recent renovation - LNB and magic eye not working

[dejavuagain]

Sorry in advance as I am a novice at this and don't know all the correct terms.

We have just finished renovating which included all new wiring. We have gone for a centralised media cupboard on the ground floor.

problem 1 - Only 2 of 8 lines on octo-lnb are working - we have an octo-lnb which we have had for 2 years. Previousily, we only used 2 lines of the octo-lnb. In the renovation, we had 8 coax lines run from the dish to the media cupboard. I am only able to get 2 of 8 lines working. Is is possible to have a fault in the LNB? As the dish is on the top of 3 story house, troubleshooting directly with the dish is a bit limited.

I splurged and got an F-connector compression tool to put ends on all the wires. Rather than pull the copper braid back, I cut it flush with the insulator before installing the compression f-connectors. Could that be the problem?

problem 2 - Magic Eye is not working - In efforts to quickly get sky going, I did the following ---

In media cupboard on ground floor
(from dish) coax.....female type connector.....coax(to bedroom)....

in bedroom on 2nd floor
coax (from ground floor).....input to line1 on sky+HD box....TV

= sky was working fine; but we missed SKY+!!!!

So I moved the SKY+ HD box to the media cupboard and made the following changes:

In media cupboard on ground floor
(from dish) 2 coax.....line 1 and line 2 on sky box.....RF2 out..coax(to bedroom)

in bedroom on 2nd floor
coax (from ground floor)....patch line (which is coax with correct terminations)..... magic eye plugged into TV.


red light on magic eye does not work; but picture is being received in TV.

I have tested the following:
- turned on the RF power via installers menu and rebooted numerous times.

- magic eye WILL light up when plugged directly into RF2

- magic eye WILL light up when plugged into patch cable which is then plugged into RF2

I am guessing it is a problem with the coax connectors but I can receive a sky signal thru this cable fine. I am using the cable directly as we don't have wall plates.
Does the magic eye have different requirements for the cable then sky? Could it be the way I installed the F-connectors (same as above)?
or could the coax cable run be too long that it is deteriorating the signal?

[Graham M]

If the copper braid isn't making a connection inside the F-Connector then the link will not work.

[dejavuagain]

I think I get it....

the copper braid needs to be pulled back (rather than snipped) so that it can still be used to transmit the 'negative' signal which is used to communicate back to main box.

I will snip the existing ends from the coax and put new ends on in the AM - pulling back the copper braid rather than snipping it.

[Graham M]

Pretty much, it completes the circuit once the plugs are on you could tidy the left-over braid if it irks you that much by running a sharp stanley knife around the collar of the connector i guess