Sky Q Question / Help needed guys .........
I'm still on old fashioned HD box and fairly happy with it still. But I'm anticipating adding a Cabin in the garden and would like Sky out there too, which i will struggle with on the current RF connection setup.
My question is specifically around wifi connectivity and if the mini-boxes use my internet data to connect to each other.
I've read that they create 'their own wifi network' but still can not find anything written on how that is done and if they are using my data to do so.
I'm out in the sticks & my Home internet is EE's 4GEE SIM with a capped data allowance , so I do not wish to enter into a contract for Sky Q if it then suddenly consumes all of my data just to watch regular TV
Any help / advice much appreciated
The mini box gets its info for TV from the main box which uses the dish. The only time you’ll use bandwidth is when you watch anything you have to download ie movies and on demand stuff.
The mini box apparently is just a signal booster
EDIT to say that for 3 months when our TV was set up we didn’t have any internet connection due to an openreach issue out in the road and the normal TV worked ok on both boxes- we never had on demand etc however
Last edited by Franky Four Fingers; 4th November 2020 at 11:36.
My Q is connected (wired) to my router. I don’t have the mini boxes but the Q sets up its own network (Sky-xyzetc) which I presume it what is used by the mini boxes. If that makes sense. As you can tell I’m extremely technically minded. :/
Q uses its own mesh network. It streams recordings and live TV from the main box to the mini this way. I think you'll struggle to connect it to the garden. Have a read of this and see if you can use ethernet to your cabin?
https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/tvs-...net-with-sky-q
Hope it helps.
As far as I know Q will only mesh if you're on Sky Broadband?
I too am in the sticks but have Three 4g providing all of our house internet but have unlimited data and 4 Mini Boxes
We have a gym in the garden with Sky Q but this is connected via CAT5, as are all of the other boxes.
Last edited by Alex L; 4th November 2020 at 12:56.
There's some confusing terminology here...
Sky Q uses a 5GHz Wifi network to form a mesh between the main Q box and any mini boxes.
If you have Sky broadband, this is the same 5GHz WiFi network as your broadband router so there is one 5Ghz meshed network in the house. Your 5GHz wireless devices (phone, iPad etc) can connect to the internet via the nearest access point on the mesh (broadband router, Sky Q main box or Sky Q mini box)
If you have a different broadband provider, Sky Q sets up an independent 5GHz WiFi network so there will be two 5GHz networks in your house; one from your broadband router, and one meshed one from the Sky Q box. In this case your 5GHz wireless devices cannot connect to the internet via the Sky Q WiFi network.
The main Sky Q box does all the receiving/recording etc and the mini boxes are simply thin clients (for want of a better term), so all pictures you watch on the mini boxes are streamed across the WiFi network described above; there is no storage or buffering on the mini boxes. This does not use the Internet as such,just the WiFi, however the Sky Q box is a bit of a tart when it comes to getting the programmes. If you are not careful you can end up doing a lot of streaming over the Internet to get the recordings into the main Sky Q box.
I have to say I have not found the whole streaming to mini boxes thing very reliable (I have Sky Q and BT broadband). Sky have sent me a "booster" that has helped a bit, but I still get pauses and drop outs when watching on the mini boxes. For reference, one of the minis is a mere 2ft away from the booster through a single internal breeze block wall, and the other is about 20ft through wooden flooring and a wooden wardrobe.
It does not seem to be possible from a customer perspective to determine or influence the topology of the mesh network (so it's possible that neither of my minis are making use of the booster for example)
That's possibly the most confusing tech article I have ever seen!Originally Posted by Jubal
I was wondering about connecting my minis up using ethernet (using powerline) but am now more confused than ever!
Interesting; do you know if this is just if you have a different provider or also if you have Sky broadband and use a different router?
I have Sky Broadband, Sky Q, 2 minis and switched to a TP-Link router and mesh extenders. I sometimes have issues with the mini's dropping connection to the Sky Q box and I'm not sure what is causing it. How would I know if the Sky box had set up a separate network?
As an aside, I've had to replace my main Sky Q box and one of the minis as they have both failed in under 2 years (can't remember exactly when I got them), so haven't found them massively reliable.
I'm not 100% as I've not tried the scenario you suggest, however I suspect very much that it needs a Sky broadband router more than it needs the Sky broadband itsef.
In my house I've got the BTHubxxxx wifi network and a separate SKYxxxx network apparent. I suspect you have a SKYxxxx network and whatever the TP-link mesh is
Sky Q - biggest crap ever. Had it installed 3 months ago. Main box plus 2 others. 7 engineer visits later, the addition of their ‘white booster boxes’, numerous £50 credits for shoddy service, massive drag on our WiFi, investing £500 in a mesh system ..... insisted they ripped it all out .... they did and replaced with new HD boxes - albeit they say that isn’t possible
I’m not a tech guy but it was obvious that the system eats your WiFi.
The 2 mini boxes never worked for more than a few minutes and then froze or lost the connection
Proceed with extreme caution and prepare for hours on the phone to them
Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app
That's a more succinct version of my reply
Yes, it’s half a job. I think you just wire up at both ends and disable Wi-fi on the q boxes. I’ve not tried it though and sky don’t readily make it a setup option. There are a few threads on the sky forums about it but they are very fragmented.
Not all routers are 5ghz channel as an aside as stock standard either
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I guess that as long as the main box and minis are all on the same LAN and wifi is off everything should work.
Might get some of these and give it a go
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/TL-PA7017.../dp/B07ZWFMYTY
I’ve had sky q for a couple of years now. On the whole I’m happy with it. Easy to use.
But the 2 mini boxes we have in 2 bedrooms often freeze and play up
We upgraded from HD to Sky Q a couple of months ago. Our Q box and router live in the cupboard under the stairs behind the longe wall that the tv is mounted on and we have had not connectivity issues at all.
We also have mini boxes in the Kitchen/diner and upstairs bedroom and they too have functioned well
Hope this helps
John
And with that .........I'm out !
Been both reluctant and hesitant to move to Sky Q .....that review tells me enough
I live in an 200yo building where the walls (some internal) are a good 3ft thick .......need reliability
Thanks for all responses and help
Same as me and the only way to make them connect to one another was by CAT5 due to the length of the house and the thickness of the walls.
Do you mean it eats the actual WiFi signal or Internet usage....ie kills your bandwidth?
If you are using a Sky router & hence have only one Wi-Fi network for all devices then they are all sharing the bandwidth so if you are streaming a 4K programme (or two) there's a lot less available for all the other Wi-Fi devices. Using a wired connection to the main & mini boxes avoids this issue.
There's a dedicated Sky forum over on AVForums:
https://www.avforums.com/forums/sky-...-tv-forum.547/
Had Sky Q for 3 years ago and had alot if problems initially. Now more or less faultless. Use BT whole home with main box wired into one of the Wholehome hubs and two minis wireless to the main box.
Similar experience here; wireless mini boxes are a huge backwards step from the previous arrangement, sound great in theory but so poor in reality.
I have a main box and 2 minis all wireless to a Three 4g router, no issues. As far as i know, the minis use no data for watching live TV, though i'm on unlimited so don't care anyway
The minis dont use internet data for watching live TV.
Wonder when sky will do the mini boxes that allow UHD /4K on them ?
Only the main box you can watch the tv in 4K / uhd
I moved recently and the house I bought had an old school Sky multiroom set up with the wires from the LNB in the various rooms. I brought my HD box with me but after some discussion (I didn't want Q because I wanted to use the IR PUC codes on my B&O TVs and the single B&O remote) they turned up with a spanking new HD box for the kitchen. This isn't advertised anywhere on their site, but they can supply the HD boxes if that's what you want.
This thread inspired me.
Having spotted some tp-link AV-1000 gigabit powerline starter kits for a very reasonable £29.99 on Amazon, I popped them in to the router, connected them up to the mini boxes, turned off the Sky Q wifi mesh and as if by magic a solid signal to the mini boxes with no stutters pauses or not availables
So far.
I've got Sky Q with 3 further mini boxes and it's been great, I wouldn't want to give it up.
So this thread is a bit like shopping on Amazon, there can be 1 and 5 star reviews of the same product
Full disclosure...
It didn't fix the problem.
Despite the kit reporting speeds between the nodes of between 200 and 300Mbps, the problem hasn't gone away.
One mini, the one closest to the WiFi signal booster, has got markedly better using powerline instead. The one furthest away has got markedly worse.
So I've left one on WiFi and one on powerline.
I'm beginning to suspect that the underlying problem lies with the main box's ability to serve the content rather than with the network itself.
Ah well, things are a bit better than they were last week, but still not perfect
There’s millions of Sky Q users, the majority like me perfectly happy.
If wifi works in all parts of your house then chances are Sky q will. Ours works in conjunction with BT whole home with main sky Q box connected to one of the whole home disks and then the mini boxes wirelessly.
It really is much better than the old HD boxes and because the boxes are owned by Sky, if they go wrong they are repaired or replaced free of charge.
I was having issues before with using the sky q mini boxes due to lack of wifi but ended up switching to Powerline adapters, just make sure turn off wifi on the mini boxes through the engineer menu (Settings 0 0 1 Select).
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