Does anyone have one of these TV sockets?

One cable carries all horizontal and the other all vertical. They "steal" the frequencies for Terrestrial TV and FM/DAB down the cable so multiplex face-plates no longer work with Sky Q. It is an attempt by Sky to make their system unique so that they have limited third party competition. The rest of the non-sky world seem to have adopted a different wideband LNB technology.

Yes really

No, Sky Q boxes have the equivalent of 12 tuners. They can decode simultaneously 12 different transponders (MUXs allowing a MINIMUM of 12 different TV channels (many more if the additional required TV channels are on the same 12 transponders)

Unicable II LNBs can be simultaneously controlled by 32 boxes or fewer boxes with multiple tuners (typical limit of 32 tuners) and use only one cable from the LNB.

Possibly not, but the technology has moved on a lot in the past few years with affordable satellite boxes.

Thanks for clarification.

As per typical.

He perhaps seems to misunderstand both sky Q wideband LNBs and the different technology of Unicable LNBs

The frequencies from the satellite to the LNB are no different with a "traditional" universal LNB, a Sky Q LNB or a Unicable LNB. The difference is signals that are in the down-leads between then box and the LNB the technology in the box. In the past it was one down lead for every decoded transponder (MUX). With Sky Q it's 2 down-leads for up to

In the case of Sky Q it is because for their satellite implementation to work that have to use the frequencies previously used for terrestrial TV and dab and FM radio.

I looked and found no one but you saying this.

Ther is no reason why they should split polarisation across cables,. No one ever has

The LNBS have always ben able to select either.,

I think the confusion arises out of the 'Sky Q uses wifi frequencies and old TV frequencies to receive the satellties on'.

It doesn't. What is happening apparently is that instead of tuning the LNBs to downconvert to a fixed IF they are down converting to a mish mash of spectrum, in the range up to 2Ghz, which is a pretty crap idea, and then doing the final mux selection out of that mess.

The claim that they then only have two actual LNBs - horizontal and vertical - may be true, but there is no reason not to MUX them down one cable

Only in the *downlead*.

It's just the IF frequency. You don't talk about AM radios 'using'

If you actually understood the stuff you read, you would have made that clear.

It may be a crap idea but it works for them, possibly with the added advantage that it keeps this proprietary solution unique to them. If a customer wants to switch away from the Sky satellite subscription service but still wants the free to air channels from satellite then a change of LNB may/will be required. (I do believe there is a single Freesat box that now supports the Sky Q "wideband" LNB).

The unicable LNB does effectively MUX multiple transponder info down a single cable. There are typically 32 user bands in a unicable II LNB that can be connected to 32 tuners with each tuner selecting which satellite transponder is allocated to that tuners user band*. If the user changes TV channels the satellite transponder allocation to that user band can/will be changed. The control up the cable is now digital and not the high/low voltage or the presence or not of a 22KHz tone required for a traditional universal LNB.

For a few years now many non-Sky satellite receivers, including those at the cheap end of the market, have supported Unicable LNBs even though they may not fully exploit the full capability of the technology.

Although a unicable LNB may only have one physical output requiring one down lead cable it needs to be distributed to multiple tuners. This can be achieved by the use of cheap (under a fiver) splitters. Some of the medium to higher end modern satellite receivers have the equivalent of 8 tuners but with only one or two inputs and with these the routing is achieved internal to the box.

As I have previous said - in the downlead cable(s).

There are several people saying this, including one quoted in my post!

In old and new Sky digital systems they always split H & V because they are so close together frequency wise they are tricky to split apart again. In the older system they were split by time ie. a cable could be either H or V (never both) and was switched under control of the box. In newer system no switching. The two cables are fixed and always the same, the entire band H on the one cable and entire band on V on the other.

SkyQ systems don't do that. but please continue to double down.

Bob.

Indeed they can but they don't have to.

We have one SkyQ minibox and it is connected to the main box via our core switch (ethernet). All wifi and rf is switched off on both SkyQ boxes and has never been operational.

They don't seem to mind which cable is connected to which socket of the Sky Q box, so I assume it can work it out which is which.

This is because the coax and the tuners in the STB have no 'knowledge' of polarization - only frequency.

how does Unicable LNBs work when you have a multiple LNB multifeed satellite dish like me where I have Astra 1, Astra 2, Hotbird, Eutelsat

I don't know, does it work that way at all? Or require a cable per LNB on different orbital positions?

I don't know much about unicable, it almost seems the opposite approach to wideband, breaks the downlink into small sub-bands which can each be mixed down from wherever in the ~10GHz band to one of 32 frequency "slots", lots of generating suitable LO frequencies and frequency mixing, lots of communication between LNB and receivers ...

From everything I've read on satellite forums the Unicable LNB is more suited to fixed dish/fixed satellite and not recommended for dish rotation, but possibly the recommendation is for when LNB may be feeding multiple receivers in a house with perhaps different people controlling each box.

My understanding is that a Unicable II LNB is equivalent to a traditional Quattro LNB with additional inbuilt sophisticated control switching/MUX. Similar in function to a LNB with add-on distribution/switching hardware but all packaged within the LNB at a lower cost (£50 ish). The receiver box needs to be able to control the LNB but many non-Sky modern boxes already do.

The advantages it's being sold on: Ease of distribution. One cable from the LNB and then the use of cheap splitters to provide inputs to multiple reciever boxes. With some receivers now having the equivalent of 8+ tuners a single cable from the LNB can feed then all. No need for 8 cables from the LNB or some extra switching hardware. (Some box with 8 tuners may require 2 inputs but easily achieved with a cheap 2 way splitter behind the box).

I'm not familiar with your setup but a quick google suggests a fixed dish with multiple LNBs ??? Again, I don't know the answer to your question but as the box would need to control LNBs up the cable it would need to change the method of control if the input was from a Unicable LNB or a Universal.

I don't know, but I'd assume that you'd have to use DiSEqC switching. to switch between physical LNBs.