Sky Q Install

[Moley RUFC]

Finally upgrading the aging tv setup I have.

I’m looking at buying a Sky Q 4K box for £199 as a straight upgrade for my current Sky+ box. I’ll look to upgrade a decent OLED screen at the same time. My questions relates to the install.

Can anyone confirm the maximum distance a sky engineer will run the cabling from the wall socket to the new Sky Q box. My tv will be wall mounted around 4m away from the wall socket, does this sound like an issue (will there be a quality loss on the picture running that far?)

[SidJames]

My total run of cable from dish to Q box is about 25m, of which 10m is inside. No wall sockets, they just bosh straight through the wall.

Good clarity of picture.

[megaphone]

Why are you paying £199 for a Sky Q box? Sky will give you one and install it for literally nothing. Just call Sky and haggle. Also your current subscription will likely not work with a Sky Q box.

RE the cable, they will run any reasonable length, however I doubt they will run up through a wall or chase out walls etc, the cable will just hang down to the box. Maybe a few £££ might help.

Edited by megaphone on Monday 22 January 08:57

[AB]

I'll ask the Sky Engineer anything you need to know if you get the questions to me before 10am

My slot is 10am - midday and it's the 3rd time they've had to come out because the extra mini boxes drop connection and won't connect again.

[Moley RUFC]

megaphone said:

Why are you paying £199 for a Sky Q box? Sky will give you one and install it for literally nothing. Just call Sky and haggle. Also your current subscription will likely not work with a Sky Q box.

RE the cable, they will run any reasonable length, however I doubt they will run up through a wall or chase out walls etc, the cable will just hang down to the box. Maybe a few £££ might help.

Edited by megaphone on Monday 22 January 08:57

Fair comment although I do have the HD and box sets package which I understand is what you need.

[megaphone]

IIRC the Q box needs a specific card for it to work, number needs to begin with a 7. You'll have to upgrade your sub to a 'Q" sub anyway, so you may as well start a new contract and get it all done by Sky. They have to upgrade your LNB on the dish as well.

Where are you intending on buying a Q box from? Do not buy second hand, all Sky Q kit stays the property of Sky, they can block unauthorised boxes.

[Moley RUFC]

Yep, I was going to ring sky and upgrade to Q and see what can be done regards the 4K box. Fed up of watching great tv on an awful setup (first world problems)

[LocoBlade]

AB said:

I'll ask the Sky Engineer anything you need to know if you get the questions to me before 10am

My slot is 10am - midday and it's the 3rd time they've had to come out because the extra mini boxes drop connection and won't connect again.

If your third engineeer visit didn't fix things you might find this quite useful to better understand how Sky Q boxes try to communicate with each other and what to do to fix them yourself:
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/tvs-entertainment/p...

I've had similar issues getting my 2 ethernet and 1 Wifi Mini boxes to work reliably since I switched broadband from Sky to BT last week but think I've now sorted myself in the 10 day period between booking an engineer and him actually turning up on Wednesday. If you want the full lowdown on how they're now configured then let me know.

[outnumbered]

LocoBlade said:

If your third engineeer visit didn't fix things you might find this quite useful to better understand how Sky Q boxes try to communicate with each other and what to do to fix them yourself:
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/tvs-entertainment/p...

That seems like an exercise in how not to design something for consumer use !

[LocoBlade]

outnumbered said:

LocoBlade said:

If your third engineeer visit didn't fix things you might find this quite useful to better understand how Sky Q boxes try to communicate with each other and what to do to fix them yourself:
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/tvs-entertainment/p...

That seems like an exercise in how not to design something for consumer use !

Yup, it's a massively (over)complicated setup especially when you also have Sky Broadband at which point the Minis act as Access Points for the Wifi, meaning the mesh has to carry data for TV distribution and general house Wifi traffic. It also does some odd network "tricks", my managed switch used to throw a fit with the default Sky engineer setup because each Sky Q device has a spoofed / virtual MAC address which it uses on the network regardless of whether it's currently using Wifi, Ethernet or even Powerline to communicate. It jumps around between those connections quite regularly (despite me giving most of the boxes 1Gb Ethernet!) meaning a device with the same MAC could suddenly appear on a different part of the network which seemed to upset the switch under certain circumstances.

With my setup the main Q box and two of the three Minis are ethernet connected and as they no longer act as WiFi APs I've ended up disabling Wifi on those Minis completely. I've also disabled 2.4Ghz Wifi on the main box to force it to use Ethernet for internet connection and only have 5Ghz enabled so the Mini in the kitchen can talk to it via it's own private WiFi network separate from the house internet Wifi. This with Powerline disabled on all devices has been rock solid for connectivity over the past 5 or 6 days, we have an engineer coming tomorrow still which I've been loathed to cancel in case it crapped out again so hopefully it will just be a case of him validating the setup to confirm there's not a better way to do it, and if he changes it for the worse I've got all the settings noted down so can always revert back!

Edited by LocoBlade on Tuesday 23 January 19:14