There’s normally people here who know stuff. So I’m hoping someone can help.

We just bought a new TV, which has Freesat installed. I thought this might be a good moment, then, to ditch Sky and cut our costs. But I need to persuade my wife. This evening, I unplugged the input to our Sky+ box, connected it to the back of the TV and did a channel search.

But the reception is poor; it keeps freezing or pixelating. This has never happened when viewing via a Sky box. I plugged the cable back into the Sky box and the picture is fine.

What am I missing? Do I need to leave it for more time to stabilise? Or is there something about the Sky box (or other bits of the Sky installed kit) which is causing this.

I’m sure you will still get the Freesat set of channels through your skybox if you stop paying a sub…
Used to be the case.

Do you have Sky Q or normal Sky HD?
If you have Sky Q then you need a different lnb on your dish.
If you have Sky hd or Sky + then it should work fine.
Try the other cable from your Sky box as the first one you tried may have a fault on it.

It’s Sky HD. And yes, as far as I am aware, we can continue to view the free channels via the Sky box, but I was hoping that having a built in receiver would allow me to ditch the Sky box, and have just the one remote control.

Tried each cable. No difference (that I could see).

Have you done an auto tune on your tv? Also on some TVs it may ask which satellite you want to use, if it does it’s astra 28.2.

Worth stripping the cables again before placing them in the TV.

Done an auto tune – get a listing, and can select channels, it’s just that the reception then is variable. Looks fine for a few minutes, then pixels, freezing etc.

The TV says it’s looking at “ASTRA 28.2E, LNB Frequency 9750/10600” (that’s how it came, I didn’t select it)

Strange one that. I would try a factory reset on the TV, it will be in the system settings somewhere.
If after that you have no joy and you’ve checked the cable end as Drac said and they are ok you have two choices really. Return the TV and get a replacement or get a local TV/Satellite engineer to come round and check the signal from your dish.
In theory if it works on your Sky box it should be ok on your tv but there are a lot of grey areas.
I’ve come across plenty of brand new TVs in my time that have been faulty.

Thanks, all. Think I’ll look at the cable tomorrow.

you can check how good a signal your getting from the dish in one of the sky box menus, shows signal strengh and quaility for both inputs. been on Q for a couple of years so can’t remember where it is in the menus

Thanks. Something else to check this evening.