I know there are more definitive guides to some of this stuff on here, but this is intend to be a short, easy to read, step-by-step guide, of the sort I would have liked to have found myself, just a few months ago, when I first started using Skybox. So here goes.
My machine is the Skybox F5S, but I'm guessing most of these tips will work for earlier models, but you should probably CHECK FIRST if you have a different model, especially before trying anything more involved.
MANUALLY FIX MISSING CHANNELS
Every now and then when you change channels, you'll get an error message on the screen saying "Program Missing". That's because the satellite operator has moved the channel to a different frequency. There are various technical reasons for this, which I won't go into, but you don't have to wait for AJ to upload a new TP_PROG file to get these channels working again yourself. The process is slightly convoluted if you're a bit of a technophobe, but unless you do something crazy, like switch the box off half way through an operation, or disconnect the USB drive without ejecting it properly, you can't break your Skybox by doing the following, to manually rescan for missing channels.
1) While you're on the channel which is now missing, press the Info button on the remote control, and make a note of the number under the channel name. It'll say something like FQ 11798. This is the transponder number on the satellite.
2) Now, press the Menu button, go to the Installation section, and choose TP List.
3) Scroll down the list until you find FQ 11798, or whatever the transponder number was for your missing channel, and press OK on the remote.
4) Leave all the settings in the TP Search box as they are, and press OK on the remote control again.
If the missing channel has simply moved to another slot on the same transponder, once the Skybox has completed a short scan, your missing channel should now be added to the end of your 'All Satellites' list. Press exit on the remote until you go back to live TV, press OK on the remote control, and make sure that you're in the 'All Satellite' view, by pressing the Red button on the remote and choosing 'All'. You should now be able to go to the very end of the list and see the channels you just added in the TP Search. If not, press the Power Off button on the remote, and restart the box.
If performing a TP Search doesn't restore your missing channels, it's probably because it's been moved to a different transponder. In this case, you need to go to this website and do the following. Astra 1N / Astra 2A / Astra 2D / Astra 2F / Eutelsat 28A / Eutelsat 28B (28.2?E) - All transmissions - frequencies - KingOfSat
5) Find the name of the channel you're missing on kingofsat.net. You can search the page by hitting Command + F, on an Apple Mac, or Control + F on a Windows PC, and type the name of the missing channel.
6) In the table which contains the name of your missing channel, the banner across the top will read something like... '28.2?E Astra 1N 10773.00 H 45 UK DVB-S QPSK 22000 5/6 ASTRA, 33.8 Mbps NID:2 TID:2045'. The only part we're interested in is the transponder number ? which in this case is '10773'.
7) Repeat steps 2, 3, and 4 above, searching instead this time for '10773', or whatever the transponder number is for your missing channel.
If all of that fails (because sometimes kingofsat.net takes a while to be updated) you can still manually add your missing channel using the Skybox's Installation menu...
8) Press the Menu button on the remote, to go into the Installation system settings.
9) Choose 'Single Satellite Search', and change the Scan Mode to 'Accurate'. You could leave this setting on the default 'Blind Scan', but it will take longer for the Skybox to scan all available frequencies, and you'll end up with a lot of 'No Name' channels cluttering up your 'All Satellites' menu. This will also add all of the missing Adult channels, if you were previously using AJ's None-Adult TP_PROG.
Once the scan is complete you may need to restart your Skybox by powering off and on again, but you should now have lots of extra channels towards the end of your 'All Satellite' channel guide. Go to channel 1, press OK on the remote, and press Left to go to the last page of your channels. If not, press the Red button on the remote, and choose 'All'.
Although the channels which you've now manually added won't be in the usual place as they were on AJ's TP_PROG, it will get you back up and running again until AJ has a chance to post the latest update.
CAN I NETWORK MY SKYBOX TO MY PC AND USE IT AS A MEDIA SERVER?
The short answer to that one unfortunately is NO. There is currently no way of accessing the USB drive connected to your Skybox via the network, so as to drag and drop files onto it from your PC. Neither is there any way of browsing a networked (shared) drive from the PC, via the Skybox's Media Player. The only thing you can do at the moment via the network, is update the TP_PROG file and some other settings, using the official LAN tool from Skybox.cc SkyBox | SkyBox
Once you've installed the LAN Tool (Windows only unfortunately) you need to enter your Skybox's IP address. To find your Skybox IP address, press the Menu button, go to 'Network Setting', choose Setup from whichever network interface is currently Green, or Active. In there you'll see a number of settings which are greyed out. Your IP address will be something like 192.168.000.007. When you come to enter this in the LAN Tool field named 'BOXIP' you need to remove all but one of the zeros. So 192.168.000.007 would become 192.168.0.7. The Password box in the LAN Tool software is the same as the password set on your Skybox, which unless you've manually changed it will be set to the default of 0000 (four zeros).
Once connected, if you placed AJ's TP_PROG file in the same folder on your computer as the LAN Tool software, you will now see it in the lefthand box marked 'Local File List' under 'System'. Highlighting it and clicking the Right arrow will place it onto your Skybox, so you can go through the usual update channels procedure without having to place the TP_PROG file on a USB memory stick.
It remains to be seen if there are any plans to extend the networking capabilities of the Skybox, so it works as a networked media player. For the time being, you will have to take the USB memory stick out of your Skybox and connect it to your PC or Mac, and manually drag and drop the files you want to watch on the Skybox Media Player on to it. Unfortunately, because the memory stick needs to be FAT32 formatted (the older file system used by pre-Windows 7 PC's) no file larger than 2 gigabytes can be written to the USB drive. So if you have a video file which is larger than this, you'll need to split it into smaller chunks, or convert it to another format, using something like Handbrake: HandBrake: Open Source Video Transcoder
WHY DOES THE SOUND AND / OR PICTURE FLICKER EVERY NOW AND THEN?
Some users don't appear to have an issue with this, and others find it a big problem. The basic idea is that you can use a connected USB memory stick as a hard drive, to buffer live TV, for pause, rewind, fast forward, and recording, similar to branded consumer grade Freesat boxes. Unfortunately the way this has been implemented on the current version of the Skybox Firmware (the special software which makes your Skybox run) isn't very stable, and the only fix which seems to stop the picture and / or sound jittering (especially on HD channels) seems to be to do the following:
1) Press the Menu button on the remote, and go to the Multimedia Settings page.
2) Choose PVR Settings, and switch Time-shift from ON to OFF. You can leave PS Record set to ON.
3) Press Exit on the remote control until you go back to live TV. The stuttering should no longer be a problem. You can still hit the Record button on the remote control and capture the current program to the connected USB memory stick, but unfortunately this means that a giant red Record button will be on the screen the whole time, until you press Stop. I haven't been able to find out if there are any plans to change this annoying intrusion in future versions of the firmware, so we can only wait and see. But at least you can go for a pee, or answer the phone, without having to miss some Z-lister eat a bug on 'I used to be a Celebrity.. ..get me back on television!'
WHY IS THE ELECTRONIC PROGRAMME GUIDE (EPG) SO BAD?
One of the great things about consumer grade set top boxes from the big media companies, is that you can set the box to automatically record any program from any channel up to two weeks in advance, using the on-screen programme listings guide. This is made possible because the set top box makers have agreements in place with the major broadcasters to make there TV and Radio listings available weeks in advance, and the special software which runs on consumer grade set top boxes can access this database which is encoded into some of those elusive 'No Name' channels mentioned earlier.
Unfortunately the last of the run-by-volunteers 'open' TV listings websites which provided a similar service via the internet closed down a long time ago, and so there is currently no way for the Skybox to read any programme information beyond the generic Now and Next info., which is broadcast alongside the TV signal as clear text.
You can, however, still set the Skybox to begin recording at certain times on any channel, if you know what time the show you want to record is going to be broadcast. So my work around for this is to use two apps on my Android smartphone (also available for iPhone) one called tv24.co.uk, and another called simply TV Guide. You can search for these on your App Store of choice, and both are free.
1) Press the M/P button on the Skybox remote control, and choose 'Timer Setting'
2) You now have 8 programmable time slots. Choose one, and change Timer Mode from Off to either Once, or Daily.
3) Enter the time your programme is set to start from the TV Guide smartphone app, choosing the correct channel and programme length.
Once you press OK, at the times you've chosen, the box will automatically switch channels and begin recording a .ts video file to your USB thumb drive, which can be played back using VLC Media Player on your PC, if you put the USB stick into your computer.
Annoyingly, however, after the program is done recording, the Skybox will shut down. Meaning that if you decided you no longer wanted to record the programme, and watch another channel instead, unless you remember to also disable the timer settings the Skybox will still shutdown. So you need to remember to repeat steps 1 and 2 above, choosing this time 'Off' in step 2, instead of 'Daily' or 'Once'.
Hope that helps! I'll add more as I discover them for myself.
My machine is the Skybox F5S, but I'm guessing most of these tips will work for earlier models, but you should probably CHECK FIRST if you have a different model, especially before trying anything more involved.
MANUALLY FIX MISSING CHANNELS
Every now and then when you change channels, you'll get an error message on the screen saying "Program Missing". That's because the satellite operator has moved the channel to a different frequency. There are various technical reasons for this, which I won't go into, but you don't have to wait for AJ to upload a new TP_PROG file to get these channels working again yourself. The process is slightly convoluted if you're a bit of a technophobe, but unless you do something crazy, like switch the box off half way through an operation, or disconnect the USB drive without ejecting it properly, you can't break your Skybox by doing the following, to manually rescan for missing channels.
1) While you're on the channel which is now missing, press the Info button on the remote control, and make a note of the number under the channel name. It'll say something like FQ 11798. This is the transponder number on the satellite.
2) Now, press the Menu button, go to the Installation section, and choose TP List.
3) Scroll down the list until you find FQ 11798, or whatever the transponder number was for your missing channel, and press OK on the remote.
4) Leave all the settings in the TP Search box as they are, and press OK on the remote control again.
If the missing channel has simply moved to another slot on the same transponder, once the Skybox has completed a short scan, your missing channel should now be added to the end of your 'All Satellites' list. Press exit on the remote until you go back to live TV, press OK on the remote control, and make sure that you're in the 'All Satellite' view, by pressing the Red button on the remote and choosing 'All'. You should now be able to go to the very end of the list and see the channels you just added in the TP Search. If not, press the Power Off button on the remote, and restart the box.
If performing a TP Search doesn't restore your missing channels, it's probably because it's been moved to a different transponder. In this case, you need to go to this website and do the following. Astra 1N / Astra 2A / Astra 2D / Astra 2F / Eutelsat 28A / Eutelsat 28B (28.2?E) - All transmissions - frequencies - KingOfSat
5) Find the name of the channel you're missing on kingofsat.net. You can search the page by hitting Command + F, on an Apple Mac, or Control + F on a Windows PC, and type the name of the missing channel.
6) In the table which contains the name of your missing channel, the banner across the top will read something like... '28.2?E Astra 1N 10773.00 H 45 UK DVB-S QPSK 22000 5/6 ASTRA, 33.8 Mbps NID:2 TID:2045'. The only part we're interested in is the transponder number ? which in this case is '10773'.
7) Repeat steps 2, 3, and 4 above, searching instead this time for '10773', or whatever the transponder number is for your missing channel.
If all of that fails (because sometimes kingofsat.net takes a while to be updated) you can still manually add your missing channel using the Skybox's Installation menu...
8) Press the Menu button on the remote, to go into the Installation system settings.
9) Choose 'Single Satellite Search', and change the Scan Mode to 'Accurate'. You could leave this setting on the default 'Blind Scan', but it will take longer for the Skybox to scan all available frequencies, and you'll end up with a lot of 'No Name' channels cluttering up your 'All Satellites' menu. This will also add all of the missing Adult channels, if you were previously using AJ's None-Adult TP_PROG.
Once the scan is complete you may need to restart your Skybox by powering off and on again, but you should now have lots of extra channels towards the end of your 'All Satellite' channel guide. Go to channel 1, press OK on the remote, and press Left to go to the last page of your channels. If not, press the Red button on the remote, and choose 'All'.
Although the channels which you've now manually added won't be in the usual place as they were on AJ's TP_PROG, it will get you back up and running again until AJ has a chance to post the latest update.
CAN I NETWORK MY SKYBOX TO MY PC AND USE IT AS A MEDIA SERVER?
The short answer to that one unfortunately is NO. There is currently no way of accessing the USB drive connected to your Skybox via the network, so as to drag and drop files onto it from your PC. Neither is there any way of browsing a networked (shared) drive from the PC, via the Skybox's Media Player. The only thing you can do at the moment via the network, is update the TP_PROG file and some other settings, using the official LAN tool from Skybox.cc SkyBox | SkyBox
Once you've installed the LAN Tool (Windows only unfortunately) you need to enter your Skybox's IP address. To find your Skybox IP address, press the Menu button, go to 'Network Setting', choose Setup from whichever network interface is currently Green, or Active. In there you'll see a number of settings which are greyed out. Your IP address will be something like 192.168.000.007. When you come to enter this in the LAN Tool field named 'BOXIP' you need to remove all but one of the zeros. So 192.168.000.007 would become 192.168.0.7. The Password box in the LAN Tool software is the same as the password set on your Skybox, which unless you've manually changed it will be set to the default of 0000 (four zeros).
Once connected, if you placed AJ's TP_PROG file in the same folder on your computer as the LAN Tool software, you will now see it in the lefthand box marked 'Local File List' under 'System'. Highlighting it and clicking the Right arrow will place it onto your Skybox, so you can go through the usual update channels procedure without having to place the TP_PROG file on a USB memory stick.
It remains to be seen if there are any plans to extend the networking capabilities of the Skybox, so it works as a networked media player. For the time being, you will have to take the USB memory stick out of your Skybox and connect it to your PC or Mac, and manually drag and drop the files you want to watch on the Skybox Media Player on to it. Unfortunately, because the memory stick needs to be FAT32 formatted (the older file system used by pre-Windows 7 PC's) no file larger than 2 gigabytes can be written to the USB drive. So if you have a video file which is larger than this, you'll need to split it into smaller chunks, or convert it to another format, using something like Handbrake: HandBrake: Open Source Video Transcoder
WHY DOES THE SOUND AND / OR PICTURE FLICKER EVERY NOW AND THEN?
Some users don't appear to have an issue with this, and others find it a big problem. The basic idea is that you can use a connected USB memory stick as a hard drive, to buffer live TV, for pause, rewind, fast forward, and recording, similar to branded consumer grade Freesat boxes. Unfortunately the way this has been implemented on the current version of the Skybox Firmware (the special software which makes your Skybox run) isn't very stable, and the only fix which seems to stop the picture and / or sound jittering (especially on HD channels) seems to be to do the following:
1) Press the Menu button on the remote, and go to the Multimedia Settings page.
2) Choose PVR Settings, and switch Time-shift from ON to OFF. You can leave PS Record set to ON.
3) Press Exit on the remote control until you go back to live TV. The stuttering should no longer be a problem. You can still hit the Record button on the remote control and capture the current program to the connected USB memory stick, but unfortunately this means that a giant red Record button will be on the screen the whole time, until you press Stop. I haven't been able to find out if there are any plans to change this annoying intrusion in future versions of the firmware, so we can only wait and see. But at least you can go for a pee, or answer the phone, without having to miss some Z-lister eat a bug on 'I used to be a Celebrity.. ..get me back on television!'
WHY IS THE ELECTRONIC PROGRAMME GUIDE (EPG) SO BAD?
One of the great things about consumer grade set top boxes from the big media companies, is that you can set the box to automatically record any program from any channel up to two weeks in advance, using the on-screen programme listings guide. This is made possible because the set top box makers have agreements in place with the major broadcasters to make there TV and Radio listings available weeks in advance, and the special software which runs on consumer grade set top boxes can access this database which is encoded into some of those elusive 'No Name' channels mentioned earlier.
Unfortunately the last of the run-by-volunteers 'open' TV listings websites which provided a similar service via the internet closed down a long time ago, and so there is currently no way for the Skybox to read any programme information beyond the generic Now and Next info., which is broadcast alongside the TV signal as clear text.
You can, however, still set the Skybox to begin recording at certain times on any channel, if you know what time the show you want to record is going to be broadcast. So my work around for this is to use two apps on my Android smartphone (also available for iPhone) one called tv24.co.uk, and another called simply TV Guide. You can search for these on your App Store of choice, and both are free.
1) Press the M/P button on the Skybox remote control, and choose 'Timer Setting'
2) You now have 8 programmable time slots. Choose one, and change Timer Mode from Off to either Once, or Daily.
3) Enter the time your programme is set to start from the TV Guide smartphone app, choosing the correct channel and programme length.
Once you press OK, at the times you've chosen, the box will automatically switch channels and begin recording a .ts video file to your USB thumb drive, which can be played back using VLC Media Player on your PC, if you put the USB stick into your computer.
Annoyingly, however, after the program is done recording, the Skybox will shut down. Meaning that if you decided you no longer wanted to record the programme, and watch another channel instead, unless you remember to also disable the timer settings the Skybox will still shutdown. So you need to remember to repeat steps 1 and 2 above, choosing this time 'Off' in step 2, instead of 'Daily' or 'Once'.
Hope that helps! I'll add more as I discover them for myself.
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