Openbox - no signal on most FTA channels

[James Morgan]

Hi,
I am a novice regarding satellite dishes/boxes and looking for some help in setting up my openbox. I bought it a year ago as a cheap 'freesat' box in my rented property that had a satellite dish. Seemed easy to use - just plugged it in to the satellite cable and ready to use. I have just moved house and can't get it to work properly. I don't really understand the set up in the new property. There are 2 satellite dishes outside. There is a twin cable coming into the house with 2 coax cables. I don't know which of these to plug into the openbox. I have tried both, but with either I don't get a signal on any of the normal FTA channels (BBC, ITV etc). If I do a scan for new channels it finds lots of them (Dave, Really, Sky News, Channel 4+1), but I still don't get any signals on the normal FTA channels. So I know the box is picking up a feed from the dish, but can't seem to find all the channels. A quick google search came up with info about LNBs. At this point I was getting very lost and unsure what a LNB is and whether I need to reconfigure the openbox for an alternative LNB. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

[Hadron]

Is the dish a communal one, shared with other households, or is it for your property only?

If it's a shared dish, I was wondering if it might need the "no signal fix" that affected channels on vertical polarisation, but I see that you mention "Really" as one of the channels that you can view. Really is on a vertical transponder, so it can't be that issue.

Your LNB frequency settings on the Openbox should be set to Universal (9750 - 10600).

[James Morgan]

Is the dish a communal one, shared with other households, or is it for your property only?

If it's a shared dish, I was wondering if it might need the "no signal fix" that affected channels on vertical polarisation, but I see that you mention "Really" as one of the channels that you can view. Really is on a vertical transponder, so it can't be that issue.

Your LNB frequency settings on the Openbox should be set to Universal (9750 - 10600).

Thanks for the feedback. It is not a communal one. LNB is set up to be Univeral. I had tried changing it to other LNB's but this didn't seem to make a difference

[James Morgan]

Just a bit more info, if I do a blind search with each of the two coax cables, I get a large number of channels (a few hundred on each) but these channels are different for each coax cable. I am searching using Sky UK 28 satellite. However, neither of the cables find any of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 channels (although one seems to find Channel 4 +1). Most of the channels it finds are foreign but there are quite a few of the more obscure English FTA Channels (eg Dave, Quest, Really). It finds all the normal scrambled channels (Sky Sports, Eurosport, BT Sport etc)

[James Morgan]

After a bit more research I think I have found the cause of my problem which may be of interest to others. Firstly whilst I have 2 satellite dishes, one of these has been disconnected. The other box appears to be set up for Sky Q. This has 2 cables and will only work with Sky Q boxes as it uses a proprietary LNB. My solutions are to subscribe to the Sky Q service (expensive) or to replace the LNB on the dish (much cheaper, but need a ladder!). I somewhat naively thought that all satellite dishes were the same, but I now understand it is a lot more complex than that. I am a bit old school and look back fondly at the good old days when you simply plugged your TV into the aerial and got 5 channels!

https://www.smartaerials.co.uk/blog/what-is-difference-between-a-sky-q-and-quad-universal-lnb