The cables from my dish were fitted through a back box I'd installed but i'd not got a face plate until now. Today I cut the cables, fitted a faceplate with a pair of outputs, connected the downlead to the back and the flyleads to the front.

I know this was a bit of a risk but was fed up with the mess at the side of the TV.

Once during the Apprentice tonight 'Bad or no signal' momentarily flashed up. This also momentarily came up when exiting the Humax set up menu. However, the rest of the time the picture was fine but i'd like to check my signal strength to make sure.

I'd assumed the two bars in the bottom right of the i-Plate was signal strength but the manual doesn't label them. These are both showing the same status as they were before i cut the cables.

I then looked at the diagnostics screen. This appears to have a section to show signal strength and quality. However, this section appeared to be greyed out and was showing 0 for everything. How do i get the diagnostics to work?

Were you recording at the time, you can't use diagnostics while recording.

On the iplate display the top bar is strength and the bottom one is quality..
As for the greyed out diagnostics option this isn't available whilst recording..
Check your dual feeds by recording BBC Hd 108 and BBC Cisl 951 and then tuning to anyother channel and pressing pause. The box should pause live tv while recording the others. Using the Diagnostics does not prove full operation of both tuners

That makes sense. Ok - one of the centre wires had got bent over when attaching the cable to the wall outlet. Both tuners now up and running - diagnostics shows 85% strength, 100% quality. Is that reasonable strength or should i be aiming higher?

Interestingly, switching channels and looking at the iPlate most channels are ok but the quality drops on some with Bloomberg TV down at the lower end of the Orange central section.

Quality is much more important than signal strength of which you have 100% so that's great. To get more signal strength you would need a bigger dish

Thanks. It's a shame i didn't take diagnostics first to see what difference my changes made.

By the way - i'd highly recommend
http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/page15b.htm

Good prices, quick delivery and excellent technical advice pages (eg the section on fitting f connectors).

I got a very nice finish using a 2-U modular plate with a RF socket and two f-barrels drilled into a blanking plate.