Sky HD
As I’m moving all my telephone apparatus over to VoIP of some sort, even if this means having to replace or use a suitable ATA (Analogue Telephone Adapter), it was time to look at the box I most feared – My trusty old Sky+ Box.
I occasionally watch Sky BoxOffice, normally by recording in the middle of the night and playing it back a few days later. For this to work, the Sky box needs to be connected to a phone line.
This article describes the work I completed in order to make this work with my Elastix PBX.
Sky boxes are not designed to reside behind a PBX. Although there are some hidden engineer service menus (described elsewhere on the Internet), to add PBX pre-dial codes. People have had mixed results as to even if this works. Also, generally the Sky Help Desk don’t even acknowledge that this facility even exists.
As home PBXs are becoming more common for home and SOHO use, Sky’s lack of acceptance of this situation does appear a little blinkered. But not surprising as probably less that 1 in 10,000 Sky users will have a PBX. Once upon a time, it was only companies that needed LCR (Least Cost Routing), but as complex dialling patterns increase for the home user, home users are considering a small PBX to do the work.
This allows calls to be optimised based on the destination, additional lines to be added via the Internet, virtual Fax/Email services and so on. The advantage of a small PBX for home use is very attractive indeed for those with the skill to install and configure. I certainly would miss mine if it were to fail.
With modern digital PBXs, the need for an access code to dial and external call is not really needed. All of my extensions don’t require the dialling of a ’9′ before any external call from the system. This gives us a huge advantage because this simplifies the configuration process.
First of all I ran a very long phone extension lead (some 50m) from where my Sky box resides up to my PBX so I could connect as required.
One of the important things to remember is that the Sky Box is communicating like a Fax or modem. So, the use of VoIP codecs that compress data, or have a low bandwidth are totally useless for the purpose of connecting a Sky Box. So be very careful of the codecs used, especially if you route the call out over the Internet. You can’t fit a quart into a pint pot. So if the bandwidth is less than 32Kbps, don’t expect a 9Kbps codec to carry at 32Kbps signal without a lot of missing bandwidth and thus data.
If you have an old Fax or modem that is not (FoIP, T.37 or T.38) working on a port, then you have a port that needs its configuration copying to the port you wish to use with your Sky Box. If not, then you may have some further issues.
Initially, I connected my Sky Box to a SIP port on my DrayTek router. Configured this as a basic SIP extension and waited for the Sky Box to do something.
As my box had not been connected for around 2 months, it was pretty desperate to make contact with the Sky ‘systems’. It only took it about 10 minutes and made its first call. Or at least tried to.
Now I have the 0800 number the Sky Box uses to communicate with Sky Central. This allowed me to set-up a suitable trunk dialling rule for this ‘extension’. At the moment, I just prefix the dialled number with 141, which blocks my CLID from Sky.
However, the problem I had, was the call was being made (every 15minutes or so) and only lasting a few seconds.
I could dial the number manually and a modem at Sky would answer and go through its carrier detection sequence. After the Sky Box fails to successfully lock onto a suitable carrier, the call was dropped. This occurred over and over again. I recorded a call and it is quite clear that a carrier lock was not being achieved.
I fiddled around with the codecs assigned to this SIP extension. First trying A-Law and then U-Law, without any success. So I will need to get back to this.
Next I moved the Sky Box to an FXO port on a TDM400 card. Instantly this worked, allowing the Sky Box to make contact with Sky Central. So currently, this is the current set-up.
I need to investigate the SIP port problem further. Is it just SIP, or would it affect IAX2 as well? I am currently looking for a cheap SIP/IAX2 ATA to experiment with. I will try the SIP port again, but I don’t hold out too much hope. I’m hoping IAX2 is the way to go, but most ATA adapters only support SIP.
I will write further articles as I learn more, but at the moment you will probably need to attach your Sky Box via a real FXO port. Unless someone can advise me otherwise.
To be continued….
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