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2005 25th Year Nº 189

10-11
INTERNATIONAL
€ 7,80 DK: Kr 57
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 CONTENT

TEST REPORTS

Star Sat SR-X3500CUCI Ultra

Digital Sat Receiver with 2 CI
Slots & 2 integrated modules ..... 23

TECHNOMATE TM-7755 2VA 2CI

Blind scan receiver with 2 embedded
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OPENTEL ODC7200CPVR
Twin Tuner FTA+
Conax Digital Cable PVR ............ 36

WLAN Extreme Reception with Homemade Antennas ........................................... 12

SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY

Beginner Section: Multi-Satellite Reception

Botech CA 9000 FTA/CI
with a Moveable Satellite Antenna ....................... 14
Digital CI Receiver ..................... 44
FEATURE:
Cable vs. Satellite Digital TV .............................. 16
Media News .......................................... 22, 34, 42
PREVIEW:
General Satellite FTA-7001S FortecStar FSIR-5400NA
Digital FTA set-top-box .............. 50 New Power Scan Receiver .................................. 60
TELE-satellite Receiver Guide ......................... 72
SatcoDX News .......................................76, 77, 79
Do-It-Yourself Satellite TV .................................. 78
TSI Team:
Your questions, our answers ......................... 89, 95
EYCOS S10.02F TELE-satellite in KENYA ..................................... 90
Digital FTA satellite receiver........ 54 SatcoDX World Statistics ................................ 96

Golden Interstar
DVB-T/S 8300 CI Premium
Digital FTA + CI satellite and
terrestrial receiver ..................... 62
Max Communica-
tion LNBF models
801, 802, 804
and 804-s
Universal LNBF’s for
Offset Dishes ..... 68
VANTAGE DIGITAL
VT-DS 2/1 PL
VT-DS 4/1 PL
VT-DS 8/1
A Switch for Any
Application .......... 74
ADVERTISERS
ARION ................................................... 9
BOTECH .................................................55
BROADBAND RUSSIA ............................84
CABSAT .................................................46
DOEBIS 1 ..............................................10
DOEBIS 2 .............................................. 11
DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT ....................64
DIGITAL RISE .......................................65
DIGITAL TELEMEDIA .............................25
DVB SHOP .............................................27
EDON ....................................................15
EEBC .....................................................88
EMP .......................................................47
EURASIA ...............................................87
FORTECSTAR ......................................... 5
GENERAL SATELLITE ............................. 19
GLOBAL TECHNOLOGIES .......................21
GOLDEN INTERSTAR .............................43
HOBBY&ELEKTRONIK............................79
HORIZON ..............................................59
ITB ........................................................18
JAEGER/WEISS .....................................49
JONSA ...................................................29
KATHREIN .............................................71
MATEL ...................................................39
MAX COMMUNICATION .........................53
MIDEXPO ..............................................61
MOTECK ................................................57
NETA .....................................................31
NEOTION ............................................. 100
OPENTECH............................................. 7
PANSAT 1 .............................................24
PANSAT 2 ..............................................67
PROMAX ................................................85
SADOUN ................................................35
SAT CONTROL........................................91
SATFORCE .............................................37
SHENZHEN SUCCESS .............................77
SMARTWI ..............................................94
STAB ITALY ...........................................99
STARSAT ............................................... 41
TAITRONICS .........................................70
TECHNOMATE ........................................13
TELE-Satellite CITY .......................... 82,83
TOPFIELD .............................................. 2
VANTAGE ............................................... 4

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Dish Motor .......... 80 capabilities .................86 with CI .......................92
 SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY WLAN Parabol

WLAN Extreme Reception

with Homemade Antennas
Thomas Haring
WLAN conection
spanning 125 miles in USA
If you take a closer look at the pictures in
this article, you might ask yourself “What in
the world are these people trying to do here?”
At first glance, this thought is justified, yet
behind all of this is a very simple idea: wire-
less transmission networks (WLAN’s) are
becoming more and more popular. Com-
pared to more costly and more labor-inten-
sive installed cable networks, more and more
companies and private users are opting for
wireless technology in order to link all of
their PC’s together. The problem with this is
that under normal circumstances a wireless
network only has a range of 50-100 meters
(160-320 feet).
Using a simple frying pan 30cm in diameter
(see picture), a signal gain of from 15-18 dB
can be realized allowing a WLAN link over a
range of 3-5 km. Somewhat more costly but
equally more professional in appearance is
the use of a satellite antenna that because
of its exact parabolic shape makes an opti-
mal solution. In the focal point of whatever
receiving antenna is used is placed a USB
WLAN receiver that is then easily linked with
a PC via an extension cable.
Unlike hardwired cable networks, wire-
less systems are much more susceptible to
security breaches. A small test that was
performed in our labs showed that using
our homemade antenna, for which we used
a small 60cm satellite dish, we were able to
find a total of 12 hotspots of which ¾ of them
were readily accessible. This would allow for
example external Internet access for down-
loading of large files. It was also possible to
access the hard drives of some of these con-
nected PC’s. Of course it isn’t legal to access
other networks without permission and we
want to make certain that this is understood.
With that in mind, we strongly recommend
that you make sure that all the security set-
tings are properly set up if you want to use
a WLAN.
While the New Zealanders chose a less
expensive path, it could not get bigger or
more impressive in the USA. At the 3rd
Defcon WiFi Shootout in the Nevada dessert,
students at a university in Cinncinatti, Ohio
managed a WLAN connection that spanned
125 miles with a stable data transfer rate of
11 Mbit/sec. With simple cooking utensils
such a long distance connection is under-
standably not possible. Sending and receiv-
ing over this vast distance was accomplished
using mesh antennas and high-power WLAN
adapters.
More information on this subject can be found
at http://www.usbwifi.orcan.net.nz

Electronic research students at Massey

University in Wellington, New Zealand wanted
to find a solution to this problem. The normal
power output of WLAN can usually not be
increased because of equipment limitations
so this leaves only the reception that can be
improved. This is where homemade anten-
nas come into play. Anything that resembles
a parabolic shape and has a metallic finish
can be used, regardless whether it is a wok,
a lampshade or some other cooking utensil.

12 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com WLAN DIY mini dish in company of professional dishes
 BEGINNER SECTION Motorized Systems
Multi-Satellite Reception
with a Moveable
Satellite Antenna
Heinz Koppitz
The most popular method to receive more than one satellite is to install your dish on a
motor. But there are several different types of motorized systems that we would like to dis-
cuss in more detail here.
An azimuth type of installation is typically
necessary for extremely large antennas. The
dish is mounted to a vertical mast and is
moved horizontally. Due to different azimuth
and elevation values for each and every sat-
ellite, the antenna must also be moved verti-
cally. Furthermore, the position of the LNB
has to be adjusted if the azimuth difference
between two satellites is too great. This
must be done in order to properly align the
LNB with the satellite’s polarization plane.
Otherwise horizontal and vertical transpond-
ers cannot not be separated correctly. Keep
in mind, this must also be done if a fixed
antenna is manually moved from one satel-
lite to another.
Because a typical C-band antenna is lighter
in weight, they don’t need to be installed ver-
tically. Instead they can easily be installed in
such a way that the axis of rotation is aligned
with the North Star (“Polarmount”). The
advantage of this type of installation is that
while the antenna is moving around this axis,
the azimuth and elevation are automatically
adjusted at the same time since the antenna
now precisely follows the satellite arc (also
known as the Clarke Belt). Once the first sat-
ellite has been found, you get the other ones
by simply moving the dish east or west of
the first one. Even though this method works
quite well manually, it’s much more comfort-
able to a use a motor (“Motor Drive”) to move
the dish from one satellite to another. This
actuator motor receives commands from a
positioner that tells the dish where to move.
14 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com
An antenna mounted on this kind of motor
can literally be moved from one horizon to
the other. These motors are usually avail-
able for dishes up to 120cm in diameter. Not
The positioner can be a stand-alone box on only do these mounts follow the Clarke Belt
top of the receiver or it can be built into a as mentioned earlier, but the position of the
receiver. Unfortunately, very few receivers LNB is also adjusted automatically as the dish
on the market today come with the proper moves across the sky. Actually, it is the entire
built-in positioner to control these types of dish assembly together with the LNB that is
motors. Also, with this type of mount, it adjusted but the end result is the same: the
would still be necessary to adjust the posi- LNB is already in its proper position when the
tion of the LNB so that it is correctly aligned antenna arrives at the desired satellite. No
with the satellite’s polarization plane. A skew skew adjustment is necessary. Horizon-to-
motor mounted on the LNB assembly adjusts horizon systems are also available for large
the polarization of the LNB and is usually C-band antennas but these mounts are some-
controlled by the same positioner that drives what more complicated in design and conse-
the actuator motor. In addition to the coax quently much more expensive.
cable from the LNB to the receiver, this setup
also requires cables for the actuator motor Flaws in
as well as for the skew motor on the LNB.
DiSEqC 1.2
The DiSEqC 1.2 protocol uses control
DiSEqC 1.2
commands to store and allocate satel-
lite positions directly in the motor drive
Nearly all of today’s digital satellite receiv-
ers come with the DiSEqC 1.2 protocol. To
put it simply, this is an antenna motor control
protocol that allows you to control an antenna
motor from the receiver through the same
coax cable that delivers the satellite signal to
your set-top-box. It eliminates the need for
all those extra cables used in actuator motor
type applications since the control signals are
routed through the coax cable to the motor.
The motor itself is connected inline with the
coax cable with the cable from the receiver
going to the motor input and another cable
going from the motor output to the LNB.
The most common type of DiSEqC 1.2
motor is the H-H motor (horizon-to-horizon). Dish alignement for Astra 28,2 in Vienna
(some motors are even preprogrammed
with different satellite positions). While the
manual programming of satellite positions
works quite well, the preprogrammed ones
(“Preset-Positions”) are unusable for most
users, because during the installation, they
need to be converted into local coordinates
and the “Calculation Function” of DiSEqC
1.2 is simply not able to cope with this. At
most it can subtract the local longitude from
every satellite position, which is just suit-
Enter your local coordinates
able for places close to the equator. As a
matter of fact, the “Preset Positions” also
don’t work in Europe, because for an exact
position calculation, a coordinate conver-
sion of the geocentric satellite data to the
horizontal coordinate system of your local
position is necessary. For our interested
readers, we offer a small Windows program
at www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-
0511/Uspos.exe to help you with these cal-
culations.
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International
DiSEqC 1.3 –
Multi-satellite
reception at
its best
STAB Italy was the first company to
address this problem and by using the exact
mathematical formula for coordinate conver-
sion, they found a suitable solution for it,
naming their new system USALS (“Universal
Satellite Automatic Location System”). Many
of today’s modern digital satellite receiv-
ers offer this system within their software,
normally named with terms like “USALS”,
“DiSEqC 1.3” or “GotoX.x” in the feature list.
All the calculation work is now done directly
in the receiver and the motor just receives
the usual “goto X.x.” command, widely known
from DiSEqC 1.2. Simply align the dish with
the first satellite. For additional satellites,
the receiver only needs to know the orbital
position of these other satellites together
with your local longitude and latitude. The
receiver will then correctly move the antenna
to each and every one of these satellites to
an accuracy of a tenth of a degree.
15
16 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com
 FEATURE

Cable vs.
Satellite Digital TV
Peter Miller
TELE-satellite International traditionally deals with satellite TV equipment. This is quite and cable transmission channels along with
natural since satellite broadcasts always required additional equipment to be installed in the approximate number of good quality TV
your house: a satellite dish with an LNB mounted on a roof or on a balcony and of course a channels that can be broadcast within that
satellite receiver, often referred to as a set-top-box. That’s the way it was for analog satel- bit rate.
lite transmissions. Plenty of receiver models, LNB’s, dishes and accessories available on
the market made it really difficult for a non-specialist to wisely choose what to buy. New Table 1.
technology offered exciting possibilities that did not exist with analog terrestrial TV like The type of modulation used in cable TV
out-of-footprint reception or simply watching channels originally meant for the viewers in is called Quadrature Amplitude Modula-
other countries. Digital TV increased the attractiveness and complexity of satellite recep- tion although, in fact, it is a combination
tion even more. of amplitude and phase modulation. That’s
why it is more effective compared to the
simple phase modulation (QPSK) used in
During the “pre-digital era”, cable TV was generally transmitted in the C-band (3,700 satellite TV. Figures 2 and 3 show the differ-
not that exciting. It required no additional – 4,200 MHz) or Ku-band (10,700 – 12,750 ence between QPSK and QAM.
equipment in your house. All you needed MHz).
was a piece of coaxial antenna cable with Cable TV uses a frequency band from 47 Figure 2. QPSK Modulation.
plugs at both ends. Of course, the operator to 862 MHz. In some countries the lower
had to provide the proper cabling terminated limit maybe somewhat different. Figure 3. QAM Modulation.
with a wall jack in your house. The situation
changed when digital TV appeared on cable Figure 1. Frequency bands of
networks. Now, a dedicated set-top-box is cable and satellite TV.
required between the wall jack and your TV-
set. A digital TV cable receiver looks and Fortunately for cable TV, one transmission
works very much like a satellite receiver. channel requires only 8 MHz. A VHF channel
However there are differences between the may occupy even less frequency spectrum:
two that we will discuss in more detail here. 7 MHz. The USA, with its NTSC system, has
even narrower channels: only 6 MHz. As you

Bands, Channels may remember, satellite transmission chan-

and Modulation
One of the most obvious differences
between satellite TV and cable TV is the
frequency band they use. Satellite TV is
nels occupy 27 or even 33 MHz. One trans-
mission channel allows us to send either one
traditional analog TV channel or an MCPC Figure 2.
package of digital TV channels. Table 1 com-
pares the usable bit rates for typical satellite

Figure 1.

Figure 3.

Table 1. SATELLITE CABLE

Modulation QPSK 16-QAM 32-QAM 64-QAM 128-QAM 256-QAM
Symbol Rate [ks/sec] 27500 6900 6900 6900 6900 6900
FEC ¾ - - - - -
Usable bit rate [kbit/sec] 41250 27600 34500 41400 48300 55200
Approx. number of TV channels 8 5 7 8 9-10 11

www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 17

 FEATURE
The norm permits usage of 5 modes of
QAM modulation from 16-QAM to 256-QAM.
The higher the index of QAM mode, the more
amplitude levels and phase angles that are
used. The most effective is 256-QAM (com-
pare the table) but due to small differences
in the amplitude and phase of neighbor-
ing states, it is also the most sensitive to
interference and noise. It requires a cable
infrastructure that is capable of maintaining
a high signal-to-noise ratio. Because of this,
the most popular QAM modes are 64-QAM
and 128-QAM. The upper limit of symbol
rate that we can use is 6960 kS/s. If the SR
were higher, the transmission channel would
occupy more than 8 MHz and would cause
interference with neighboring channels.
Cable receivers often also have a lower limit
of 4000 kS/s. That’s because lower symbol
rates increase the locking time of the tuner.
In practice, cable operators do not use low
symbol rates. Unlike satellite TV, where one
transponder can be “split” into a few SCPC
low symbol rate channels, a transmission
channel in cable TV practically always occu-
pies the whole 6, 7 or 8 MHz bandwidth (per-
haps with a little margin for interference
rejection). If a cable operator does not have
enough TV channels to “fill up” 6960 kS/s,
he configures his head end to add stuffing
bytes to the transmitted data stream. Prac-
tically, in cable networks, we always deal
with MCPC signals.
While in Europe and many other parts of
the world, all 5 modes of QAM are allowed
and the symbol rate can be chosen at will,
the United States has adopted a slightly
different approach. They use only 2 kinds
of cable signal: 64-QAM SR=5.057 Ms/sec
(26.94Mbit/sec) or 256-QAM SR=5.361 Ms/
sec (38.8Mbit/sec). Channel spacing is 6
MHz. There are also other subtle differences
in this „US” modulation. Because of that a
receiver designed for the European cable
networks is not compatible with the Ameri-
can signal and vice versa.
User’s
perspective
From the viewer’s point of view, the
important difference between the two kinds
of TV is what he or she can find there to
watch or listen to. Cable TV is typically
more local – less international. So, here you
would expect to see more national channels
with perhaps a limited number of the most
popular foreign channels. You are not likely
to discover an exotic TV channel or feed
transmission. Of course, you also cannot
experiment with things like out-of-footprint
reception here. Sorry, no DX-ing.
Although, theoretically, the number of TV
channels that can be transmitted via cable
20 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com
is not that small (at least several hundred,
maybe even 1000), in practice, there are
factors limiting it. Some factors are techni-
cal in nature (it is hard to occupy every pos-
sible transmission channel without causing
interference), while others are of copyright
or legal origin. The cable operator, in most
cases, converts a signal received from a sat-
ellite to a form suitable for his cable net-
work. The operator must have an agreement
with the content provider to redistribute his
broadcast. So, when we compare a number
of channels available from satellites to those
from cable, the winner is obvious: TV-Sat.
It may be worth mentioning that due to the
digital form of information, the conversion
from satellite signal to cable signal does not
reduce its quality. Similar transmodulation
of analog signals would always worsen its
signal-to-noise ratio and introduce extra
distortion.
On the other hand, for the persons who
value simplicity and comfort, there are
advantages in cable TV. You do not need to
care about:
- dish mounting problems
- weather conditions
- complicated antenna systems (multi-
feed, motorized, DiSEqC, USALS, Program-
mable 0/12V Output)
Moreover, it is easy to replicate a wall
jack in every room and ensure independent
channel watching everywhere without both-
ering with multi LNB’s, multiswitches, etc.
Anyone who is familiar with a satellite set-
top-box will have no difficulty in handling
a cable receiver. All phases of installation
- language selection, channel search, chan-
nel organization – are very similar to those
of a satellite box. Afterwards - channel zap-
ping, displaying the information box, EPG,
setting reminders – everything works in the
same manner. We can use cable PVR’s in the
same way we use satellite ones. Actually it
is even simpler. With a twin tuner cable PVR,
we have total freedom in selecting a chan-
nel to watch and a channel to record. Just to
remind you, to achieve this in satellite TV,
you would have to use a twin LNB and run
two cables from it to the receiver.
An automatic channel search in a cable
receiver may look similar to the satellite
automatic search but, in fact, it resembles
a blind scan more than anything else. The
receiver starts scanning the entire band-
width looking for digital signals. Usually, it
can only check the predefined symbol rates.
The symbol rates may be either hard coded
in the receiver’s software (if the box is dedi-
cated for a particular cable operator) or set
by the user in the installation menu. Some-
times, you can define two or more symbol
rates for a single scan. You are also asked
to decide whether to limit the search for a
particular QAM mode or check for all modes
(AUTO). If a receiver is designed for a par-
ticular operator it may contain a predefined
set of tuning parameters. In such a case,
the channel search is practically immediate.
A network search can be activated in some
cable receivers and if the transmitted dig-
ital data is accurate, this kind of scan can
be very effective and fast. The user enters
only the first set of tuning parameters (fre-
quency, symbol rate and QAM mode) and all
of the other carrier’s parameters (equiva-
lent of transponders in TV-sat) are derived
from the received digital information. The
initial set of tuning parameters is sometimes
called “home carrier” or “home channel”.
Alternatively, you can manually enter all
carriers. If there aren’t too many of them
(for example 10) it is not that tiring. How-
ever, if your cable operator adds a new car-
rier, you will have to add its parameters
manually again. Things are much simpler in
the USA where they use only 2 values for
symbol rates and QAM modes. The scanning
can be much faster and, what’s even more
important, absolutely complete. Cable net-
works usually provide a mixture of analog
and digital channels. Your set-top-box will
simply ignore the analog channels and loop
them through to its output. It is quite the
same as in satellite TV.
Conditional access systems can be embed-
ded or provided by CAM’s inserted in a CI
slot. This is nothing new. It is even a bit sim-
pler for the provider to control CA related
issues because the receiver can have a built-
in cable modem. This modem can be used
to exchange CA related information with the
head end. Such communication is called:
“the return channel” and may also be used
to provide Internet access or interactive
TV. In satellite receivers, similar functions
would require a built-in classical modem and
a connection to a telephone line – resulting
in additional cabling in your house.
Conclusion
Cable digital TV offers the same high qual-
ity audio and video as satellite TV. Satellite
and cable set-top-boxes are similar to each
other, the differences being limited mainly
to their tuners. A user who is familiar with
satellite equipment will have no problem in
operating the box. However, he may have a
problem with the installation of the receiver,
especially if he does not know the exact
parameters of the carriers in his cable net-
work. An automatic channel scan may bring
no results if one does not enter the correct
symbol rate.
If you live in a place where setting up a
satellite antenna presents a problem, cable
digital TV may be a simple alternative to
getting a high quality signal.
 Media Europe & Africa
News
TPS, which it co-owns with TF1. M6 has asked At launch it will be available to 3 million viewers,
prepared by Goldman Sachs to find a buyer for its 34% share and will cost DKK 5 per month. It will be free of

Branislav Pekic in the platform, according to French financial daily charge from its November 1 launch date until the
“Les Echos”. TPS is currently valued at between end of the year. Films will air without ad breaks
€1.3-1.7 billion, which would put M6's stake at since it will be supported by subscription fees and
EGYPT €450-600 million. TPS has been suffering from the ad revenue.
SUNNI AUTHORITY PLANS new DTT platform, with subscriptions growth down
ISLAMIC TV CHANNEL 20-30% than the previous year. SOUTH AFRICA
The most authoritative Sunni Muslim academic SABC TO GET TWO NEW TV CHANNELS
body, the al-Azhar University, is planning to launch IRELAND The Independent Communications Authority of
a satellite TV channel with the aim of counter- CHANNEL 6 TO LAUNCH BY 2006 South Africa (Icasa) has granted licences for two
ing "anti-Islam onslaughts" and fighting "radical A new TV channel has been awarded a 10-year TV regional channels - SABC4 and SABC5 - to the
Islamic thoughts" broadcast on other Arabic satel- licence by the Broadcasting Commission of Ire- South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).
lite channels. The project was recently approved by land (BCI), and should be on air within six months. The channels are likely to be operational in 2007.
the Islamic Research Academy (IRA), the highest According to the BCI, Channel 6, operated by Mug- The new entities will form part of the public broad-
authority at the al-Azhar University. The channel lins Broadcasting, will provide "music, drama and casting services division, an arm that currently
was first proposed a year ago, but lack of funding comedy" and will also include local programming. It comprises SABC1 and SABC2 TV stations and 15
proved a problem. will be aimed primarily at the 15-35 age group and radio stations. SABC5 will broadcast in Afrikaans,
isiZulu, isiXhosa including two
GERMANY Nguni marginalised languages
PREMIERE HD TO Europe isiNdebele and SiSwati.
LAUNCH IN NOVEMBER MOBITV TEAMS UP WITH SES FOR GLOBAL EXPANSION
Premiere will be first to launch MobiTV will use SES's satellite distribution platforms to deliver its mobile news, sports, SPAIN
HDTV programming with their and entertainment TV programming in international markets. The MobiTV service is PUBLIC BROADCASTER
package "Premiere HD" from available in the U.S., UK, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic and SET FOR REFORM
November via Astra. A special will soon be available in Canada through Rogers and Bell Canada. The service offers The Spanish Government has
Premiere HD trailer can now be MSNBC, ABC News Now, NBC Mobile, ESPN, CNBC, FOX Sports and the Discovery approved a wide package of new
seen on the Astra HD demonstra- Channel, among others. TV regulations that will change
tion channel. The ‘Premiere HD’ the face of the country's TV
service will carry three 24-hour market. One of the bills is about
programmes that will feature films, sport and docu- will be carried by Sky, NTL and Chorus. The service the reform of state-owned group RTVE. The group
mentaries. The football World Cup is already con- will broadcast initially for 12 hours per day Monday- will become a Corporation, financed by a mix of
firmed in HDTV format on Premiere. Friday and 15 hours Saturday and Sunday. advertising revenues and public funds, independent
from the Government and with a General Director
HUNGARY THE NETHERLANDS being appointed by the Company's board of direc-
SHOWBIZ TV TO LAUNCH IN JANUARY DE MOL PLANS SECOND TV CHANNEL tors, instead of by the Government.
A new cable TV channel called The storyTV will Dutch media tycoon John de Mol plans to launch a
be launched across Hungary by prominent per- second TV channel in the Netherlands. The new, DIGITAL MOBILE TRIALS TO TAKE OFF
sonalities and the magazine publisher Sanoma in still-unnamed, channel would air at the end of 2006 Abertis Telecom, Nokia and Telefonica Moviles
January 2006. The channel will be broadcast for 18 with family programming. Another new TV channel, Espana are teaming for a mobile TV trial in Madrid
hours a day, from 7am until 1am, reaching about 2 TV Oranje, will start on October 1, featuring Dutch and Barcelona between September 2005 and
million households, and will focus mainly on stars artists, orchestras and cabaret. February 2006. It will provide 500 users access
and celebrities. The cable channel will be based in to content from Antena 3, Sogecable, Telecinco,
Budapest. SCANDINAVIA Telemadrid, TVE and TV3 on Nokia 7710 smart
VIASAT TO ROLL OUT PVRS phones equipped to receive mobile TV broadcasts.
FRANCE Viasat Broadcasting has selected Pace Micro Tech- The pilot will allow the three companies to test the
CANALSAT AND SFR LAUNCH TV nology to roll out its personal video recorder service feasibility of Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld
PACKAGE FOR MOBILES in Scandinavia. The Pace TDS460 set-top box will (DVB-H) technology and new mobile TV services.
CanalSatellite and leading French mobile opera- allow Viasat subscribers to pause or rewind live TV;
tor SFR have launched the world's first TV channel record one program while watching another and UNITED KINGDOM
package for mobile phones. The two companies will record two programs at the same time. Viasat is BBC AND BSKYB TO LAUNCH HDTV
offer 17 channels accessible 24-hours a day on 3G expected to launch the service in the third quarter. The BBC is preparing to launch a HDTV service
cell phones through SFR's Vodafone Live! portal for early next year after increasing the amount of satel-
an introductory monthly fee of €7. Phone users will TV2 TO LAUNCH FOURTH MOVIE CHANNEL lite capacity it rents from SES Global. The BBC said
be able to watch CanalSat's major theme channels, Denmark’s TV 2 will launch its fourth network this it would use the extra space to "reconfigure" the
including Cine Cinema info, CNBC, Cuisine TV, November - a 24-hour movie channel named TV satellite broadcasting of its TV, radio and interac-
Planete as well as a 3G Discovery Channel. 2 Film. The channel will feature Danish films, as tive services. Meanwhile, BSkyB has taken up three
well as titles from Disney, Sony and MGM, and additional satellite transponders on Astra, securing
M6 SEEKS TO SELL TPS STAKE will be available on TDC Kabel TV and Canal Dig- enough new satellite bandwidth for up to 12 HD TV
M6 is looking to sell its stake in satellite platform ital. Negotiations are underway with Telia Stofa. channels.

22 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 Satellite Receiver TEST REPORT

Star Sat SR-X3500CUCI Ultra

Ultra Powerhouse PLUS
SatcoDX compatibility
This is an updated version of the SR-X3500CUCI receiver that we first looked at in 2004. you made, you need to instead press either
Cosmetically it looks almost identical - on the front panel, eight buttons can be used to control the Menu or OK buttons depending on which
almost all functions except where a number needs to be entered. At the rear, the usual antenna menu you are in.
and loop-though are available, along with RCA sockets for audio and composite video, in and
out ports for a terrestrial TV antenna, two Scart sockets, an RS232 serial port and a 0/12V When the receiver is first turned on
switch output. Sadly there are no S-Video or digital audio outputs. - after selecting your language from the
selection of English, French, Italian, Alba-
nian, Farsi, Arabic, German, Russian, Turk-
Under the flap are two CI slots, plus two The remote control has also been rede- ish or Greek – you get to the main menu.
“universal” card slots. These are able to read signed. The buttons are in mostly the same From here you can search for channels right
cards for Viaccess, Irdeto, Cryptoworks, positions, but are now arranged around a cen- away. If you have no need to change from a
Nagravision, Conax and Mediaguard (Seca). tral recessed area. Once you’ve got used to single satellite setup with a universal LNB,
This could be a grey area legally, but does the OK button not being in the usual position it’s as easy as going to the Easy Installation
give the user a wide range of options where at the centre of the circle, it’s quite intuitive screen, selecting your satellite and starting
multiple cards or CAMs need to be used. to use. The recessed buttons require a fair the search.
amount of pressure to register a keypress,
On the inside is where the changes become which soon becomes tiring when setting up The full installation choice gives all the
apparent. The menu screens have been favourites lists or navigating the EPG. options you’d expect. Network, FTA only, and

redesigned, and now have a colourful, easy
to read style. If the default display is not to
your liking, the Starsat Tools software (also
known as IRD Tools) gives you the option of
uploading a picture to be used as the menu
background.
Page up and down buttons have
been added to the remote to make
navigation of the channel list and EPG easier.
It takes some time to remember that the ESC individual transponder searches are availa-
button, referred to as Exit on the screen, exits ble. DiSEqC 1.0 and 1.2 control is available,
a menu without saving. To save the changes but there’s no USALS. Manual searches are

www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 23


also available, which allows a channel’s PIDs
to be entered manually.
At the bottom of the search options, there’s
a blind search option. This isn’t blind scan
as we’ve come to know it. Here up to five
symbol rates can be entered, and these will
be looked for inside the specified frequency
range. So it’s nothing like the usual com-
pletely blind scan, but perhaps still useful
in some circumstances where the satellite
regularly uses the same symbol rates. Think
of it as a blind scan with the help of a guide
dog. By today’s standards, search times are a
little on the slow side. On Hotbird, the default
95 transponders in the receiver’s memory
took 7 minutes, 49 seconds to search. Adding
the network scan option added a further six
transponders, increasing the scan time to 9
minutes, 30 seconds.
Satellites software. This makes it possible to
use the World of Satellites to make custom
channel lists for your location and then load
them into Starsat Tools. Alternatively, trans-
ponders can be added, deleted and edited as
needed inside Starsat Tools itself.
All that needs to be remembered is the
relative position of the satellite in the receiv-
er’s menus. Inside Starsat Tools, the DiSEqC
position for each satellite can be assigned.
Once the lists are ready, it’s a simple matter
of transferring the data via the RS232 port to
the receiver. Once transferred, the frequen-
cies are ready to be scanned as usual.
The only confusion found with the Starsat
Tools software is when adding or amending
satellites from the SatcoDX charts, which
needs to be done manually in a text file. It
could be simplified much more by adding an
option to assign the four-digit satellite code
from the SatcoDX charts to the satellite
Everyday use
Surfing through channels is reasonably
fast, channels appear in less than a second.
Pressing the OK button presents a full-
screen list of channels to choose from. This
list can be sorted alphabetically, or by the
FTA/encrypted status of the channel. Four
favourites lists are available, but it seems
their names are not changeable from the
default “Favourite 1”, “Favourite 2” style.
The EPG is not the most user-friendly. You
can only view the now and next programme
titles for one channel at a time, and there is
no grid display. To see the programme details,
you first have to go to the channel and press
the right arrow button. The up/down buttons
then switch between the now and next pro-
grammes – but the left arrow does not return
you to the channel list to view a different chan-
nel’s programmes, to do this you have to press
the Exit (ESC) button. All this seems rather
confused and makes it difficult to get quickly
to the information you are looking for.
Sensitivity is very good and the receiver
copes very well with weak signals. The offi-
cial specifications list the low symbol rate
limit as 2Ms/sec, and I was unable to receive

SatcoDX position in the receiver. Perhaps such sim-

plification will already be included when the
anything below this. Other features include
sleep and wake-up timers, an internal tele-

Compatibility software for this specific update of the X3500

is made available.
One of the few external differences on the
receiver is that it now displays the SatcoDX
Compatible logo. At the time this report was
written, the required Starsat Tools software
was not available, but hopefully it will be on
their website or included in the box when the
receiver is on sale. Thankfully, a previous
version was found that works with it, so we
could test it.
text decoder, a picture zoom function and
the obligatory Tetris game.
Expert conclusion
+
The SR-X3500CUCI Ultra is a fairly fast and simple to use machine.
Two multi-encryption card slots plus two additional CI slots give
plenty of flexibility for Pay-TV packages. It’s good to see a 0/12V
output. Keeping the transponder database up-to-date is made easy
Andy Middleton
with the receiver’s SatcoDX compatibility. TELE-satellite

-
Test Center
UK
Star Sat’s Starsat Tools can download
A few inconsistencies in the menu design make it a little less user-friendly than it
.SDX files from the SatcoDX website, or use
could be. There’s no digital audio output, and no USALS support.
files saved in .SDX format from the World of

26 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver Info-Box

Main menu

SR-X3500CUCI Ultra
Digital Receiver with 2CI &
2 universal integ. modules
TECHNICAL Manufacturer STAR SAT, PO Box 42291,
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Channel list
DATA
Fax +971-4-2287765

E-Mail starsat@emirates.net.ae

Model SR-X3500CUCI Ultra

Function Digital Satellite Receiver with

2 CI Slots and 2 universal
integrated modules

Channel Memory 6000

Satellites 153

Symbol Rate 2-45 Ms/sec. DiSEqC options

SCPC/MCPC Compatible yes

USALS no

DiSEqC 1.0 / 1.2

Scart Connectors 2

Audio/Video Outputs 3 x RCA

UHF Output yes

0/12 Volt Output yes

Digital Audio Output no

EPG yes EPG

Modulator yes, UHF

C/Ku-Band Compatible yes

SCPC Compatible yes

EPG yes

Power Supply 90-250 VAC, 50/60 Hz

Power Consumption 30W

SatcoDX Compatible yes

TEST

Installation menu
RESULT

Features

Channel Memory

Channel
INTERNATIONAL

Scan Speed
SATELLITE

Video Quality

Audio Quality

TELE
Tuner Sensitivity SatcoDX data

28 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver

Technomate TM-7755 2VA 2CI

Blind Scan,
2 Viaccess Slots, 2 CIs
Many of us DXers lead a dual life with our satellite equipment. In the quest to receive all the The receiver comes programmed with a 61
unusual and occasional transmissions, plus maintaining an everyday system to receive regu- satellites in memory, with three additional
lar TV and radio channels, we often resort to two or more receivers as no single one can do spare slots. Helpfully, the list includes the
everything, with all the associated cost, cabling and logistical problems to overcome. So this orbital location of the satellite along with
receiver looks promising to those of us who want to do a lot without these hassles - a receiver the name. This list is quite up-to-date and
that claims a very fast blind scan, two Viaccess card slots and two Common Interfaces at a includes the recently relocated and renamed
price that doesn’t break the bank. Eutelsat W6 at 21.5E. Only three spare posi-
tions is not as much of a problem as it may
seem, as the satellite names and positions
Despite all the card and CI slots, the DiSEqC 1.0 and 1.2 are available, and the
can be freely edited.
receiver is very compact. An LED chan- USALS protocol is included to enable the
nel-number display and basic controls are easy setup of a DiSEqC motor. Alternatively
Our usual test on Hotbird without the blind
present on the front panel which is just 28cm a DiSEqC switch can be used with up to four
scan was impressive – using the pre-pro-
wide, while the height and depth are 6cm LNBs. The English-only manual contains all
grammed transponders, 93 were found in
and 23.5cm respectively. At the back there’s the information required, but could be confus-
just 3 minutes, 17 seconds. Network scan
the usual LNB in and loop-through sockets, ing to users who are using a satellite receiver
is also available, which increased the time
UHF in and out, two Scarts (one of which for the first time. The quick installation guide,
required significantly: 108 transponders in
has SVHS available), RCA/phono sockets for confusingly near the end of the manual, is
just over 7 minutes. Navigating the receiv-
audio and composite video, an S/PDIF for helpful but suffers from what appears to
er’s menus is easy – they are mostly well-
an external amplifier, and finally an RS232 be bad translation from another language.
designed and easy to follow. The receiver
socket for connection to a computer. Sadly, Although the receiver has a blind scan capa-
responds instantly to the command from
the often neglected but useful 0/12V output bility, the traditional method of scanning pre-
the remote, so there is no feeling of it being
is not present. programmed frequencies is also available.
slow to operate. The menus are available
in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portu-
guese, German and Russian. Moving from
one channel to the next is also fairly fast,
with just a brief black screen before the next
one appears. As with most receivers, press-
ing OK gives us a list of channels to choose
from. This list can be sorted into alphabeti-
cal, transponder or encryption status, and
this setting is remembered for the next time.
From here, a channel can be added to one or
more of the four favourites lists. These come

pre-programmed as Sport, Film, Music and

Children but these names can be edited as
required. The EPG is a little cluttered, but
the quick navigation speed helps. A timer
is included, so you can set the receiver to

30 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver

switch to a channel when the selected pro-
gramme starts. The time can be taken from
the satellite or set manually. A sleep timer
and power on / off timers are also included.
becomes 5667; 6111 could be 6117 or 6167;
27500 becomes 27531 and so on.
If this is your only receiver, no problem
– you get to see the channels and all is good.
and transponder editing functions are quick
and easy to use, so it’s an easy job to quickly
wipe the transponders from a single satellite
position and scan again to find everything
that’s currently being broadcast – much

Blind Scan But if you want to enter them into another

The blind scan function finds just about
everything, but there are problems. The
options are good - you can choose to scan
one or both polarities, choose only high or
low bands, or a frequency range. There’s also
a choice of scanning only above or below a
symbol rate (SR) of 7500, which helps a lot
with the speed. The previous scan options are
retained in the menu, so re-entering the same
frequency range on a re-scan is not needed.
Running the power scan on Hotbird, with the
full SR range found the same transponders as
the earlier network scan, but in 27 minutes.
As we know that almost everything on this
satellite has an SR above 7500, we can use
this to get just about everything there and
the speed increases significantly – this time
it was just 11 minutes.
The power scan can be speeded up some
more by selecting to scan frequencies not
currently in memory, the already-stored fre-
quencies are then skipped. There’s also a
mode where only the transponder frequencies
are found and added to the database without
their channels. This is faster than searching
for the channels themselves, which could then
be done with the non-blind scan later. Hunt-
ing out feeds is where blind scanning is really
useful. The TM-7755’s blind scan, whilst not
feeling “very fast” as claimed in the manual,
does skip over empty frequencies faster than
other receivers. This makes scanning a qui-
eter satellite than Hotbird much faster. By
scanning in 6MHz intervals, it gets through
empty portions of the spectrum quite quickly,
but it is still more efficient to check the usage
of the satellite on the operator’s frequency
plan or the SatcoDX charts and concentrate
on the parts that are in use. A scan of the busy
receiver, make an accurate log, or give the
frequency to someone else to use on their
receiver you will get trouble. Most receivers
don’t have such a high tolerance on the SR,
so it won’t appear. With practice, especially
with popular SRs like these, you’ll get to
know what the real one is. But with an unu-
sual SR, you’re in the dark without help from
a more accurate source. Even when enter-
ing the correct SR manually and scanning in
the non-blind scan, it will “correct” itself to
the inaccurate value. The only way it seems
the real SR can be added to the receiver is
when it is found via a network scan, or edit-
ing them later. Occasionally, you’ll also see
that the same channels are added twice. For
example, a feed on Eutelsat Sesat (36°E) at
11.049H SR 16500 was found (with an SR of
16552) on both 11.046H and 11.052H, the
two scanned frequencies at either side of the
centre frequency.
Newly found channels are added to the end
of the list as expected. If the parameters are
the same as a channel already stored, the
existing channel is updated in the list with the
new name. When hunting a satellite specifi-
cally for feeds, it’s often a good idea to wipe
out existing channels before blind scanning,
so that you can see exactly what is being
broadcast at the current time. The channel
Expert conclusion
+
This is a very capable budget receiver available at an attractive
price. 2 Viaccess and 2 CI slots make it good for use with mul-
tiple pay-TV packages. The remote is well designed and easy to
use, and complements the quick response and simple design of
the menus.
easier than on other blind scan receivers
where the easiest way to do this was a factory
reset. As we’d likely be using this receiver to
also store regular channels we want to keep,
this means we don’t wipe out our carefully
edited channel selection on another satellite!
But if this is the preferred method, a function
to wipe all channels but keep transponders
and other settings intact is available in the
editing menu, in addition to the standard fac-
tory reset in the install menu.
While the search is in progress, only the
names of the found channels are displayed.
It would be nice if the frequency and SR
could also have been included – eager feed-
hunters with a second receiver could then
start checking out the found frequencies
while the scan progresses. These criticisms
aside, there are helpful features for DXers
too. The frequency and PID details are easily
obtained from the “info” button and stay
there until cancelled, giving time to note the
numbers - very helpful! As expected, 4:2:2
transmissions cannot be received, but unlike
some other receivers they don’t crash or
slow it down, and the audio is available.
Sensitivity is good, and I found no prob-
lems with weak signals or low SRs, right
down to the SR of 1000 (1.0 Mbps) of TRSP
on Sesat.
Andy Middleton
TELE-satellite

-
Test Center
10.900-11.200 range of Eutelsat W1 (10°E) on UK

both polarities and searching the full SR range

The fast and flexible blind scan is let down by the inaccuracy of the reported symbol
found 15 feed and regular channels in 4.5
rate. If you’ll be using this to find frequencies to be added to other receivers, it’ll soon
minutes. There are problems though. As we
become annoying to have to guess the correct SR or find it with a different receiver.
have seen with other blind scan receivers in
The 5000 channel memory is barely adequate if using a multi-satellite system for both
the past, the symbol rate found is sometimes
TV viewing and feed-hunting.
wildly inaccurate. 5632 becomes 5671; 5700

32 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver Info-Box

Channel Information

Technomate
TM-7755 2VA 2CI
Blind scan receiver with 2
embedded VA slots & 2CI Channel list

TECHNICAL Distributor Technomate, 328 Hoe Street,

London E19 9PX
DATA
E-Mail info@technomate.com
Fax +44 208 503 6677
Model TM-7755 2VA 2CI
Function Blind scan receiver with 2
embedded Viaccess slots & 2 CIs
Channel Memory 5000
Satellites 64
Extended EPG
Symbolrate 2 – 45 Mbps
(1.0 received in our tests)
DiSEqC 1.0 & 1.2
USALS yes
Programmable 0/12V Output no
Scart Connectors 2
Video/Stereo Audio Output 3 x RCA
Digital Audio Output yes (optical)
Color System PAL/NTSC/SECAM
S-VHS Output yes (via Scart)
Modulator yes, UHF
Power scan
PAL/NTSC compatible yes
C/Ku-Band Compatible yes
SCPC Compatible yes
EPG yes
Teletext yes
USB 2.0 Connection no
Picture-in-Picture no
Power Supply 90-240 VAC 50/60Hz
Power Consumption Max 30W
TEST
RESULT

USALS setup
Features

Channel Memory

Channel
INTERNATIONAL

Scan Speed
SATELLITE

Video Quality

Audio Quality

Tuner Sensitivity
TELE

www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 33

 Media North & South America
News
the rights to NFL’s Thursday and Saturday games Group are to launch the HDTV version of their joint-
prepared by for some $400 million per year. One deal being con- venture channel National Geographic, dubbed NGC

Branislav Pekic sidered would see the NFL becoming a shareholder HD, in early 2006. In preparation for the move, nearly
in the sports network. all of NGC's current production roster is already
being captured in HD, and the channel's buyers have
UNITED STATES ABC PREMIUM CONTENT ON PROTEUS spent most of the past year acquiring programming
TIME WARNER SUPPORTS FOX ABC has taken its latest stride into the world of mobile in HD. At launch, more than 90% of NGC's primetime
BUSINESS CHANNEL TV, offering a range of premium content based on its grid will be seen in HD, the network said.
Time Warner Cable is close to a deal to carry Fox daytime soaps, primetime drama Alias and late night
News' business channel, which would give the yet- show, Jimmy Kimmel Live. The US network has part- KROGER TO ROLL-OUT
to-be-launched network a critical mass of subscrib- nered with mobile entertainment specialist Proteus, STORE TV NETWORK
ers to compete against incumbent CNBC. Fox, which already counts Fox, Discovery, Granada, HBO The Kroger Co., a supermarket chain of 2,500
which is owned by News Corp., is seeking carriage and Paramount among its TV client base. For ABC, stores, is launching a chain-wide satellite and Inter-
of the business channel on Time Warner Cable's the Proteus tie-up follows other deals in the mobile net-based TV network to inform customers about
"expanded basic" channel line-up, giving it 9.8 mil- space such as that with MobiTV owner Idetic, to offer products, services and promotions. The system,
lion viewers. News Corp. executives have pledged streaming of ABC News. provided by In-Store Broadcasting Network, will
to have a minimum of let Kroger coordinate mes-
20 million viewers for sages channelled through
the channel before MEXICO is Bite TV which wants to sett the trend for multi- in-store TV and radio net-
its debut, expected in TELEVISA AND INTEL TO platform entertainment. The channel was launched works. IBN will install the
early 2006. DEVELOP DIGITAL TV in April on cable but plans to go nationwide this fall. network over the next 18
Televisa is joining forces with Intel Corp. to develop It limits itself to short live-action and animated films months and, once com-
HORSE CHANNEL and expand Spanish-language digital home serv- and music videos targeted to a specific audience: pleted, will serve 68 mil-
FROM THIS FALL ices in Mexico, Latin America, Spain and the US. short-attention-span guys between the ages of lion in-store shoppers
The HorseTV Media Televisa will oversee content distribution, which 18 and 34. But most of all, it is determined to be each week.
Group is planning to includes music, videos and games, via Internet multi-platform, available not only on digital cable
launch a cable net- and consumer electronics devices. Televisa said it and satellite, but also on the Internet, cellphones PAY-TV OPERA-
work in the U.S. this would seek joint investment opportunities with Intel and PDAs. TORS FIGHT FOR
fall featuring entertain- Capital as part of its convergence strategy. SPORTS CHANNEL
ment and informational VENEZUELA Satellite pay-TV networks
programming about CANADA VENEZUELA WARNS U.S. DishNetwork and DirecTV
horses. The Horse FOUR PAY-TV APPLICATIONS FILED OVER TELESUR TV are trying to liberate Com-
Channel is expected Canada's broadcast regulator in July said it would Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has warned cast's SportsNet channel.
to launch as a 24-hour consider proposals for new premium pay TV serv- the US not to interfere with a new region-wide TV Comcast Corp. has long
outlet this fall and will ices in October, which could lead to the break-up of station in South America. A joint effort by Argen- refused to sell rights to
be available as a sub- Canada's current pay-TV duopoly with the launch tina, Cuba, Uruguay and Venezuela, Telesur TV, its regional sports chan-
scription channel via of one or more new national premium pay TV began broadcasting July 24. The station is mar- nel to satellite competi-
cable and satellite. Pro- networks. The CRTC will hear proposals for four keted as an alternative to major news outlets like tors. However, the FCC is
gramming will include English-language applications from Quebecor, CNN and Fox News with a focus on Latin America. now considering whether
competitions and high- Spotlight Television, Allarco, and Channel Zero. Chavez said if the US "interferes" with the station to approve the proposed
stakes rodeos, classic it would spawn an "electronic war." Meanwhile, the purchase of bankrupt
horse movies, real- BITE TV PLANS MULTI ACCESS APPROACH U.S. House of Representatives voted to broadcast cable operator Adelphia
life stories, and funny The latest addition to the Canadian digital TV offer alternative programming in Venezuela. Communications Inc.
home videos. by Comcast and Time
Warner Inc. The satellite
PACE TO PROVIDE STB’s FOR DIRECTV AL GORE’S TV CHANNEL DEBUTS firms suggested that, as a condition of approval,
Pace Micro Technology has signed a deal to pro- Current TV, the cable network for young adult audi- Comcast should be required to make SportsNet
vide DirecTV, with set-top boxes. Under the terms of ences co-founded by former U.S. Vice President available to them.
the arrangement, the UK manufacturer will supply Al Gore, launched in August into 20 million homes
so-called "next generation" boxes to the US broad- on DIRECTV, Time Warner Cable and Comcast. O.J. SIMPSON FINED FOR PIRAT-
caster from next year. The network is offering short-form programming: ING SATELLITE TV
15-second to five-minute segments throughout the A federal judge has ordered former football player,
COMCAST CONSIDERS SPORTS day, exploring the people, places and issues of rel- O.J. Simpson to pay $25,000 in damages for pirat-
NETWORK LAUNCH evance to young adults across the U.S. The chan- ing satellite TV signals from DirecTV. A 2001 raid of
Comcast Corp. is reportedly looking into turning nel is also allowing viewers to contribute their own Simpson's home, turned up illegal devices, known
its Outdoor Life Network into a sports channel that content. as "bootloaders," which authorities say are used to
would rival ESPN, with talks already said to be steal TV programming. During the raid, the illegal
underway with the National Football League. The NAT GEO IN HDTV FROM 2006 devices were connected to his TV and receiving
Wall Street Journal reported that Comcast is eyeing National Geographic Film & TV and Fox Networks unauthorized signals.

34 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Cable Receiver

Opentel ODC7200CPVR
Are You Ready for High
Class Digital Cable TV?
When we say “Digital TV”, we usually mean “Satellite Digital TV”. However, these days the – the member of 7000 family. This flap,
traditional, terrestrial, analogue TV is rapidly being converted to digital mode in more and when opened, reveals two slots for smart
more countries. And so is cable TV. If you live in an area where cable TV is popular, chances cards. The Opentel ODC7200CPVR does
are that your cable operator is already considering switching to digital. not have a CI slot. As you have most likely
already deduced from its name, the receiver
What does it mean for you, the subscriber? priate type of RF tuners and demodulators has a built-in HDD. A look at its rear panel
You will have to add a cable set-top-box and their software is adjusted accordingly. reveals that it also has two tuners. Next to
between a cable jack in your wall and the TV- This is also true for Opentech, the manufac- their inputs and outputs, are the TV antenna
set. Is such a receiver similar to a satellite turer of the Opentel ODC7200CPVR. input and modulator output. All these inputs
box that you are familiar with? Yes, it is, but and outputs use IEC-169 connectors. As
there are some differences. What are these? At first glance, it is hard to distinguish the expected, there are two Scart connectors
Read a separate article in this issue of TELE- Opentel 7000 family of receivers from the and a set of three RCA sockets to connect a
satellite that deals with this topic. 4000 family. All models use the same, silver TV-set or a VCR that is not compatible with
colour, casings. Why change something that Scart. Home theatre owners will be happy
Generally, the TSI team does not test cable is still very elegant and modern? The front to discover S/PDIF output with digital audio.
TV receivers, but this time, we made an excep- panel has a hemispherical, smoked-glass And the list is completed by the two compu-
tion. Why? We thought that many of you, dear window, behind which a 4-digit display is ter-related ports: RS-232 and USB 2.0. They
readers, would like to have some orientation mounted. The display is green and, as usu- are used for software upgrade, programming
about the subject when your cable network ally, shows either the channel number or the one receiver from another and, of course, for
operator starts offering you digital boxes. present time. Four crescent-shaped buttons file transfers between the receiver and a PC.
Manufacturers of digital TV receivers offer placed around it, allow you to switch channels Workmanship of the box is very good.
their products in various versions. They may and adjust audio volume. The fifth button on
differ in embedded CAS or the number of CI the left toggles the receiver between the As does the receiver itself, its remote
slots. Moreover, many of them offer differing operating and standby modes. Only by the control design deserves a compliment. It is
front-ends to their boxes: satellite, terrestrial printing on the front panel flap, can you tell elegant, lightweight and sits nicely in hand.
or cable. In such cases, they have the appro- that you have the Opentel ODC 7200C PVR The only thing that can be questioned is the

lack of separate volume adjustment and left/

right arrow buttons. When you start using
the receiver, you are sometimes uncertain,
in a particular submenu, whether the left/
right arrows will move the focus, execute a
function or adjust audio volume.

36 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Cable Receiver
Everyday use
On the first power up, you are asked to
choose language. The choice is very limited:
English, Suomi and Svenska. This, as well
as the embedded conditional access system
- Conax, clearly identifies the target market
of this receiver. Yes, it is Scandinavia. Cable
receivers are more often designed for the
particular operator rather than for the world
or continental market. So, no need to burden
it with too many languages.
After selecting the menu language, it is
time to set up the channel search. You can
do that in two ways: automatically or manu-
ally. If you choose the first option, you have
to enter the frequency range (by default 110
– 900 MHz), symbol rate and QAM mode (16-,
32-, 64-, 128-, 256-QAM or Auto). Automatic
channel search speed is very disappoint-
ing. We waited ten minutes during which the
scan proceeded from 110 MHz to 172 MHz.
If it was to go with the same speed to 860
MHz, it would take two hours! A much more
practical way to find the channels is to select
the manual channel search. Here, for every
multiplex, you enter its center frequency
and symbol rate. Luckily, you do not need
to specify the QAM mode. It may be set to
AUTO. When all data is entered, the actual
channel search does not take much time. Due
to its nature, you do not expect that many
changes in channel database in cable net-
work as in satellite TV. So, you will probably
not need to repeat the search too often. The
Opentel ODC 7200C PVR had no problem in
locking on to and processing low and high bit
rate data streams. We tested it with 32-QAM,
SR=4000 and 256-QAM, SR=6900. Then we
decided to measure its tuner sensitivity and
dynamic range. And this is a really good
point about this receiver: its specification
promises to handle signals from -15 dBmV
through to +25 dBmV. We observed that the
reception threshold was -19 dBmV, and even
+40 dBmV was not too strong signal for the
Opentel box (measured as digital channel
power). So, the receiver’s front end has the
38 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com
dynamics of 60 dB for the 256-QAM – the
most demanding mode of modulation. Wow!
Please note that it may happen in cable net-
works that you get too strong signal which is
really impossible in normal TV-SAT systems.
Some receivers misbehave in such a situa-
tion. Just for curiosity, we checked to see if
the Opentel ODC 7200C PVR could handle
a cable signal complying not with the Euro-
pean but with the US standards. As could be
expected from a receiver targeted for a spe-
cific region in Europe, the receiver could not
lock to a signal modulated in QAM Annex B.
Channel memory can store up to two
thousand channels. That should be more
than enough for any cable network. After
collecting channel data, Opentel ODC 7200C
PVR automatically divides them into TV and
radio channel lists. The found channels can
be put in one of 8 favorite lists, renamed,
moved, deleted or locked with PIN if children
should not watch them. Channels can be
rearranged in every favourite list (you can
change their position) and a list itself can be
renamed. Channel zapping speed is abso-
lutely acceptable. It is well below one second.
Right after a channel zap, an info box is
shown at the bottom of a screen. Everything
that you need is included in it: channel name
and number, program title, short descrip-
tion, start and end time, current channel list
name, signal strength and quality bar graphs
and a set of icons. The icons indicate: CA
status, parental lock status, availability of
teletext, availability of subtitles, additional
soundtracks and Dolby Digital audio. If we
press the Info button when the box is dis-
played, an additional program description is
shown, of course assuming that this data is
included in the incoming data stream.
An electronic program guide (EPG) is avail-
able in two modes: grid navigator showing a
few neighbouring channels on the timescale
or a single channel programme list. It is fast
and well designed. All information that you
may need is either displayed right from the
beginning or after just a single button press.
As in every other menu, help is also shown
at the bottom of screen explaining each but-
tons’ function. You can select programmes
for recording directly from EPG. Such book-
ing is called „a reservation”. If you just want
a pop-up to be displayed at the beginning
of your favourite program, you should book
“a reminder”. The model delivered to us for
testing had a large hard disk (120 GB). It is
really quiet. If you like to listen quietly to
music before you fall asleep, this receiver
will suit you. The very near-silent hard disk
and a sleep timer activated with a single
button press will do the trick.
The Opentel ODC 7200C PVR enables you
to watch one channel while recording up to
three others. Unlike satellite PVR’s, in cable
TV, when you connect tuner A output to
tuner B input, you have a total freedom in
choosing which channel you want to watch
and which to record. Of course, when you
want to break a world record in concurrent
recordings, you must take into account that
there are only 2 tuners. So all the channels:
the one you watch and the ones you want to
record must be transmitted in no more than
two digital channels (in TV-Sat, we would call
them: two transponders). When playing back
the recordings, except for the fast forward
and rewind functions you also have 3-second
jumps forward and backward as well as slow
motion and pause functions available. You
can add bookmarks to the most interest-
ing moments. You can zoom to a fragment
of the screen, no matter whether moving
or paused, coming from the live broadcast
or from playback. If you prefer, instead of
storing a full recording, you may just cap-
ture a screenshot of your favorite actor or
politician.
 As with virtually every modern PVR, the
Opentel ODC 7200C PVR offers time-shifted
programme watching. Forgive us that, at this
time, we are not going to describe it in detail.
This has been explained many times in many
PVR test reports published in TSI maga-
zines. What is not that often found in PVR’s,
is the Picture-in-picture function. When you
activate PIP, you can not only monitor the
content of the other channel, but you can
zap channels shown in PIP window using
dedicated buttons on the remote control
and even display a channel list for PIP! Using
the USB port you can transfer files between
the receiver and your PC. We managed to
transfer not only to the audio/video record-
ings but also to captured screenshots. In
the opposite direction can you transfer mp3
files or photographs in jpeg format. Having
an Mp3 list as well as mp3 player is really
nice. Every time there is nothing interest-
ing to watch on TV, you may start listening
to your favorite mp3 files copied from the
PC. We checked how the transfer works and
had nothing to complain about the transfer
itself. However, the recorded audio/video
files copied from the Opentel ODC 7200C
PVR to our PC had no file name extensions
and thus we had a hard time trying to find
out how to play them. We tried a number of
media players with various codecs installed
and achieved only the audio play out without digital audio signal, showing teletext and
video. Even the audio itself was not smooth subtitles in every language that is present
though. The user manual mentions only that in the incoming signal. The video output is
we can transfer mp3’s, jpeg’s and screen- available in CVBS, RGB or S-Video format
shots. It says nothing about AV files. If they (on the Scart connectors). Should this
were not meant to be played on PC (for model be used outside Europe where Scart
example, due to copy right issues), it would connectors are not that popular, a sepa-
be better if the receiver did not allow us to rate S-Video output would be nice to have.
transfer them. They could be hidden if this Audio and video quality leaves nothing to be
is simpler to implement. We must say here desired. One may perhaps dream of having
that these recordings, when played back on YPbPr output. But such output is truly
the receiver, are of excellent quality. advantageous only if you have HDTV chan-
nels in your cable and, of course, if you have
Opentel ODC 7200C PVR performs per- high resolution flat panel or rear projection
fectly in switching audio tracks, outputting TV-set or monitor.
Expert conclusion
+
Nearly all features that you may expect in a PVR are present in
Opentel ODC 7200C PVR. PIP works very well. The EPG and all the
menus are user-friendly, easy to navigate and look nice. Channel
switching is really fast. The User Manual is well written and has a lot
Peter Miller
of pictures. TELE-satellite
-
Test Center
Poland
Slow channel search. Long booting time: 15-20 seconds to see the logo and 20-25
seconds to get audio and video. We could not play the AV files transferred via USB
to PC. It could be expected from such high-end product as the Opentel ODC 7200C
PVR that its front panel display would show something more than a 4-digit channel
number.
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 39
 TEST REPORT Cable Receiver Info-Box

Channel search

Opentel ODC7200CPVR
Twin Tuner FTA +
Conax Digital Cable PVR
TECHNICAL Manufacturer Opentech Inc., Seoul, Korea,
www.opentech.co.kr
Information box
DATA
E-Mail overseas_sales@opentech.co.kr
Distributor 13F., SJ-Technoville 60-19,
Gasan-Dong, Geumcheon-Gu,
Seoul, Korea 153-801

Fax +82-2-3397-0685
Model Opentel ODC 7200C PVR

Function Twin Tuner FTA+Conax Digital

Cable PVR

Channel Memory 2000

EPG
Input Frequency 60~860 MHz
Symbol rate 7 Msps max.

Scart Connectors 2

Video/Stereo Audio Output 3 x RCA

Digital Audio Output yes (optical)

Color System PAL

S-VHS Output yes (via Scart Connector)

Modulator yes
EPG yes
Teletext yes Recorded channel list
USB 2.0 Connection yes
HDD 40 GB ~ 2 TB
(in the device under test: 120 GB)

Power Supply 95 ~ 240 Vac, 50/60 Hz

Power Consumption 30W max.

Features
TEST
RESULT

Picture-in-picture
Channel Memory

Channel
Scan Speed

Channel
INTERNATIONAL

Switching Speed
SATELLITE

Video Quality

Audio Quality

TELE
Tuner Sensitivity
Mp3 player

40 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 Media Asia & Australia
News
ponders are now allowed only for direct-to-home Pace Micro Technology for the supply of the hard-
prepared by
(DTH) operations. disk based receivers until 2007.
Branislav Pekic
JAPAN SOUTH KOREA
GREEN LIGHT FOR TWO NICK KOREA PREPARES FOR LAUNCH
ASIA NEW HDTV STATIONS MTV Networks Asia and Korean broadcaster
SHOWTIME ARABIA CONSIDERS IPO Japan’s Communications Ministry decided in On*Media are to launch Nickelodeon Korea by
Pay-TV operator Showtime Arabia is eyeing a pos- August to allow the creation of two or so stations for the third quarter of this year in a 24-hour format.
sible stock market listing that could value the group digital high-definition television broadcasting serv- The channel will air "a diverse range of programs
at up to £1 billion. Showtime's shareholders, Mid- ices transmitted via satellite. While the new licenses adapted from the U.S., along with locally produced
Eastern firm Kuwait Projects Company (Kipco) and will be primarily issued to new broadcasters, exist- programming genres, including animation, live-
US minority partner Viacom, have asked invest- ing broadcasters will be eligible if they withdraw action, comedy, game shows, and pre-school." On
ment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to from their existing services, the Ministry of Internal Media Network already operates MTV Korea.
look into a possible flotation in the UK capital later Affairs and Communications said.
this year. The pay-TV group offers more than 50 MOBILE SATELLITE TV GROWTH
premium Western channels. MALAYSIA A DISSAPOINTMENT
TV VIEWERS TO GET 176 CHANNELS IN 2006 The number of subscribers to the digital satel-
CHINA – HONG KONG By next year, Malaysians will have a choice of 176 lite mobile service provided by SK Telecom Co
SMEG TO INTRODUCE DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1. TV channels – 7 channels for free while the rest exceeded 100,000 in July. The subscription rate,
Shanghai Media Entertainment however, is less than some analysts
Group (SMEG) has selected and company officials expected,
Dolby) Digital for the first channel AUSTRALIA the Ministry of Information and
in China to offer 5.1 programming. GOVERNMENT TO PROTECT PAY-TV ACCESS Communications said. Since
SMEG debuted its Dolby Digital The federal government said in July it would introduce criminal measures in a bid to April, a satellite beams 7 video
5.1 service on its Orient Movie prevent unauthorized access to pay-TV services. The new measures come more than and 20 audio channels to specially
Channel in June. In addition to the a decade after the launch of subscription television and were unveiled by Attorney equipped mobile phones in some
regular broadcast of feature films General Philip Ruddock. "Following a six-month review by my department, the gov- parts of the nation. Meanwhile,
in Dolby Digital 5.1 on its Orient ernment has decided that criminal penalties should be available against those who according to a report by “The
Movie Channel, SMEG plans access pay-TV broadcasts without authorization and payment of the subscription fee," Korea Times”, free broadcasting
to start broadcasting surround Ruddock said. services to handheld devices may
sound programming on other pop- be offered across Korea in 2006
ular channels, including its sports TV ON CELL PHONE TRIALS LAUNCH after the trial period is completed
and music channels. Up to 1,000 Australians will be watching TV on their mobile phones over the next in Seoul and Kyonggi at the end
12 months as part of a trial being conducted by the Bridge Networks in conjunction of this year.
CHINA INTRODUCES FOR- with major telco Telstra. The Sydney-based trials, to be known as "moviemedia," will
EIGN OWNERSHIP LIMITS test the technical capability and commercial prospects for DVB-H applications in Aus- SYRIA
China’s State Administration tralia. The 1,000 Telstra customers will receive a free 12-month trial of 15 TV channels PRIVATE TV STATIONS
of Radio, Film and Television (including Foxtel, ABC, SBS, Nine Network, Turner and Sky Channel) using Nokia's COMING SOON
(SARFT) in July banned local TV new 7710 mobile phone. Syria's information minister, Mahdi
stations from forming partnerships Dakhlallah, said in July private TV
with foreign companies to launch or operate chan- for a fee. The FTA TV channels are three public- stations will be allowed to start broadcasting "soon",
nels in the country. The ban reportedly took effect funded RTM channels and four operated by the pri- when new legislation aimed at modernising the
July 7, and also bars local broadcasters from leas- vate sector, namely TV3, 8TV, Channel 9 and ntv7. country's media sector is introduced. Currently, only
ing channels to non-Chinese operations. It is not yet RTM will launch its third channel by the end of 2005 two state-controlled TV stations operate in Syria,
clear how the legislation will impact the businesses that will most likely be dedicated to sports, similar where state of emergency laws - introduced in 1963
of companies such as Viacom and News Corp. to the planned Channel 9 backed by Media Prima. - prohibits private channels from broadcasting.
The pay-TV sector will see the emergence of MiTV
INDIA with 50 channels and Fine TV with 18 interactive VIETNAM
GOVERNMENT TO ALLOW channels. Astro, which offers 51 channels is said to HTV TO BROADCAST ABROAD VIA SATELLITE
KU-BAND UPLINKS add another 50 channels after the Measat 3 satellite Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture and Information has
The Indian government, as part of the forthcoming is launched. recently permitted Ho Chi Minh City TV (HTV) to
TV channel uplinking policy, is likely to allow broad- broadcast its programmes overseas by satellite,
casters to use high-capacity Ku band transponders NEW ZEALAND according to local press reports. The overseas
for uplinking channels from India, allowing a size- SKY TO LAUNCH DVR SERVICE WITH PACE channel will include Vietnam's theatrical and musi-
able reduction in their operational costs. The dig- SKY is to introduce New Zealand's first Digital cal performances, programmes highlighting the
ital Ku band can accommodate as many as 10-12 Video Recorder (DVR) service towards the end of scenic beauty of Vietnam, educational programmes
channels on a single transponder, as opposed to this year. The company, which provides Pay TV and live broadcasts of festivals. HTV joins channel
the analogue C band, on which TV channels now services via the terrestrial network and a DTH sat- VTV4 from Hanoi who has been broadcasting over-
uplink, that accommodates just one. Ku band trans- ellite platform, recently signed an agreement with seas since 2001.

42 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver
Botech CA 9000 FTA/CI
FTA Plus Two CI Slots
Established in 1993, the Turkish company Botech has a wide variety of products for satel-
lite reception. We have been given the opportunity to examine one of their receivers, the CA
9000 FTA/CI.
The first thing to catch your eye when
opening of receiver’s package is its small
size: only 280 x 55 x 235mm. With these
dimensions you should have no trouble at all
finding a place for it somewhere in your TV
room. Furthermore, its silver-colored cabinet
will make fit in easily with other video and
audio devices. The front panel is quite simple
in design, giving the impression of a solid and
easy to use set-top-box.
On the left side can be found a round relief
on which are four little rectangular chrome-
plated buttons in the shape of a cross, two
of them (ch up/down) can be used to move
inside the channel list or to move the cursor
in the menu list while the other two (vol -/+)
can be used to increase/decrease the volume
or to change the settings values in the menu
items. We were also hoping to find the Menu
and OK buttons on this panel, but this was
not to be. The only way to completely oper-
ate the receiver is through its remote control.
To the left of the “cross” is the on/standby
button, which can be used when you need to
switch the receiver on/
off and can’t immedi-
ately find the remote
control.
In the center is the
large green four-digit
44 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com
display that shows the time in standby mode
or the channel number when the receiver is
switched on. In addition to the four digits,
there are also two LED’s - a red one indicat-
ing when the receiver is in standby mode
and an orange one indicating the presence
of a common interface module inserted into
the receiver. As the receiver’s name sug-
gests, it can accept two conditional access
modules. Simply open the flap that covers
more than half the front panel to find the
two CI slots.
The remote is small and light enough so
that even a child can easily handle it; the
buttons are quite small, but are not too close
together, so there should be no trouble using
it. They are arranged in a logical order and it
shouldn’t take too much time to learn how to
use the remote without having to look at it all
the time. The only odd thing about it is the
presence of two “OK” buttons. Their function
is absolutely identical. Wouldn’t it have been
better to put one of them on the receiver’s
front panel?
The rear panel comes with all of the essen-
tial connections that we might expect: an
LNB input with its looped-through output,
two Scart connectors for a TV and VCR and
four RCA jacks for video signal, left and
right audio signals and coaxial S/PDIF audio
output. There’s also an input for a terrestrial
TV antenna, its corresponding RF modulator
output and an RS232 serial port to connect
the receiver to a PC.
Everyday use
The user manual that came with this
receiver is only written in English, but it’s
fairly clear and can guide you easily step-by-
step through the initial installation. It was
only when we moved ahead to some of the
other receiver’s features that we discovered
the user guide does not always match the
receiver’s software. An updated version of
the user manual would probably not be a bad
idea. If English is not your first language, you
can change the OSD language choosing from
one of the following: English, Bulgarian, Ital-
ian, Turkish, Arabic, French, German, Rus-
sian and Persian (despite the user manual
saying that only English, Italian, Turkish and
Arabic were available).
The very first time the set-top-box
is turned on a message appears on
the screen saying “no channels”.
This is clearly an invitation to
access the menu and properly set
the reception parameters. Pressing

the “menu” button on the remote takes you
to a nicely designed main menu. From here
you can choose among five other menus.
The first menu that must be accessed at
the very beginning is the “Installation” menu.
Oddly enough this is the third menu in the
list instead of being the first one as might be
expected. Here you must set all the param-
eters according to your antenna configura-
tion. Regardless of whether you have a fixed
antenna, a motorized one (DiSEqC 1.2 or
USALS) or a multifeed system, the receiver
can handle all of these configurations. The
LNB field offers a list of ten pre-set local
oscillator frequency (LOF) values, but should
you need an LOF not in the list, the receiver’s
firmware lets you enter it manually. When
everything is properly set up, the two signal
bars graphs will indi-
cate a good signal
with green bars. At
this point a channel
scan can be started
and this can be car-
ried out in several
different ways. There
is an auto scan,
where you can decide
to scan one or more satellites at once (there
are already 55 satellites preprogrammed,
with fairly up-to-date transponder data, but
perhaps not all that complete: 57 transpond-
ers for the Astra satellites at 19° east, are
you sure that nothing is missing?). The same
scan could be set to consider only FTA chan-
nels or ALL (FTA and scrambled) channels.
Furthermore, you can perform a “network
search” to allow the receiver use stream data
so that it can find a more complete list of
channels.
To complete the automatic scan on the 89
preprogrammed transponders of Hotbird,
about 6 minutes was needed. This is a fairly
typical time among digital receivers. It is
also possible to do a manual scan: here you
can scan one of the preprogrammed trans-
Satellite Receiver TEST REPORT
ponders or perform a scan after modifying it
or after adding a new one. It is worth saying
that in this menu there is also an option that
lets you search a specific channel by entering
PID values. The receiver can handle up to 64
satellite positions and it has enough memory
to store up to 4,900 channels.
When you’ve accumulated a very long list
of TV and radio channels, perhaps you need
to set some time aside and start organiz-
ing everything you’ve found. In the channel
manager menu you can sort the list by chan-
nel name, by type (FTA and scrambled) or
by transponder, or you can manually move a
desired channel or group of channels within
the list. You can also rename a channel,
delete it, lock or skip it and also change its
PID value (you can only change the PID if it
was entered manually). Channels can be also
moved into one of the four existing Favorites
lists and, once inside one of these lists, you’ll
be able to sort the channels in the same way
as in the main list, plus edit, lock or skip
them.
The receiver’s software has been designed
with the editing of data in mind. In every
menu, you have the ability to edit nearly
everything: channels, satellites, Favorites
list names, frequency of transponders, PID
values, etc. Furthermore you can also add,
modify or delete transponders.
With your PC you have the ability to
accomplish this task in a much easier way.
Simply go to the Botech web site (http://
www.botech.com.tr/) and download the pro-
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International
gram DnUpManNext5.3.exe. After connect-
ing a PC to the receiver through the serial
port, you can transfer the channel list to
the PC as a cdf file. From the PC you can
take advantage of all the same edit functions
that you would have otherwise needed the
remote control for thereby saving quite a bit
of time. Unfortunately, importing data from
other sources such as SatcoDX is not pos-
sible. This same program can also be used
to update the receiver’s software when it is
available on the Internet. New receiver soft-
ware can even be downloaded via the Hotbird
satellite at 13° east. This new software can
then be transferred from one box to another
through its STB-to-STB feature.
Another menu item available is “Prefer-
ences”. When selected, the user can set the
menu languages, the first and second audio
tracks and subtitles plus choose specific
OSD settings such as background colors,
menu transparency and brightness, paren-
tal locks or play one of the integrated video
games (Tetris, Snake or Sokoban). We need
to mention that one of our first actions was
to disable the pin code needed to access the
menu items. It wasn’t difficult to find its
value (0000), but perhaps for a beginner this
would be a problem.
Once all of the editing chores have been
completed, we can see how well this receiver
behaves while channel surfing. Switching
from one channel to another on the same
transponder required about one second.
This unfortunately makes channel surfing
not all that much fun. A small Info banner
45

is shown at
the bottom of the
screen that displays the
channel name, channel number,
satellite name, the current time and a
brief description of the program (if made
available by the provider). There are also
a number of graphical symbols that show
if the channel is free or encrypted, if tele-
text or AC3 audio is available or if there
are subtitles. Pressing the Info button once
displays this same banner but pressing the
Info button a second time displays addi-
tional channel data including transponder
frequency, PID values as well as the signal’s
strength and quality. It is somewhat unu-
sual that this receiver does not indicate the
name of the network a channel might belong
to. This feature would enable you to group
channels together by broadcaster.
In video mode you can use the colored but- and save this data. Of course, it is possible
tons on the remote to set the audio track of to reach the timer section through the main
the channel, to freeze the picture or to switch menu also. Here you’ll find an eight-event
between the left and right audio track. The entry panel. From this point we can set all
EPG is activated by pressing the appropriate the desired parameters for a VCR recording,
blue button on the remote. A grid will appear the sleep timer or a wakeup call.
displaying the current channel’s programs (in
daily mode) or the entire transponder’s pro- The receiver supports teletext as VBI as
gramming (in weekly mode). Here you can well as OSD, but the small buffer provided
get expanded programming information by for this feature makes changing pages very
pressing the yellow button. slow. Perhaps the teletext decoder in your TV
set does the job in a better way.
If you find a program of interest while
looking through the EPG, simply press the And last but not least, if you’ve had enough
blue button to access the timer function. All of surfing through all the satellite channels,
of the required timer settings will already be you could always opt to play one of the three
properly filled out. You only need to confirm included video games!
Expert conclusion
+
The Botech CA-9000 CI is a small, easy to operate satellite receiver.
It has a nice, user-friendly OSD. Its two CI slots enable the reception
of different pay-per-view services.
- Antonio
Claudio Plati
TELE-satellite
The data shown on the screen when pressing the “Info” button
Test Center
could be different: for a normal use it would be better to display the Italy
extended content of the EPG (if available) instead of the PID values
for the channel. The user manual needs to be updated.
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 47
 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver Info-Box

Main menu

Botech CA 9000 FTA/CI

Digital CI Receiver
TECHNICAL Manufacturer Botech Electronic Ltd., Turgut Reis
Mah. Fatih Bulvarı No:323 / 81458
DATA
Sultanbeyli / ISTANBUL Auto scan
Phone +90-216-496 48 04
Fax +90-216-496 48 56
E-mail info@botech.com.tr
Model CA-9000FTA Digital FTA receiver
Function Digital CI Receiver
Channel Memory 4900
Satellites 64
Symbolrate 2 - 45 Ms/s
DiSEqC 1.2 compatible
USALS yes TV setting
Programmable 0/12V Output no
Scart Connectors 2
Video/Stereo Audio Output 3 x RCA
Digital Audio Output yes (S/Pdif)
Color System PAL/NTSC
S-VHS Output no
Modulator yes, UHF
PAL/NTSC compatible yes
C/Ku-Band Compatible yes
SCPC Compatible yes Channel manager
EPG yes
Teletext yes (OSD and VBI)
USB 2.0 Connection no
Picture-in-Picture no
Power Supply 90-260 VAC 50/60Hz
Power Consumption Max 40W

Features
TEST
RESULT

Extended EPG
Channel Memory

Channel
Scan Speed

Channel
INTERNATIONAL

Switching Speed
SATELLITE

Video Quality

Audio Quality

TELE
EPG
Tuner Sensitivity

48 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver

General Satellite FTA-7001S

Small, but smart
A few years ago, the name “General Satellite” might not have been familiar to you. Founded to do next, but we still recommend that you
in 1991 as a distributor of satellite equipment in St. Petersburg, Russia, today General Satel- refer to pages 34-35, where the complete
lite has become a major international corporation. With offices in 11 countries in Central and menu layout is printed. After pressing the
Eastern Europe as well as Asia, General Satellite doesn’t just simply sell receivers and dishes. “Menu” button on the remote control, select
In cooperation with a leading satellite receiver manufacturer, General Satellite began produc- “Installation”. You will be asked for a PIN
ing receivers under its own brand in 2003. code each time you access this submenu.
The default code is 0000. In the “System

The Receiver the name of the channel currently selected.

The first thing you notice when you open
the box is that the GS FTA-7001S is really
compact. It is a nice looking, silver-colored
box, and at only 26cm wide, will fit perfectly
either on top of your TV set or among the other
electronic equipment in your TV cabinet. The
front panel has four buttons, which allow you
to switch the receiver on or off (Standby),
select a channel or toggle between TV and
Radio mode. For basic control this would be
enough, but for more advanced functions a
nicely designed, ergonomic remote control is
here to help. On the front panel there is also
a flap, but in the FTA version of the receiver
you won’t need to open it – there is nothing
behind it. If you are interested in receiving
encrypted channels, you can select the CI
version, where the slots for CI modules would
be located behind this flap.
Unfortunately, there is no display on the
front panel to indicate the channel number or
Instead, there are three LEDs – red, green
and yellow, which indicate standby mode,
operational mode and channel lock respec-
tively.
The receiver is quite surprisingly equipped
on its rear panel. Normally you wouldn’t
really expect to find such things as an S-
Video output or a digital S/PDIF audio output
on a budget FTA receiver, but the GS FTA-
7100S has both of them. Additionally, there
is one Scart connector (TV), RF input and
output connectors, an RS-232 interface
allowing software and channel list upgrades
from your computer, and, of course, an LNB
input and looped-through output for the sat-
ellite antenna signal. Up to 16 LNB’s can be
connected via a DiSEqC 2.0 switch if desired.
After turning on power for the first time, an
empty black screen will appear with a window
in the middle with the message “Information.
Empty List”. Even without referring to the
receiver’s manual, it’s easy to figure out what
Settings” submenu you can select the OSD
language (from which you can choose Bulgar-
ian, Czech, Danish, English, French, German,
Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese,
Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Swedish or
Turkish), configure the LNB and DiSEqC set-
tings in “Antenna Setup” and select the sat-
ellite (or satellites) that you plan to watch.
Unfortunately, the preprogrammed satellites
are only arranged alphabetically so it would
help to know it’s exact name in order to find
it quickly.
The menus are easy to navigate through,
but if you need additional information on a
particular feature, press the button with
a question mark on the remote control. A
small box will appear with a detailed descrip-
tion of the function you have selected.
Channel Search
Once the initial setup has been completed,
the fun can begin. It’s time to find the chan-

50 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 Satellite Receiver TEST REPORT

nels that you would actually watch. As is typi-

cal, you can choose from two options – either
an automatic or manual search. On the popu-
lar satellite positions, like 19.2° east (Astra)
or 13° east (Hotbird), an automatic search
would undoubtedly locate most of the avail-
able channels. You can run it in Quick, Full or
Network mode, and choose whether or not to
skip the encrypted channels. We first tested
the automatic search on Astra, where in Quick
mode the receiver found 817 channels (575
TV and 242 Radio) in 2 minutes 47 seconds.
When Full mode was chosen, the receiver was
busy for 34 minutes 33 seconds and located
964 channels (624 TV and 340 Radio).
It’s also possible to search for frequencies
with specific symbol rates. These can added
once Full mode has been selected. But the
most impressive results were seen in Net-
work mode, which located exactly the same
number of channels (624 TV and 340 Radio)
in just 6 minutes 24 seconds. The receiver
was “factory reset” after each test, so these
numbers reflect what you would see when
you perform a search in each of the modes
for the first time.
For less popular satellites, such as Express
AM22 at 53° east, it is not so easy. The auto-
matic search didn’t find any channels at all.
Three frequencies preprogrammed into this
receiver for this satellite no longer broad-
cast any channels. In such a case, the only
alternative is to use the good old manual
search function. All the required up-to-date
information for this function can be found
in the SatcoDX charts. The GS FTA-7001S
had no problems locking onto SCPC carriers
and MCPC packages with both low and high
symbol rates.
Once all the channels you want have been
stored in the GS FTA-7001S, they can be
organized into as many as 32 Favorites lists.
Everyday Use
So, all of the preparation work is now com-
pleted. We located the channels we wanted,
programmed them into the receiver’s
memory and organized them into Favorites
lists. Now it’s time to have a look and see
what’s on tonight!
Switching from one channel to another is
fairly fast at around half-a-second. This time
might be a little more if we select a channel
with a very low SR (like the SCPC channels
on Eurasiasat 1), but it’s still fast enough. If
the chosen channel is encrypted, a message
confirming this appears that also includes
information about the encryption system
in use. You can return to the previously
watched channel by using the “RCL” button
on the remote control. The picture quality is
very good, which is also a pleasant surprise
considering this is a budget receiver. If you
press the red “i” button once, a small box
appears near the bottom of the screen with
the name and number of the current channel,
the name of the currently selected Favorites
list, a signal strength indicator and some
brief program information (what is currently
on, when it started and when it’s scheduled
to end). Pressing this button a second time
brings another, larger information box, which
includes the channel’s genre, language and
age restriction settings. Two more detailed
signal strength and quality indicators are
also shown.
In normal channel viewing mode, the yellow
button on the remote control is the key to two
functions – teletext and subtitles. Teletext
Expert conclusion
+
A good budget receiver for everyday use at home. Fast channel
mode is quite fast, much faster than what you
might be used to on your old TV set, but some
pages still take time to load. The Electronic
Program Guide (EPG) is fast and user-friendly.
After pressing the “EPG” button, the actual
channel picture is minimized to the top right
part of the screen. Underneath the receiver
displays the channel’s details – satellite, pro-
vider, frequency, polarization, SR, FEC, age
restriction, genre, language and encryption
status while the larger, left side of the screen
is devoted to EPG information. For the cur-
rent and adjacent channels, the name of the
current and upcoming program is displayed
with start/end times.
Pressing the red “i” button lets you see
more details about the selected program, as
long as this data is provided by the broad-
caster. The green button lets you see what
the selected channel will broadcast later –
tonight, tomorrow or next Wednesday, again,
only if the broadcaster is generous enough
to share this information with you. Finally
the yellow button lets you set a timer for a
program that you don’t want to miss. And
you don’t have to worry about the receiver
accidentally getting the wrong time from the
satellite stream – you can adjust it manually,
if you wish.
The GS FTA-7001S works properly with the
Russian channels - the Cyrillic letters are dis-
played correctly both in the channel names
and EPG. We successfully tested this on
Eutelsat W4 at 36° east, but since the major-
ity of Russian channels providing such infor-
mation are encrypted, you might be more
interested in the CI version of this receiver.

The six default lists are called “TV All”, “Radio changing speeds, 32 Favorites lists. Good picture quality plus user-
All”, “Music”, “News”, “Sports” and “Movies”. friendly menu and EPG.

-
Channels can be sorted alphabetically or fil-
Nickolas
tered by satellite, frequency, network, type Ovsyadovsky
TELE-satellite
and encryption mode. To select the desired Channel search is fast and easy but only for the popular satellites. Test Center
Favorites list, press the blue “UHF” button on Unfortunately, the “blind scan” function is not yet included. Hungary
the remote control.

www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 51

 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver Info-Box

Channel selection

General Satellite
FTA-7001S
Digital FTA set-top-box
Quick automatic search
TECHNICAL Manufacturer General Satellite Corporation
Novoladozhskaya str. 4/1
DATA
St.Petersburg, 197110, Russia
Website http://www.general-satellite.com

E-mail gs@gs.ru, Smirnov@spb.gs.ru

Fax +7 812 325 28 68

Model General Satellite FTA-7001S

Function Digital FTA set-top-box

Channel Memory 5000

Symbolrate 2 – 45 Ms/s EPG

DiSEqC 1.0/1.2

Programmable 0/12V Output no

Scart Connectors 1
RCA Video/Audio Output no

Digital Audio Output yes

Color System PAL/SECAM

S-VHS Output yes

Modulator yes

C/Ku-band Compatible yes

Teletext
SCPC Compatible yes

EPG yes

Teletext yes

USB 2.0 Connection no

Power Supply 190-250 V, 50/60 Hz

Power Consumption Max. 25 W

Features
TEST
RESULT

Filtering by provider
Channel Memory

Channel
Scan Speed

Channel
INTERNATIONAL

Switching Speed
SATELLITE

Video Quality

Audio Quality

TELE
Tuner Sensitivity
Tetris

52 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver

EYCOS S10.02F
No Frills
Digital Satellite TV
The advancement of digital satellite technology can easily be seen in the way prices for set-
top boxes have dropped over the past several years. Or, to put it another way, you are always
getting better and better quality for an affordable price.
The Eycos S10.02F is a good example of this
new generation of price-conscious receivers
that still manage to offer all the necessary
features for reliable and uncomplicated sat-
ellite signal reception. Just five years ago,
the same amount of money for this box would
have gotten you an average analog receiver.
Today the Eycos comes with all the necessary
standard features you‘d expect plus a little
bit more.
The S10.02F is a digital satellite receiver
designed for the reception of free-to-air (FTA)
TV and radio channels. The Korean company
Eycos opted to use a European design firm -
the compact box was clearly designed with a
Retro look in mind. Particular emphasis was
placed on ergonomics and logical operation.
You can‘t help but notice the bright blue
colored four-digit display that shows the cur-
rent time in standby mode and the current
electronic equipment landscape. Only after
flipping open the front panel flap will you find
the receiver‘s buttons that let you operate
the box just in case the remote control disap-
pears. A card slot is also visible. In our test
receiver, this card slot did not serve any func-
tion although it can be assumed that Eycos
in cooperation with individual programming
providers will outfit this model with an inte-
grated conditional access system.
The Eycos series of receivers includes
models with integrated modulators as well as
a CI interface. Aside from these features, all
of the models are identical to the basic model
that we tested.
Everyday Use
Newcomers to the world of satellite TV and
radio would like nothing more than to con-
nect their receiver, turn it on and not have to
worry about any additional installation set-
tings. It is this target group that the Eycos
S10.02F will best serve since it is already
preprogrammed for the reception of Astra,
Hotbird and Turksat. The target market
for this box is clearly the German-speaking
countries in central Europe as well as their
Turkish-speaking citizens.
If the preprogrammed settings do not
work for you, they can all be modified to your
needs through the individual menus or, if
necessary, the receiver can be totally reset
and reconfigured step-by-step from the
beginning. That the Eycos S10.02F has more
in it than first meets the eye can be seen in
the list of available menu, audio and subti-
tle languages. Nearly every European lan-
guage plus Russian and Persian are offered.
In addition to the time setting, the timer list
and the initial parental control settings, the
System Settings also provides options for
the audio and video outputs as well as for
the OSD display and the length of time the
Info bar remains on the screen after chang-
ing channels.

channel number when the receiver is turned

on; a rather attractive feature. The box is
available in black and silver and thus can
easily be optically integrated into any existing

54 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver
As a bonus, the brightness, color intensity
and contrast of the video signal can also be
set in the Video Settings menu independent
of the TV being used. The video signal on
the Scart connectors can be sent to the TV
in either CVBS or RGB format. The video
output signal along with left and right stereo
audio outputs are also available on three RCA
jacks. For digital audio, an optical output is
provided on the rear panel.
In the installation menu a few extra sur-
prises were waiting for us to discover. The
satellite list is made up of 64 entries of which
47 already come preprogrammed with up-
to-date satellite positions. The remaining
entries can be set up any way you like result-
ing in a „fully loaded“ satellite list. Addition-
ally, the transponder data of every satellite
can easily be edited.
In order to use this receiver with more
than one satellite position at the same time,
it comes integrated with DiSEqC 1.0, 1.1 and
1.2. With corresponding switches, up to 16
different satellite positions can be driven
to. Naturally, A DiSEqC motor for automatic
antenna control would be best for this appli-
cation. If you think that this is more than
enough for this price class, then think again:
this receiver also comes integrated with the
easy-to-use USALS protocol and also sports
56 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com
a well-designed, self-explanatory menu that
shouldn‘t be a problem even for beginners.
We tested this receiver on a multifeed
antenna pointed to Astra at 19.2° east and
Hotbird at 13° east and began by deleting
all of the receiver‘s previously stored chan-
nel data. In this way storing channels in
the channel memory can be started from
scratch. The S10.02F comes with three dif-
ferent methods of channel scanning, namely
an automatic scan that doesn‘t require any
setup by the user, a manual scan requiring
the input of frequency, polarization and sym-
bolrate and an expanded scan that includes
the entering of PID data.
A Network scan option is also available for
the automatic and manual scans. The auto-
matic scan encompassed 74 transponders
on Astra plus 98 transponders on Hotbird
and required a total of nine minutes and 15
seconds for 1521 TV channels and 632 radio
channels. A respectable value.
For a more thorough scan we recommend
you activate the Network function. Although
the scan time increased to 15 minutes and
22 seconds, six additional transponders on
Hotbird as well as two more on Astra were
found that increased the number of TV and
radio channels by 176 and 55 respectively.
As always, the longer times involved with a
Network scan are well worth it. The S10.02F
can also scan for data channels. Our tests of
this feature revealed 227 data channels on
Astra and 165 on Hotbird.
The entire channel list can be worked on
in the main menu in order to, for example,
rename channels, delete them or skip over
them. Even more interesting are the eight
Favorites lists that can be easily filled and
accessed. The Eycos shows its flexibil-
ity even here with an overall user-friendly
organization of all the lists and the ability to
rename the lists.
We were also impressed that the Favorites
lists did not differentiate between TV and
radio channels. They could be filled with any
combination of TV and radio channels. If,
for example, you select a radio channel out
of one of the lists, the receiver automatically
switches over to radio mode and vice versa.
Perhaps this will motivate some users to
actually surf through the radio channels that
more often than not take a back seat to the
TV channels.
Once all of the channels have been organ-
ized to your personal tastes, channel surf-
ing can begin. Similar to Astra, the Hotbird
position also offers a wide variety of pro-
gramming that goes far beyond the main-
stream programming we are all familiar
with. Switching between channels is also
not too tiresome since the Eycos has a pass-
able switching time of about one second.
Undoubtedly, there are faster receivers
available, but this value really can‘t be criti-
cized since extreme channel surfing between
Astra and Hotbird did not cause this box a
problem in any way. Occasionally, especially
when switching between Astra and Hotbird
transponders, some momentary video pixi-
lation was observed but in the blink of an eye
the video and audio quality were once again
crystal clear.
The Info bar that appears at the bottom of
the screen with every channel change shows
the channel number as well as the title of
the current program, a brief description of
the program, the name of the satellite, fre-
quency, symbolrate, signal strength and
quality bar graphs as well as the current time
and a bar graph that shows the elapsed time
of the current program. Additionally, there
are symbols that show the availability of sub-
titles, teletext and Dolby Digital. What could
have been information overload in this Info
bar is instead, thanks to its „clean“ design, an
excellent source of information. This bar can
also be called up at any other time by push-
ing the Info button on the remote. Pushing
the Info button a second time displays more
detailed information on the currently running
program.
The teletext function can be accessed
either via the teletext decoder in the TV or in
the receiver. Switching with multiple audio
tracks did not cause any problems. Eycos
also provided this receiver with a 16x Zoom
function. The box comes equipped as prom-
ised in the user manual.
The Electronic Program Guide (EPG) is
activated by pushing the Guide button on
the remote control. The arrow buttons allow
you to comfortably navigate through the
EPG. The EPG can be used to access chan-
nels directly or mark them for recording (with
an external recorder). The EPG data can be
displayed for a single channel or for multiple
channels.
As with all the other menus and functions, We also want to give high marks to the
Eycos paid very close attention to ease-of-use user manual that is printed in German and
and clarity. The same is true for the remote English. It is a great source of information
control; somewhat oddly shaped but with for beginners. Filled with numerous illus-
buttons that are smartly organized. The only trations and written in easy-to-understand
critical point is that because of its shape you language, it could be an excellent example
might have a tough time figuring out which for many other receivers. All-in-all, the
end of the remote is up and which end is down entire package (receiver, remote control and
if you are using it in low lighting conditions or user manual) is a solid product with excel-
in the blind (without looking at it). One good lent features that would make an outstand-
thing about its shape - it can‘t topple over ing addition to anyone‘s array of electronic
while it is, for example, laying on the table. equipment.
Expert conclusion
+
The S10.02F is a compact starter receiver that comes nicely
equipped at a very reasonable price. The user-friendly software
responds very quickly to commands and is very stable in its
operation. Thanks to DiSEqC and USALS, this receiver is also
interesting for more experienced users for the effortless reception Armin Gottwald
TELE-satellite
of multiple satellites. Test Center
Austria
-
Knowing which end of the remote control is up might be difficult at first in the dark
since its shape really doesn't give a clue as to which side is up or down. Switching
between the channel list and Favorites lists could be easier.
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 57
 TEST REPORT Satellite Receiver Info-Box

Main menu

EYCOS S10.02F
Digital FTA satellite receiver
TECHNICAL Manufacturer EYCOS Multimedia Systems
189-1, Kumi-dong, Bundang-ku EPG
DATA
Seongnam, 463-810, Korea

Tel +82-31-716-2289

Fax +82-31-716-2655

Email eycos@eycos.com

Model EYCOS S10.02F

Function Digital FTA satellite receiver

Channel Memory 4000

Satellites 64

Symbol rate 2 ~ 45 Ms/sec Channel information

DiSEqC 1.0 / 1.1 / 1.2

USALS yes

Programmable 0/12 V no

Digital Audio Output S/PDIF (optical)

Scart Connectors 2

Video/Stereo Audio Output 3 x RCA

Color system PAL, NTSC

S-VHS Output no

Modulator no Channel list

SCPC Compatible yes

EPG yes

Teletext yes (OSD und VBI)

Power Supply 90 –250 VAC

Power Consumption 24 W max.

Features
TEST
RESULT

DiSEqC 1.2
Channel Memory

Channel
Scan Speed

Channel
INTERNATIONAL

Switching Speed
SATELLITE

Video Quality

Audio Quality

TELE
Tuner Sensitivity
Satellite options

58 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 PREVIEW Satellite Receiver

FortecStar FSIR-5400NA
New Power Scan Receiver
We were about to close the books on this issue of TELE-satellite magazine when a pack- so that another receiver can be connected.
age was delivered to our office door. It turned out to be a prereleased version of the new In addition to the three RCA jacks for video
FSIR-5400NA satellite receiver from FortecStar Communications out of Canada. Although this and stereo audio, you can also connect
receiver only arrived just at press time and we did not have time to put this box through its your TV using the outputs from the built-in
paces, we still wanted to introduce it here. We will, of course, follow up with a more detailed modulator. The modulator output can be
test report in the next issue of TSI. set to either VHF channel 3 or 4 via a tiny
slide switch. For improved video and audio
quality, there’s also an S/PDIF optical audio
output and an S-VHS video output. Last but
not least there’s the RS-232 interface and
the main power switch.

The 5400NA comes with many of the fea-

The model that we received for test-
ing came with a card slot for the embedded
Irdeto system and is one of three different
models in this series. A simple FTA receiver
and a box with CI slots make up the other
two models in the series. All three of these
models were designed with the North Ameri-
can market in mind.
The silver-colored box is sleek in design
and comes with a set of five chrome-colored,
rectangular buttons on the left side of the
front panel. Four of these buttons are for
channel selection and volume control and are
arranged in a cross pattern. The on/standby
button is to the left of the other four and is
slightly larger in size. The green four-digit
display is in the center and shows either the
current channel number or the time of day.
The card slot for the embedded Irdeto system
is hidden behind a flap that forms around the
lower and right sides of the display window.
The rear panel of this receiver is nicely
equipped. The LNB input is looped through
tures that you might be familiar with when
it comes to FortecStar receivers. The most
important of these features would, of course,
be the Power Scan (A.k.a. Blind Scan) func-
tion that lets you scan a satellite for digital
signals without knowing any signal param-
eters in advance. But FortecStar has greatly
enhanced the power of their Power Scan
function in this receiver by giving it addi-
tional capabilities. For example, now you can
specify the frequency range that you would
like to scan. You can also tell the receiver
the frequency steps it should take during a
scan. These extras were not available in the
FortecStar Lifetime Ultra.
FortecStar has told us that the production
version of the 5400NA should become avail-
able sometime in September of 2005. In
the meantime, we will put this new receiver
through a more thorough test and present the
results in the next issue of TELE-satellite.

60 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Satellite & Terrestrial Receiver

Golden Interstar
DVB-T/S 8300 CI Premium
Digital and Terrestrial -
Plus Spectrum Analyzer!
Digital satellite TV has already found its way into over a million homes in Europe while the a dark-colored glass panel behind which can
changeover of terrestrial TV from analog to digital in many of the old world countries is taking be found the four-digit display and the infra-
its time. If you are interested in both of these methods then you definitely should not skip red receiver for the remote control. Along-
over this test report. side are the buttons for channel selection,
volume control and on/standby arranged in
a half circle.
The DVB-T/S 8300 CI Premium is one of the And this is just what is printed on the
newest receivers to come out of the German receiver‘s box leaving you with the idea that To the right is a flap under which can be
manufacturer Golden Interstar and its list of this is a technologically advanced and reli- found two SmartCard slots as well as slots
features promise quite a lot: two tuners - one able product. We took a closer look at the for two CAM modules making this receiver
for digital satellite reception and the other for 8300 CI Premium to see if it could deliver compatible with the reception of PayTV sig-
digital terrestrial signals - enough memory everything as promised. nals.
for up to 6000 channels on as many as 1000
transponders, every DiSEqC protocol plus The design of the box is simple yet ele- A Menu button and an OK button are also
USALS and to top it off a two-year warranty. gant. Two thirds of the front is enclosed in to be found behind this flap. Together with

62 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com


the channel up/down buttons and the volume
control buttons, all of the system settings
for this box can be handled directly from the
front panel.
This is an intelligent solution for those
moments when you discover that the remote
control needs a new set of batteries. It is
unfortunate that the manufacturer didn‘t
think to include an Exit button as well; it‘s
easy enough to get into all the menus but
getting out is a little bit more involved.
Looking at the rear panel you will find an
input for the satellite antenna, an input for
digital terrestrial signals plus one for stand-
ard terrestrial channels.
All of these three inputs also have corre-
sponding looped-through outputs with the
standard terrestrial output connected to a
modulator. In addition to the two Scart con-
nectors for a TV and VCR, there‘s also a set
of three RCA jacks that provide composite
video and stereo audio outputs plus there‘s
extra connectors for a 0/12-volt programma-
ble output and an S/PDIF output for digital
audio.
The remote control is not too big and not
too small and is light and easy to use. We
would have preferred to see the volume con-
trols set apart from the ring buttons so that
the ring buttons could be used for other com-
mands, but this is really our own impression
and doesn‘t in any way take away from the
overall ergonomics of the remote control.
Everyday Use
After turning on the receiver for the first
time or after the box is reset to its default
settings, the main menu will first appear
in English. The submenu „Installation“ is
already highlighted. For less experienced
users it might have made more sense to
make the menu language selection the first
step before doing anything else.
Satellite & Terrestrial Receiver TEST REPORT
These settings are only first found in the
third submenu. The available languages
are English, French, German, Arabic, Per-
sian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Czech, Greek,
Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Hungarian and
Italian even though the printed user manual
indicates that only eight languages are avail-
able.
In the installation you must first choose
between satellite and terrestrial. In satellite
mode a list of all the preprogrammed satel-
lite positions is displayed on the left side of
the screen.
The 8300 CI Premium has 83 of these
positions with additional positions that can
be added manually. All of the current set-
tings for the selected satellite are shown in
a window on the right side. Here you can
not only select the local oscillator frequency
(LOF), the DiSEqC settings or activate a
Network scan, but you can also view the
signal strength and quality in a spectrum
analyzer display for every transponder from
the selected satellite.
This feature is extremely helpful when
precisely aligning the antenna since in spec-
trum analyzer mode the signal strength and
quality is displayed as two moving lines of
different colors. What resembles the lines
on a medical chart help to precisely map
signal changes as the result of moving the
antenna. The supreme advantage to this
type of display is that instead of having just
a display of the signal conditions at that
moment, the overall results of moving the
antenna around can be seen at the same
time making it easier to interpret and ulti-
mately correct the alignment.
Should a DiSEqC motor also be connected,
these settings can also be taken care of in
this menu. In the Transponder Settings sub-
menu, transponders can be edited, added
or individually scanned. The manual entry
of PID data is also possible here. All in all,
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International
nothing appears to have been left out in
the channel scan settings. After selecting
a desired satellite, a channel scan can be
started by simply pressing the blue button
on the remote control.
In addition to a progress bar graph,
Golden Interstar was confident enough to
also included an elapsed time indicator (min-
utes and seconds) for the channel scan. 75
Astra transponders were scanned in just
3 minutes and 26 seconds. An incredible
achievement considering that we activated
the Network scan and searched for all avail-
able channels!
The scan of terrestrial channels follows a
similar path. It can be an automatic scan
for all available digital channels in Europe or
a manual scan on a particular channel fre-
quency. The Astra position alone delivers
over 1000 TV and radio channels. If recep-
tion is expanded to multiple satellites, the
number of channels will, of course, increase
dramatically. Naturally some form of organi-
zation of all these channels is necessary. For
starters, channels can be individually moved
into one of the eight Favorites lists.
In many cases this is where the user-
friendliness typically comes to an end. What
good is a high-speed channel scan and lots
of channel memory when it will take you an
entire weekend just to sort through all the
channels and move them into appropriate
Favorites lists?
Fortunately, the 8300 CI Premium did not
disappoint us here. In the Channel Editing
submenu we find a two-column display with
the entire channel list on the left side and the
Favorites list on the right side. Simply select
the desired channel and push the OK button
to move the channel over to the Favorites
list. It doesn‘t get easier than this.
Golden Interstar suggests that its channel
switching time is extremely fast. In practice,
63
nearly a full second was needed from the
time a new channel is selected to the point
where it actually appears on the screen.
Within the same transponder this time is
somewhat faster and when switching over to
an encrypted channel you actually need to
wait a little longer. This is nothing to write
home about but at the same time it is nothing
to complain about either.
The waiting time can be indirectly short-
ened by selecting the fading option in the
user settings menu. This will let the old
channel fade out and the new channel fade
in - something that is quite pleasant to the
eyes.
The menus are clearly laid out and permit
quick and easy navigation to the individual
submenus. The overall design, with its back-
ground colors and outlines, is a very pleas-
ant experience and all of the functions in the
8300 CI Premium can be found where they
would normally be expected.
The Info bar that appears for a user-
defined number of seconds when switching
to another channel or when the Info button
is pushed on the remote, displays the chan-
nel number and name as well as the satellite CI Premium. There‘s even a Zoom func-
with transponder frequency and symbols for tion to let you enlarge portions of the video
FTA/CAS, teletext, audio options and paren- image. Even this tool is becoming available
tal controls. in more and more receivers even though the
actual usefulness of this feature still remains
The signal strength can be displayed either to be seen.
in bar graph form or in spectrum analyzer
form. Unfortunately, the title of the current A good Electronic Program Guide (EPG) is
program is not automatically displayed. This much more important. A push of the EPG
only appears with an additional push of the button on the remote displays a seven-day
Info button. preview of the current channel. The direc-
tional buttons can be used to change chan-
It seems that it has become a prerequisite nels and also select the preview day. The
for a receiver to come with a variety of video EPG is designed with clarity and loads the
games to pass the time during long commer- data reasonably fast and then reliably dis-
cial breaks. This is no different with the 8300 plays this information.
Expert conclusion
+
A solid and good-looking receiver for satellite and terrestrial
reception. Fast software and excellent options for aligning a satellite
antenna manually or with a DiSEqC motor. Let‘s not forget the turbo-
charged channel scan.
- Armin Gottwald
TELE-satellite
Test Center
The OSD design is for our tastes a little bit too colorful. Austria
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 65
 TEST REPORT Satellite & Terrestrial Receiver Info-Box

Main menu

Golden Interstar DVB-T/S

8300 CI Premium
Digital FTA+CI satellite
and terrestrial receiver Motor setting

TECHNICAL Distributor Golden Interstar GmbH

Stuttgarter Str. 36,
DATA
73635 Rudersberg, Germany
Fax +49 7183 30594 20
Email info@golden-interstar.com
Internet www.golden-interstar.com
Model DVB-T/S 8300 CI Premium
Function Digital FTA + CI satellite and
terrestrial receiver
Channel memory 6000
EPG
Satellites 83 pre-programmed
Symbol rate 1 ~ 45 Ms/sec
DiSEqC 1.0 / 1.1 / 1.2
USALS Yes
Programmable 0/12 V Yes
Digital Audio Output S/PDIF (optical)
Scart connectors 2
Video/Stereo Audio Output 3 x RCA
Colour system PAL, NTSC
S-VHS Output No
Info
Modulator Yes
SCPC compatible Yes
EPG Yes
Teletext Yes (OSD und VBI,
only OSD available in test)
Power Supply 100 –250 VAC
Power Consumption 25 W max.

Features
TEST
RESULT

Channel list
Channel Memory

Channel
Scan Speed

Channel
INTERNATIONAL

Switching Speed
SATELLITE

Video Quality

Audio Quality

TELE
Tuner Sensitivity
Satellite setup

66 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT LNB

Max Communication LNBF

models 801, 802, 804 and 804-s
Can You Hear the
Whisper from the Sky?
LNB is short for Low Noise Block. As its name implies, a low level of
noise is absolutely essential for this device. It was true in the old days
of analog satellite TV and it is still true today as well. What has changed
over time is the performance of LNB’s. Several years ago a 1 or even 1.2
dB noise figure was considered good. Today, the leading manufacturers
know how to achieve noise figures as low as 0.3 dB.

If you installed your Ku-band offset dish

antenna 3-4 years ago, you probably have
an LNBF with the noise figure of 0.8 dB or
so. Does it make sense to replace it with
today’s 0.3 dB units? If you have some
background in electronics, for example in
audio equipment, you may wonder if such a
small change is even noticeable. Improving
the signal-to-noise ratio by 0.5 dB does not
sound very appealing. However, the noise
figure is misleading in the case of satellite
reception. That’s because the source tem-
perature is not something around 290°K as
it is for terrestrial transmissions, but only
about 30°K. That means that the actual
improvement in signal-to-noise ratio will be
about 1.8 dB so the reception of weak trans-
ponders can be significantly improved.

Max Communication provided us with 4

samples of their new family of LNBF’s: single,
twin, quad and quatro models. The family is
named Platinum Edition and the models are
respectively: 801, 802, 804 and 804-s. All of
them are designed for use on offset dishes.
Since they are so-called “universal LNBF’s”,
they are capable of receiving the entire Ku-
band. Universal LNBF’s have two local oscil-
lator frequencies (LOF’s): 9.750 and 10.600
GHz. More importantly, the noise figure for all
of these units is specified as typically 0.3 dB.

When unpacked, the LNBF’s did not look

all that different from other LNBF’s. The

68 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 LNB TEST REPORT

housing used for the twin LNBF is the same
as the one for the quad or quatro. The only
difference was that there were only two
output connectors for the twin versus four
for the other two. The plastic segments
making up the housing did not in all cases
line up perfectly with each other although
the same can certainly be said for the
LNB’s of other manufacturers as well. All of
the models come with rubber sleeves that
are used to protect the cable connections
from rain or dust. The manufacturer did not
provide much technical information on the
boxes in which the LNBF’s were packed in,
nor was a data sheet included.
them in dBm, subtract 109 from the pro-
vided values (for example: +70 dBµV equals
–39 dBm). We decided that apart from the
purely electrical measurements, we wanted
to observe the results on a real receiver. We
used a DSN GR-7400CI, a receiver that was
presented in the previous issue of TELE-
satellite International. The receiver’s signal
strength reading is shown on the same chart
as the output measurement. Coincidently,
the Y-axis values are well suited to show
values in dBµV and % at the same time.
Of course, the most interesting param-
eter to measure would be the C/N ratio
although it is rather difficult to measure correction that all digital TV receivers per-

Test Approach it correctly with real life signals. The fre-

quency spectrum is almost entirely occu-
form on the signal.

First of all, we decided to compare the Max
Communication LNBF’s with another unit
from a different manufacturer. We selected
as our point of reference, a twin LNBF with a
noise figure of 0.8 dB that was several years
old. We used a tripod on which a 90 cm dish
was installed. LNBF’s were mounted on the
feed support one after another. The antenna
was directed to Sirius 2/3 at 5.0° east. For
testing, we selected a channel transmitted
on the weakest beam (Europe BSS) and in
the middle of the Ku-band: 11.766 GHz, hor-
izontal polarization, SR=27.500 MS/s.
We measured the power of the output
signal supplied by the LNBF – which closely
corresponds to the LNBF’s conversion gain.
The higher the gain, the higher the power
of the output signal. Except for the digital
channel power (DCP), we measured the
amplitude level. The results presented here
are expressed in dBµV. If you prefer to have
pied up by transponders and this poses a big
problem in determining a noise floor. If we
could ask a satellite operator to switch their
transponders on and off when we needed it,
this would solve our measurement problem.
However, because we suspected that they
would not be willing to cooperate with us in
that way, we had to approach the problem
differently.
Instead of finding out the C/N ratio, we
measured the channel bit error rate (chan-
nel BER). This parameter tells us how often
an erroneous bit occurs (due to noise and
interference) in the data stream. A signal
having a channel BER equal to 1x10 -4 is
regarded as very good – it is called QEF
(Quasi Error Free). In our tests, we dealt
with greater channel BER values (signal was
relatively weak and noisy), but still no video
or audio distortions were noticeable at the
receiver output. That’s because of the error
However, if the channel BER were higher,
the error correction function would not be
able to recreate the original data resulting
in dramatically deteriorated video and audio
quality. Except for the measurements taken
with a meter, we noted down the signal
quality readings provided by the GR-7400CI.
These readings are nearly as good an indi-
cator of signal quality as the channel BER
measured by a sophisticated and expensive
meter.
Discussion
of the Results
As you can see in figure 1, the variation
of output power from the LNBF’s under test
is about 5 dB. Since the conversion gain of a
typical LNB is 50 to 60 dB, such a difference
in output power is quite normal. So the only
conclusion that can be drawn here is that

Figure 1. Figure 2.
Signal strength measurements and set-top-box readings Channel BER measurements
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 69
 LNB TEST REPORT

the conversion gain

of the Max Com-
munication devices
does not differ from
other LNBF’s avail-
able on the market.
Much more inter-
esting results are
shown in figure 2.
As you can see,
there is a very dis-
tinctive difference Figure 3. Signal quality readings on a set-top-box
in signal quality
between the 0.8 dB and 0.3 dB devices. If munications have very similar noise fig-
the channel BER values do not appeal to you ures and that the 0.3 dB is not a lie. To be
too much, look at the quality reading of the quite sure about that, we checked the same
set-top-box presented in figure 3. Signals signal from the Sirius satellite with another
with a reading below 40% would be heavily quad LNBF. This one had a NF=0.4dB and
distorted on this particular set-top-box. was mounted on the other 90 cm dish. We
obtained: channel BER 70x10 -4, signal qual-
One can conclude that the twin LNBF was ity 70%. There was virtually no difference
the very best among the four 0.3 dB devices. between the 0.3 dB and 0.4 dB units, while a
Not so fast! The twin LNBF was the first we significant improvement was seen over the
tested. Before we had finished, it was late 0.8 dB LNBF.
in the evening. The weather could change
a bit. So we decided to repeat the test with During our testes we observed that there
a twin model. This time the results were: was no difference between the two out-
channel BER 90x10 -4, signal quality 70%. puts in the twin or four outputs in the quad
The results were slightly worse than those models. The signal strength and quality was
of a single LNBF. Taking this into account, identical regardless of which output was
we can say that all 4 models from Max Com- connected to the coax cable.

Expert conclusion
+
All four models provide the low noise performance that the manu-
facturer promises. The conversion gain is sufficient and there is no
difference in signal strength and quality on different outputs of the
twin and quad models. If you have a 0.8 dB or worse LNBF, upgrad-
ing with the Max Communication device will significantly improve the Peter Miller
reception of weak signals. TELE-satellite

-
Test Center
Poland

Detailed technical specifications like LOF stability or operating temperature was

not included with the unit. Only average workmanship quality raises fear about the
durability and resistance of these LNBF’s to harsh weather conditions.

TECHNICAL
DATA
Manufacturer Max Communication GmbH,
Siemensstr. 53, 25462 Rellingen, Germany,
http://www.maxcommunication.de/

E-mail info@max-communication.de

Phone +49 4101 / 6060-0

Fax +49 4101 / 6060-9 99

Models 801 (single), 802 (twin),

804 (quad) and 804-s (quatro)

Description Universal LNBF’s for Offset Dishes

Noise Figure 0.3 dB typ.

LOF’s 9.750 and 10.600 GHz

www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 71

 TEST REPORT DiSEqC switches

for the installation. Included with the switch

were a set of three protective sleeves that

Vantage Digital
slide over the “F” connectors once the cables
are connected to the switch and are designed
to keep the “F” connectors on the switch free
from dirt and moisture. Keep in mind that

A Switch for
these protective sleeves need to be inserted
on the raw coax cable before any “F” connec-
tors are mated to the cable.

Any Application
We connected the switch to a 76cm dish
pointed to Intelsat Americas 5 and a 1.2-
meter dish pointed at Hispasat. The receiver
controlled the switch flawlessly. There was
a negligible delay when switching from one
Vantage Digital, a company based in Karlsruhe, Germany, is a supplier of digital satellite TV input to the other.
products. Their product line consists of satellite antennas, receivers, switches and amplifiers
along with assorted installation accessories that include cable and multifeed assemblies. Their
assortment of switches includes everything from a simple DiSEqC A/B switch to an 8-input/1- VT-DS 4/1 PL
output DiSEqC switch. Vantage also has quite an assortment of amplifier and signal distribu- The next switch we looked at was the VT-
tion products. They were kind enough to provide us with an assortment of their switch and DS 4/1 PL. Like the first switch, this model
amplifier products so that we could take a closer look at them. also comes enclosed in a weatherproof gray-
colored plastic housing. Unlike the first
switch, this housing is designed in such a way
that no protective sleeves are needed for the
“F” connectors. One side of the housing is
exposed providing access to the connectors
on the switch that are recessed inside the
open side of the housing. When properly
installed, this exposed side is pointing down
to the ground preventing any moisture from
reaching the connectors.

The DS 4/1 PL switches between the sig-

VT-DS 2/1 PL
2-input/1-output switch
For this issue of TELE-satellite we will
focus our efforts on their line of switch
products. The next issue will concentrate
on their signal amplifier and distribution
products. The switch products we received
for testing included both indoor and outdoor
pieces.
DS 2/1 PL switch connected to the C
and Ku-band LNB‘s of a 10-foot dish
The weatherproof housing lets you install
the switch as close as possible to the antenna
without having to worry if it gets wet or not.
This minimizes the amount of cabling needed
nals from four different satellite antennas
or four LNB’s on a multifeed antenna. The
satellite receiver selects the desired switch
input by sending the proper signals to the
switch via the coax cable. For our tests we
connected this switch to four fixed anten-
nas, two of which were Ku-band with the
other two being C-band. The four antennas
were pointed to Telstar 12 (90cm Ku-band),
Hispasat (1.2-meter Ku-band), Intelsat 805

VT-DS 2/1 PL
The first switch we looked at was a simple
DiSEqC A/B switch. This simple dual input/
single output switch comes fully enclosed in
a weatherproof gray-colored plastic hous-
ing. The two inputs can be connected, for
example, to the LNB’s on two different satel-
lite dishes or it can be used with the Ku-band
and C-band LNB outputs of a single dish. In
either way, the result is a single cable to the
receiver with the receiver controlling the VT-DS 4/1 PL DS 4/1 PL switch connected to the same
switch via its integrated DiSEqC protocol. 4-input/1-output switch 10-foot dish plus two additional antennas

74 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 DiSEqC switches TEST REPORT

formed. When switching from one input

to the other, the switch instantly “moved”
between inputs and behaved much like a
standard DiSEqC switch. There was no
delay in switching from one satellite to the
other as would normally be experienced with
a motor moving the dish from one satellite
to another. The switch performed flawlessly
while switching back and forth between all
of its eight inputs.

Vantage‘s assortment of switches

(1.6-meter C-band) and Galaxy 11 (3.0-meter

C-band). The Vantage VT-DS 4/1 PL easily
switched between the four inputs. There was
also hardly any noticeable delay when switch-
ing from one input to another.

VT-DS 8/1
The next switch that was put under the
microscope was the VT-DS 8/1. This switch
is far more unique than the others we have
looked at so far in that it can handle up to eight
different inputs and route them to a single
output. It is not weatherproof like the first
two models so if this switch is to be installed
VT-DS 8/1 8-input/1-output switch
outdoors, you must make certain that it is
properly protected from the elements. strength is at maximum for the first satellite.
Store the position and repeat the procedure Conclusion
This is not your normal everyday switch. for the remaining seven inputs keeping in Vantage offers a variety
The DiSEqC 1.2 logo printed on the label mind that the entire set up procedure may of very reliable switches
clearly points this out. DiSEqC 1.2 is normally take some time until all the satellite positions for almost any application.
associated with antenna motors but in this have been “found”. It is also possible to con- Whether you only have
case it is used to control this switch. From trol the eight switch inputs with the DiSEqC two satellite antennas, two
the receiver’s point of view, this switch looks 1.1 protocol. Even DiSEqC 1.0 would work LNB’s on one antenna, or if
like an antenna motor and this simply means but in this case only the first four inputs could you have as many as eight
that each of the eight inputs will be assigned be used. antennas scattered around
its own “motor position” in the receiver’s your backyard, Vantage has Ron Roessel
antenna motor menu. Once all the positions have been stored, the correct switch for your TELE-satellite
Test Center
we wanted to see how well the switch per- needs. North America

We connected this switch to our antenna

farm using the same satellites as with the 4/1
switch above plus adding antennas pointed at
TECHNICAL
DATA
Intelsat Americas 5 (76cm Ku-band) and Nimiq Manufacturer Vantage Digital, Karlsruhe, Germany
1/2 (20-inch dual feed Ku-band). Don’t forget, Fax +49-721-96-14-17-9
the receiver that you use must be DiSEqC 1.2
E-mail info@vantage-digital.com
compatible in order to fully use this switch
but since most receivers on the market today Model VT-DS 2/1 PL VT-DS 4/1 PL VT-DS 8/1

come incorporated with at least DiSEqC 1.2, Function A/B Switch 4-input/1-output 8-input/1-output
this should really not be a problem. Frequency Range 5-2300 MHz 5-2300 MHz 950-2300 MHz

Insertion Loss 3 dB typ. 8 dB (5-862 MHz) 5 dB typ.

We checked out the switch using the 5 dB (950-2300 MHz)
receiver’s DiSEqC 1.2 function. The first sat-
Isolation 35 dB typ. 30 dB typ. 30 dB typ.
ellite is set up by “moving” the antenna using
the receiver’s antenna menu until the signal Power Consumption 30 mA 30 mA 50 mA max

www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 75

 SatcoDX
Andy Middleton
SatcoDX Headquarters
A round-up of worldwide satellite news
from SatcoDX covering Mid-June to Mid-
August 2005.
All channels are free-to-air unless speci-
fied otherwise.
Europe / Africa / Middle-East
August 10 saw a big scare for EUTELSAT’s
busy W1 satellite at 10.0 degrees east. At
around 1200UTC all signals disappeared from
the satellite. APTN’s UP4 and GVW (Global
Video Wire) services and Serbia’s RTS Sat
were hastily moved to the W6 (formerly W3)
satellite at 21.5E. Several hours later W1 came
back to life, with the moved services returning
the next day when the satellite was back to full
operation.
As always, HOTBIRD (13.0E) saw many new
channels starting. Among them were OL TV
on 10.834V, RTVi Nashe Kino on 11.013H,
Radio Millennium on 11.302H, MKTV Sat,
24Ore TV on 11.449V, Conto TV and Calab-
ria Channel on 11.531V, TBN Russian on
11.566H, Music Nation on 11.746H, Puglia
Channel on 12.520V (all symbol rate 27500
FEC 3/4). Ten Sport started at 11.304H 27500
3/4, becoming encrypted soon after.
It was a quiet period at ASTRA 1 (19.2E).
Radio Top 40 from Germany started at
12.633H 22000 5/6. Astra’s Satmode promos
and data moved to 11.973V 27500 3/4, and
Premiere Win started regular programmes
in Nagravision on 12.032H 27500 3/4, after
broadcasting an FTA promo for a while.
ITV tests on Palapa C2
76 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com
Over on ASTRA 2 at 28.2E, the expected vari-
ations of ITV1’s Anglia, Scottish TV, Merid-
ian and Tyne Tees regions were added to the
existing ITV transponders at 10.759V, 10.891H
and 10.906V (all 22000 5/6). Men & Motors
became free to air and moved to 10.759V – this
is set to become the new ITV4 channel later in
the year. ABC1, available on digital terrestrial
in the UK for some time began at 10.862H,
22000 5/6, encrypted in Videoguard.
Phoenix CNE left its long time home of
11.565V on EUROBIRD 1 (28.5E) for a new
home at 11.623H 27500 2/3. Unusually for this
Aldana TV tests on Nilesat
satellite, the channel had not changed even its
PIDs since October 2002.
Several other channels started or moved on
the ASTRA 2/EUROBIRD 1 position. They
include: Yooplay TV on 11.222H, Vectone
Music on 11.224V, The Wrestling Channel
and You TV 2 on 11.260V, DM Digital on
11.264H, Aastha TV and ChoicesUK TV on
11.307V, ATN Bangla on 11.527V, Screen-
shop and Price-Drop TV on 12.032H, iBuy
TV on 12.129V, Sony’s SET Max on 11.973V
– all 27500 2/3.
Tests began for The Hits (12.304H), Discov-
ery Real Time (11.222H), Paramount +1
(11.546H) - all 27500 2/3, plus FX+ 10.876V
22000 5/6 all using Videoguard encryption. All
of these are expected to join the Sky Digital
platform shortly. Passion TV also began tests
at 11.260V in the clear.
In the Slovak Link package on EUROBIRD 1
at 12.643H 27500 3/4, JOJ, TA3 and Radio
Hey began broadcasts. The same channels
in this package also appeared at ASTRA 3A
(23.5E), 12.565H 27500 2/3.
On ARABSAT at 26.0E, Dubai’s EDTV chan-
nel, Dream 2 and Melody Hits started in the
News
C-band at 3.800H, 27500 3/4. Al Arabiya
replaced MBC at 3.786V 4500 7/8.
Meanwhile on Ku band, the Al Majd Docu-
mentary channel started regular programmes
at 12.662V 27500 3/4. 12.519V 27500 3/4
saw the start of Ghinwa TV, Mersal, promos
for Art Vision and Jeddah TV, and several
test cards in anticipation of the start of further
services. Kuwait Space Channel moved
from 11.560H to 11.212V 3000 3/4. Also
moving were the Jordan Satellite Chan-
nel, the Arabic General Channel and Fun
FM, moving from 11.568H to a new home of
11.203V 3400 3/4.
The Egypt Satellite Channel (ESC) replaced
Euronews at 11.585V 27500 3/4. Meanwhile,
Iqraa replaced ESC at 11.862V. Rotana
Zaman also started at 11.623V 27500 3/4
following a promo. Abu Dhabi Sports on
11.862V 27500 3/4 became free-to-air on
August 1st, and it is clear now also on Nilesat
(7.0W), 11.996H 27500 3/4.
At 30.5E, ARABSAT 2B saw the start of Al
Jazeera on two new frequencies, 12.722H
3400 3/4 and 12.722V 2800 3/4. The USA ver-
sion of LBC Sat began at 12.654H 3900 3/4.
Over at INTELSAT 602 (62.0E), a set of Ira-
nian channels started. Radios Sarasari,
Payam, Javan, Quran Maaref, Farhang Var-
zesh and Salamt are all at 11.147V 27500 3/4
in the Farsi language.
Sports Max on Intelsats 805 and 707
On EURASIASAT (42.0E), Imedia TV
changed SR, the new parameters are 12.608V
37500 5/6. Radio Time started at 11.804V
24444 5/6 and Halay replaced WOM Plus on
the same frequency. WOM Europe on 11.852V
4444 5/6 was replaced by Smart Musik.
At HELLAS SAT (39.0E), TV Pika, Islah TV,
Euro1080, Debate TV and the Hellas Sat
News
promo changed their SR and FEC to 28800
5/6. Greek radio stations Nitro and Sfera
started at 12.524V 27500 3/4.
Ravi started test transmissions on PAKSAT
(38.0E) 4.121H 2990 3/4.
A good test of your receiver’s low-SR capa-
bilities: Italian broadcaster TRSP started at
SatcoDX
The demise of the Index shopping chain in the
UK meant the end of their in-store radio on
TELSTAR 12 (15.0W) 11.503H 6620 2/3, their
place being taken by Carpetright. Another
new in-store (or maybe in this case, in-bank)
service started here – Xtra FM, for the UK’s
Halifax bank.
Nigeria’s Silverbird TV started on INTELSAT
903 (34.5W), 3.888L 16300 3/4.

On PANAMSAT 3R (43.0W) 12.651H 30800

Ravi tests on Paksat
SESAT (36E) 12.630V 1000 3/4, in addition to
the HOTBIRD (13E) service at 11.727V 27500
3/4. Also at SESAT, the Kurdish-language
Zagros TV became unencrypted at the same
time as changing its symbol rate. The new
parameters are 12.625V 2170 3/4.
At 7E, EUTELSAT W3A saw the start of Tur-
key’s Duzgun TV at 10.873V 2139 7/8.
On INTELSAT 10-02 at 1.0W, Romanian
radio stations Pro FM and InfoPRO started
at 12.722H 27500 3/4.
7/8, the feed of the UK’s version of The Golf
Channel returned.
Finally in this region, HDTV tests have been
seen on HISPASAT (30.0W), at 12.538V
13636 7/8 and EUTELSAT W2 (16.0E),
11.164H 27485 1/2.
Americas
Sports Max appeared for a while at INTEL-
SAT 805 (55.5W) 4.112H, before moving
to 3.678H 3255 1/2. It’s also at INTELSAT
707 (53.0W), 3255 3/4. Also at 55.5W, Zee
Cinema can now be found at 3.743V, 4957
7/8, and El Garage at 3.817H 8150 3/4.
At IA6 (93.0W), CNN started at 11.827V 8429
3/4.
In Digicypher mode on GALAXY 3C (95.0W),
US TV stations KPHO, KAET, KSAZ, KNXV,
TV Lanka on Yamal 202
KTVW, KUTP and KASW all started at
3.800H 19510 3/4.
INTELSAT AMERICAS (IA) 5 at 97.0W saw
the start of UonTV at 12.177V 23000 2/3. This
channel sells its airtime to organisations, busi-
nesses or private individuals for as little as $20
per hour.
Also at IA5, Appadana International started
at 11.867V and Irish sport channel Setanta
started using Irdeto encryption at 11.898V
(both 22000 3/4). Israel Plus started at
11.787V 25000 3/4
TVBV started on BRASILSAT B4 at 92.0W,
3.928V 27500 5/6.
Several new channels appeared at NAHUEL
1A at 72.0W. Canal 27 Guatemala on 11.603V
3600 3/4 Unsion Equador on 11.611V 3400

From Ukraine, OTV started

at AMOS (4.0W), 10.723H
27500 3/4. Another Ukrain-
ian channel, TVCI, appeared
at SIRIUS (5.0E) 12.073H
27500 3/4.

NILESAT (7.0W) is a busy

place for tests and new
channels at the moment.
Among the changes here
were Jeevan TV starting at
12.303H; Baghdad TV and
Al Baghdadia on 11.919H
and tests for Huda TV at
11.747V, Aldana TV and
Gear One at 12.226H, Ishtar
TV on 12.303H, Dadana TV
on 12.015, Al Jazeera Chil-
dren on 12.284V and Music
Time on 11.861V (all 27500
3/4).
 SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY

Do-It-Yourself
Satellite TV

Ron Roessel Channel Logo

A new type of FTA satellite TV channel has taken to the North American airwaves. It is
called UonTV and it is unlike any FTA channel that has ever been beamed from a satellite. The
idea behind this new channel is that the viewers become the programmers. In other words,
programming for this channel is provided by anyone that has something to show. According
to UonTV this could be anything from a home video of a high school graduation. to local little
league games, infomercials and videos of corporate meetings being sent to regional offices
and anything in between.

UonTV was created with small businesses of UonTV, “our goal is to make FTA more
and individuals in mind and provides them diverse”. At the moment there is only one
with access to the power of digital satellite UonTV channel but the goal is to add more
TV broadcasting at extremely inexpensive specific niche channels in the future. UonTV
pricing. For as little as US$ 20.00 per half is already in discussions about this.
SatcoDX Coverage Area
hour, there is a potential to reach millions of
satellite viewers across North America. It will be interesting to see where all of this
goes from here. For more information on
UonTV uses the widely popular Intelsat what UonTV is all about, visit their web site:
Americas 5 satellite located at 97° west. www.uontv.com
UonTV began broadcasting in July 2005 and
is based in San Diego, California with pro-
duction facilities in Hawaii. Their signal is
broadcast in the Ku-band on Intelsat Ameri-
cas 5. With a footprint covering all of the
USA, Canada, Mexico and much of the Carib-
bean, UonTV can be viewed by anyone in this
area with a simple, inexpensive FTA satellite UonTV Promotion
reception system. The Ku-band dish simply
needs to be pointed to IA5 with the receiver
tuned to these parameters:

Frequency: 12.177 GHz

Polarization: Vertical
Symbolrate: 23000 Ms/sec
PID’s: V 4130, A 4131, PCR 4130

“FTA in North America right now is mostly

limited to religious and ethnic programming”,
commented Jamison Ching, General Manager Niche Sports Private Video - Family Party

78 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

News
1/2, Canal 48 Honduras at 11.626V 3600 1/2,
TV Libre Uruguay at 11.675 3600 3/4, Con-
exion Educativa, SEMSAT and Canal Rural
Satelital at 11.708V 12000 7/8, Red Media
Educativa at 11.739V 1482 3/4 and Hipo-
dromo (encrypted) at 11.949H 4688 3/4.
On NSS 806 at 40.5W, Cosmovision started
at 3.658R 2532 3/4, and Zona Latina and Via
X began at 3.985L 5900 3/4. Universal and
TRSP on Sesat
Fox News started on 3.719L 5882 3/4. TV
Chile began at 4.182R 28881 5/6.
Asia
YAMAL 202 at 49.0E saw the start of TV
Lanka 2 and 3 on 3.953L. After using a symbol
rate of 2500, they settled on parameters of
4500 7/8. The same satellite saw the start of
Russian channels TVS Severnaya Dvina and
RTR Pomor'e on 3.940L 7500 3/4 plus Tyu-
menskoe Vremya and Telekanal Rossiya
Tyumen on 3.961L 8570 3/4.
On LMI 1 (75.0E), Music Box Russia started
along with RR-Sat feeds on 3.670V 3700 3/4.
Russia’s OTC started at EXPRESS 6A (80E),
10.992V accompanied by Radios Rossii and
Russkaya Volna. Also on this satellite, TRK 7
started at 10.965V, and Ugra TV & Radio at
10.975V (all 4444 3/4).
Also at 80E, the +0, +2, +4 and +7-hour ver-
sions of Ren TV started at 3.578R 29659 3/4,
after a brief spell at 3.480R.
Asianet Plus started on INSAT 2E (83.0E),
3.642V 19531 3/4. On the same satellite,
Akaash Bangla began at 3.612V 9625 3/4.
CHINASTAR (87.5E) saw a set of free-to-air
channels replace the former encrypted chan-
SatcoDX
nels on 4.060V 27500 3/4. This package now
contains Law & Life, City Play, Channel Max,
Channel Elan, Colourful Stage, Channel
Young, Channel Joy, Golden Life, Channel
Documentary, Great Sports Channel and
CBN.
On ASIASAT 2 (100.5E), Spanish soccer
team Real Madrid’s TV channel started at
3.960H 27500 3/4.
At ASIASAT 3S (105.5E), Fashion TV started
at 4.088H 2626 3/4. The Thailand version of
Fashion TV also began broadcasts, at THAI-
COM 3 (78.5E), 3.920V 30000 3/4. Also at
THAICOM, Thailand’s TV5 began broadcasts
at 3.585V 26667 3/4, and Korean Central TV
started at 3.666H 3367 3/4.
On PALAPA C2 (113.0E), iTV from Indonesia
started tests on 4.082H 28125 3/4.
On APSTAR V/TELSTAR 18 at 138.0E, Good
TV started at 12.425V 30000 3/4, and the Lot-
tery Channel on 3.866H 4289 3/4.
At AGILA 2 at 146.0E, Familyland’s TV and
radio channels started on 4.165V 3735 7/8.
The Church Channel and TBN started at
3.892H 5425 3/4, ACQ KBN at 3.913V 2200
3/4, and UNTV at 4.188V 2170 3/4.
Broadcasting to Australia, there were as usual
several changes on OPTUS B3 (152.0E). RTP
TV Romania International on Optus B3
International and SIC International replaced
their respective info cards on 12.425H 22500
3/4 and became encrypted. TV Polonia here
also became encrypted. To redress the bal-
ance somewhat, the following FTA services
started on the same transponder: Channel
One, IRIB3, DMC Channel, The Healing
Channel and TV Romania International.
To contribute information, use the “Contact
SatcoDX” link at www.SatcoDX.com.
 TEST REPORT Antenna Motor
Stab HH90
Motorized
antenna
for poets
Have you ever thought about looking for channels on satellites other
than the only one that you can receive with your fixed dish? Were you
deterred from doing that by the complexity of the motor setup and its
cost? Well, we have good news for you! The new Stab motor - HH90 is
for everybody.
The motor and its accessories are packed
in a small carton. If you never worked with
hardware like this before, it will probably
surprise you how easy and simple all this is.
The hardware consists of three main compo-
nents: a motor with built-in control circuitry,
a bracket used to fasten the motor to the
pole and a shaft. The HH90, in contrast with
two other members of the Stab HH family
(HH100 and HH120), has its shaft directed
80 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com
downwards - not upwards. Moreover, the
shaft is not permanently connected to the
motor. The shaft should be first attached
to the dish and then to the motor‘s pivot.
This is done with only one screw. The part
to which you fasten the dish is 14.5cm long.
Thus only unusual dishes having two U-bolts
far apart for mounting will pose a problem.
Except for the three main components men-
tioned above, there is a plastic bag contain-
ing all the necessary hardware accessories:
screws, nuts, clamps, bolts, F-type connec-
tors with protective covers and even a simple
spanner for assembling everything. Last but
not least, you will find a very helpful user
manual inside the package. It is full of pic-
tures and detailed explanations. Almost all
the parts are made of metal; only a portion
of the motor‘s cover is plastic. Despite that,
the entire assembly is very light (2.6 kg) and
compact. It is durable in appearance and the
workmanship leaves nothing to be desired.
Installation
The motor can be controlled by USALS or
DiSEqC 1.2 compatible receivers. We used
a USALS system first. Before starting the
installation, you should find the geographical
coordinates of the location where the antenna
is to be installed. You can read them either
from a map (an accuracy of 0.1° is more
than sufficient) or find them on the Internet.
Instead of „googling for it“, you can try the
service provided by Stab on their webpage,
www.usals.info. After entering the type of
motor (HH90), your country, city and e-mail
address, you will get an automatic response
providing the necessary data. We were really
surprised to discover that the system also
worked for very small village locations - and
not only for larger towns. In addition to the
Longitude and Latitude values, you will also
need to know the Dish Elevation expressed as
an angle in degrees. If you don‘t get it from
the Stab automatic service, you can find it on
the paper maps attached to the user manual.
Once all three parameters are known, you
can proceed with the actual installation.
The first very important step is to make
sure that the pole on which you want to mount
the motorized dish is perfectly vertical. Use
a spirit level or plumb line to check it. Then,
mount the motor in the bracket at an angle
corresponding to your latitude. The scales
engraved on the motor‘s case are used for
this purpose. You simply set the angle equal
to your latitude. The next step is to fix the
bracket and the attached motor to the pole
with the included U-shaped bolts and brack-

ets. Well done! You have completed the first
stage of installation. Now take the shaft and
attach it to the dish. Do it carefully to avoid
any skew between the shaft and dish axis of
symmetry. Adjust the angle between the dish
and the shaft. Set the elevation reading on
your dish to the angle equal to the Dish Eleva-
tion parameter. If your dish lacks the elevation
scale, you will have to adjust its elevation by
trial and error once everything is mounted on
the pole. So, if you lack experience in aligning
satellite dishes, you might be better off with a
dish that has an elevation scale.
During our tests, we used a 90cm offset
dish equipped with an Invacom quad LNB for
the Ku-Band. The LNB had a noise figure of
0.4dB. Of course, you can use a smaller dish
and a single, twin, quatro or other type of
LNB. The HH90 is suitable for dishes up to
95cm. The larger the dish and the smaller
the noise figure of LNB, the better the signal
quality and weather margin that can be
achieved.
The next step is to attach the shaft and the
dish to the pivot of the motor. This is done with
just one screw and one nut. Then you slightly
loosen the nuts on the U-bolts around the
pole and rotate the entire assembly (motor,
shaft and dish) to point the antenna exactly
to the south. Now it‘s time to connect the
cables. Instead of going directly to the LNB,
the cable from your receiver must go to the
„REC“ connector on the motor. Another short
cable has to be added between the „LNB“ con-
nector on the motor and the LNB itself. When
the cabling work is done, you should bring up
the installation menu in your USALS compat-
ible receiver. Here you enter your geographi-
cal coordinates and select a satellite that is
aligned as close as possible to south. That
means that if your longitude is close to 19°
East you should select Astra 1, if it is closer to
13° East, you should use Hotbird instead and
so on. The motor will run for a short time and
the antenna will move slightly. The final step
is to fine-tune the azimuth alignment (rotate
the entire assembly after loosening the U-
bolts on the pole) and the elevation angle of
the dish. Use your receiver‘s signal quality
Antenna Motor
Hints for Beginners
If you are quite new in this business and
you have just finished the installation, first
find out which satellites are transmitting in
your direction. Otherwise you may be dis-
appointed that your receiver cannot find any
channels on this or that bird. A satellite may
be perfectly visible from your location, you
may have the largest possible dish mounted
but your receiver may not be able to find a
single channel on a satellite! Probably, your
first thought will be that you did something
wrong with the installation. Calm down and
approach it methodically. A good start is to
use SatcoDX World of Satellites software
attached to every issue of TELE-satellite
International. Using the Dish Track tool you
can generate a list of satellites that can be
received in your location. Remove from the
list the satellites that require a significantly
larger dish than you have (e.g. 120 vs. 90
cm). Next, make sure that the remaining
satellites transmit in the band your LNB
can receive. In practice, this will be the Ku-
band since the C -band generally requires
big dishes and HH90 motor is not the best
solution for this band. So remove the satel-
lites broadcasting only in C-band from your
list. Check the SatcoDX chart to make sure
that there are “normal” TV or radio channels
on the satellites that are still on your list. If
there are only “feeds” listed in the chart, your
receiver will probably not recognize them as
indicator to find the maximum signal. Once it
is found, the installation is complete. Tighten
the fixing screws and nuts. Settings for all
other satellites from horizon to horizon are
determined automatically by the Stab motor
and USALS compatible receiver. No further
adjustments are required.
Everyday Use
When the motor is installed, the next obvi-
ous action is to move the dish from one sat-
ellite to another and search for channels.
In Western Poland, we were able to receive
satellites ranging from Panamsat 12 at 45°
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International
TEST REPORT
channels. Another reason for not receiving
channels (or receiving only a few) may be the
outdated transponder satellite data in the
receiver’s software. If your receiver is Sat-
coDX compatible – no problem, updating the
data will be a piece of cake. Otherwise, you
may be forced to do it manually. After that a
repeated channel search should provide you
a number of new channels.
There is yet another trick that you can do to
improve your reception. When your installa-
tion is complete and the first satellite channel
search is over, try experimenting a little. In
the DiSEqC/USALS settings of your receiver,
change your longitude setting by, say, 0.3°
East. Observe on your receiver’s signal
meter if the signal quality has increased or
decreased. Then check the reception when
your longitude setting is changed by 0.3°
West from your normal value. Experiment
with a number of settings to find the best
quality of signal. If the maximum is not
found at your true longitude but somewhat
east or west, it means that the dish is not
perfectly aligned in azimuth. You may either
mechanically correct its alignment (which is
the recommended solution) or cheat your
receiver by leaving the false data which gives
the best result in the receiver’s USALS instal-
lation menu. A difference of 1 degree or less
can be corrected in this way.
East to Hispasat 1C, 1D at 30° West, over
20 satellites altogether. These carry more
than 2700 TV channels including about 720
unscrambled ones.
The manufacturer specifies that the dish
rotates at 2.4°/sec. when powered from 18V
and 1.5°/sec. for 13V. When moving between
45° East and 30° West we found it took 38 sec-
onds or 53 seconds depending on the polari-
zation of the channel (and thus the voltage
the receiver generated). This gives 2.0°/sec.
and 1.4°/sec. which are slightly slower than
the figures specified, probably because the
manufacturer‘s measurements were taken
81

without a dish. Moreover, we cannot rule out
the possibility that our test receiver gener-
ated somewhat lower voltages than 18v and
13v respectively. When you switch between
channels broadcast from neighboring satellite
positions (3° or so), the delay is about 2 sec-
factor, it is relatively easy to determine if the
dish is correctly aligned or not. With a 90cm
dish, even a 0.2° difference in azimuth can be
noticed on a receiver‘s signal quality reading.
A large dish is heavy and presents a greater
surface area to the wind. So, if a motor per-
forms well with a large dish, it will undoubt-
edly perform well with a smaller dish.
We must say that the Stab HH90 worked
flawlessly no matter how many times and in
which direction (east or west) it was rotated.
It always returned to the exact position
required for a given satellite. We could not
observe any differences in signal level and
quality after turning the dish to many satel-
lites and then returning to the initial one. The
noise generated by the motor is very low.
If you install the motor on the roof of your
Expert conclusion
+
Stab HH90 is really simple to install. Its user manual is perfect.
house, you will not be annoyed by its noise
while enjoying warm summer evenings in the
garden. Most likely, you won‘t even notice
that the Stab HH90 is operating - that‘s how
quiet it is.
After confirming that the motor worked
well with USALS compatible receivers, we
did a test with a DiSEqC 1.2 compatible
receiver. As expected, the installation took
much longer. The Stab HH90 also worked
with that receiver without any problems.
The motor has 28 preprogrammed satellite
positions (suitable for reception in Europe)
and there is still room for an additional 21.
Some DiSEqC 1.2 receivers can use this data
to speed up the installation process. In such
a case, the DiSEqC 1.2 installation is as easy
and fast as the USALS installation.

onds - which is very acceptable. Finding the necessary geographical data for your location is very
easy if you use Stab’s web page. It is both USALS and DiSEqC 1.2
compatible.
As already mentioned, we used almost the Peter Miller
maximum allowable dish size (90cm) to test
the motor. That‘s because, the larger the
- TELE-satellite
Test Center
Poland
None
dish, the narrower its beam. Thanks to this

84 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 Antenna Motor TEST REPORT

Receiving Hispasat 30 West Receiving Turksat 1C 42 East

TECHNICAL
DATA
Manufacturer STAB S.r.l., Via Seminiato, 79, 44031 Ambrogio (FE) Italy,
www.stab-italia.com,

E-mail Info@stab-italia.com

Phone +39-0532-830739

Fax +39-0532-830609

Model HH90

Description DiSEqC 1.2 and USALS Compatible Dish Motor

Communication protocol DiSEqC 1.2® Level

Maximum dish diameter 95 cm

Maximum dish weight 10 Kg

Rotor weight 2.6 Kg

Diameter of support pole ø (35 to 68) mm

Dish support length 145 mm

Dish support diameter ø 42 mm

Rotation angle ±65°

Rotation speed 2.4°/s for 18V, 1.5°/s for 13V

(in our tests with 90 cm dish: 2°/s and 1.4°/s)

Operating power supply 13/18 Vdc

Consumption in stand-by mode 40 mA

Consumption in operating mode 180 mA

Starting movement consumption (max) 350 mA

Operating temperature -40°C +80°C

Maximum relative humidity 100%

Programmable positions (DiSEqC 1.2®) 49 satellites

Preset positions (DiSEqC 1.2®) 28 satellites

Programmable positions (USALS®) no limits

Connectors F type

Connection Coaxial cable

Mechanical limits ±72°

Programmable electrical limits from 5° to 65°

Fine rotation by impulses of 0.1°

Inclination of the rotor on the pole from 10° to 70°

www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 85

 TEST REPORT Card Reader

Wireless SmartWi
PayTV in Every Room
Who isn’t familiar with this problem? The PayTV card is installed in the receiver in the living
room yet here you are now in the evening looking to watch that one movie in your bedroom.
Or maybe it’s Junior complaining that he can’t watch PayTV in his own room. Up until now
there were three more or less practical solutions to this problem: either you routed coax cable
throughout the house thereby building your own little cable network or you used small trans-
mitters that sent the signal to every room. The problem with these solutions is still the same:
only one channel can be received on every TV. For the more desperate viewers there is still
the third option: setting up multiple PayTV subscriptions. For most users though, this is not
a realistic alternative.

Engineers at the Danish company SmartWi
thought that there had to be a better way and
ultimately came up with a viable and simple
solution. The PayTV card is inserted into an
external card reader that also doubles as
a transmitter. In the receiver are inserted
special SmartCards that also act as receivers
themselves. If you want to watch a PayTV
channel, the necessary key is requested from
the reception card via the receiver. The card
transmits the request to the card reader con-
taining the original card and receives the valid
keys transmitted back from the card reader in
only milliseconds. And there you have it! The
PayTV channel can be received! The whole
thing functions not only with just one or two
cards but rather can work with as many as
seven receiver cards at the same time (five
of which are active). The system operates in
the 868-915 MHz range. The manufacturer
specifies a reception range of over 15 meters
in enclosed rooms. In open air there was no
data although distances
of up to 150 meters may
not be out of the ques-
tion.
this: cards that don’t belong to the system
a) can’t be accessed and therefore b) can’t
cause any damage. It will also prevent your
next-door neighbor from accessing your net-
work. By momentarily inserting the card in
the card reader slot, it will be programmed
and ready for use in only a few seconds. Now
you need only insert the PayTV card in the
card reader and the reception card in the
receiver.
For our test we used a standard Viaccess
Adult channel SmartCard. This card was rec-
ognized by the card reader without any dif-
ficulties and even the decryption using two
Topfield receivers in separate rooms with

Every- one Viaccess CI module functioned perfectly.

The 15-meter range specified by the manu-

day Use facturer was not overestimated. Our tests

The card reader itself
is a small, inconspicuous
black box on which you
will find nothing more
than a USB port as well
as a card slot and a status
LED. The USB interface
serves to upload new firmware but is also the
source of power for the card reader. If you
would prefer not to continuously use a PC as
the source of power for the card reader, the
manufacturer has also included an external
power supply in the package that is also con-
nected to the card reader via the USB port.
Before the box can be put into service, the
receiver cards must first be programmed on
the Card Splitter. There’s a simple reason for
showed that reception was even possible in a
second floor room. According to the manu-
facturer, up to seven reception cards can be
used, five of them at the same time. Up to
four different channels can be received at
the same time but since our test unit only
came with three reception cards, we could
only test three different channels simultane-
ously. Problem-free operation in one of the
supported CI modules (at the moment Viac-
cess, Seca, Mediaguard and Conax) was pos-
sible in every CI receiver. Things didn’t look
as good with integrated card readers though.
In most cases they were supported, however
the card splitter did not function nearly as
reliably as with CI modules.
At the moment the manufacturer supports
the Seca, Mediaguard (1&2), Conax and

86 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

Viaccess (1&2.x) encryption systems. Other Expert conclusion
encryption systems are in the planning stages
so that we can hopefully look forward to sup-
+
The connection between card reader and reception card func-
port for Irdeto, Nagravision and perhaps even tioned error-free even over longer distances. This makes connec-
NDS Videoguard although this one is not 100% tion between multiple receivers and the central transmitter inside the
certain. The included instruction booklet con- home easily possible. There is also no need to worry about unau-
thorized access. The workmanship of the card reader and reception Thomas Haring
tains all of the necessary information in a clear
cards is very good. TELE-satellite
and concise manner. Operation is so easy that Test Center

you almost can’t do anything wrong. A discus-

sion and support forum is also available on the
- Austria

Unfortunately, not all encryption systems are supported at the moment. Boxes with
manufacturer’s homepage should you run into integrated card readers also have some difficulties handling the reception cards. A
software update should be able to take care of this problem.
an unusual problem.

TECHNICAL
DATA
Manufacturer SmartWi, Denmark

Fax +45 86406622

E-Mail http://www.smartwi.net/contactus.htm

Model Wireless SmartWi

Function Cardsplitter with wireless transmission capabilities

Transmission Frequency 868-915 MHz

Transmission Range Indoors >15m, Outdoors n/a

Maximum Number of Receivers 7 (5 active)

Maximal Simultaneous Channels 4

Power Consumption Master max. 100mA, Clients max. 50mA

Firmware Upgrade Ability yes

Dimensions 90x57x23mm

www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 87

Your questions, our answers
www.tele-satellite.info
Andy Middleton
answers your questions
Another fine mesh
„So, you need to make sure that the holes in
the mesh are small enough“, you wrote. What is
this critical dimension for Ku band please? I am
trying to receive Panamsat 10 C and Ku from a
recuperated microwave mesh dish.
The holes need to be no larger than 10% of
the wavelength of the signal being received
in order to not affect the performance. So for
a frequency in the middle of the Ku band, the
wavelength would be around 25mm - a tenth
of this would be 2.5mm and this is the critical
measurement.
In comparison, the wavelength of a C band
frequency is around 80mm, meaning the holes
could be up to 8mm in size.
Live cam feeds?
I’ve read that there are Live Cam feeds on Tel-
star 12 that can be viewed in South Africa. I am
currently using a Technisat USB with a DVB
Viewing program. I can see the listings but get
no picture, can you please explain how I can
view these pictures.
There are two very different services on Telstar
12 that you could be thinking of. The first is a
package of military channels that first appeared
on in the clear at Telstar 11 a few years ago,
carrying live video from military aircraft over
Eastern Europe. After some adverse public-
ity in the European media they were hastily
scrambled, and a while later moved to Telstar
12 where they have stayed encrypted.
The other could be from an innovative broad-
caster called Earth TV, which has a network of
cameras around the world in interesting loca-
tions. Their feed on Telstar 12 is encrypted
Live Images from provided by Earth TV
with BISS and only intended for broadcasters.
However, a growing number of channels are
broadcasting Earth TV’s pictures at various
times in their own schedules. There is a very
limited choice of these in South Africa at the
moment, the only one available appears to be
TV5 Afrique that is encrypted in various pay TV
packages.
A full list of broadcasters using Earth TV’s pic-
tures and the times they are broadcast are on
Earth TV’s website at www.liveonearth.com.
Irish channels on Sky
I have a Sky Plus box. When I try to tune in
some Irish channels, it will not pick them up. I
have the correct frequencies and other relevant
information and Sky technicians have told me I
should be able to receive them, can you please
help me?
It’s sad to say, but the information that comes
from Sky technicians and helpline staff is some-
times not entirely accurate. What they should
have told you is that the receiver will find the
Irish channels, but you need a viewing card reg-
istered at an Irish address to gain access. This
also happens in reverse, some UK channels
are not available when using an Irish card.
Racing UK
I’m having problems with the reception of the
Racing UK channel on Eurobird, any idea
what’s wrong?
Racing UK recently moved to a different
transponder on Eurobird. You can now find
it at 11.224V, symbol rate 27500, FEC 2/3,
encrypted in Videoguard.
Find the right angles
Knowing the latitude and longitude of a town
or place and the name of the satellite, how
should we calculate the azimuth and elevation
angles of the antenna for focusing the satellite
signal?
It’s possible to do all the mathematics yourself,
but there’s no need to re-invent the wheel. A
very kind person has made a calculator avail-
able on the internet for just this purpose, and
also just about any other calculation needed in
the field of satellite reception. Check out Jens
T. Satre’s www.satellite-calculations.com.
Link Calculation is available online
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International
TSI Team
SatcoDX shows you
coverage area of AFRISTAR
Afristar in Italy
I live in the northern part of Italy, I want to know
if it is possible to receive Afristar from this part
of the country.
Yes – despite it’s name, Afristar at 21.0E can
be received across most of Europe. You should
have no problems receiving it at your location.
Multi-apartment distribution
I am looking into providing a network for a small
Apartment type complex in the UK. Instead of
using the normal Cable TV distribution system
where the head end receives all the signals with
a mass of decoders and then retransmits onto
the cable network, I want to see the possibil-
ity of just installing cable into the rooms so that
clients can buy and install their own decoder.
This raises the question of how many decoders
you can drive off an LNB? I presume I would
need Amps and some form of power balancing.
Is this feasible?
There are various types of amplifiers and distri-
bution systems available, but for a small apart-
ment complex a much easier solution would be
to source a universal LNB with several outputs.
8-output LNBs are available, which would allow
the use of eight receivers from the same dish.
You should use a dish larger than the standard
Sky Minidish (if I assume correctly that Astra 2
& Eurobird will be chosen), as there are no 8-
output LNBs available to fit the minidish’s LNB
fitting, as far as I am aware. A larger dish would
be more robust when dealing with a multi-output
LNB that is likely to be significantly heavier than
the standard.
If you required more than 8 outputs, it could well
be more cost effective to simply add a second
dish rather than using complicated distribution
systems – as long as your local authority’s plan-
ning rules allow you to do this.
89
 INTERNAL REPORT Distribution

TELE-satellite in:
KENYA
TELE-satellite International Magazine is the world’s largest satellite magazine. It is
currently published in 11 different languages and distributed around the world. For example,
TELE-satellite can be found at local newsstands in the east African nation of Kenya. Local
TELE-satellite reader James Mwangi took these pictures at some of the local shops.
TELE-satellite is distributed in Kenya by “Nation Media
Group Limited”. Established in 1960, it is the largest The photo right shows
the shelf in „680 Gift Shop“,
magazine distributor in East Africa. TELE-satellite is pri-
Kenyatta Avenue, Nairobi.
marily distributed in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, the econo-
mic hub of the country. TELE-satellite is the only satellite
magazine available in Kenya.
The magazines are first shipped from the printer to OHL
AIRCARGO in Frankfurt, Germany. In Frankfurt the
magazines are packed and prepared for shipment and
sent by air freight to Nairobi. In this way the magazi-
nes are available in Kenya just a few days later than in
Europe.
Satellite TV is not yet very popular in East Africa, mainly
due to the lack of suitable satellites and channels that
can be received. But this is about to change. More and
more satellite organizations and channel providers are
entering the African continent and thus creating demand
for satellite receivers as well as demand for a specialty
magazine such as TELE-satellite.

These are photos of shops selling TELE-

satellit in Nairobi. The top photo shows
the shelf in „Bookstop YaYa Centre“ in
Hurligham, Nairobi.

The photo left shows the shelf in „680

Gift Shop“, Prestige Plaza, Ngong Road,
Nairobi.

90 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

 TEST REPORT Digital Satellite Tuner PCI Card with CI
DVB-S PCI Sat CI
More Fun with Your PC
DigitalRise, a company specializing in the design of Home Entertainment Systems, has intro-
duced into the market a range of PCI cards and USB boxes to widen your DVB-via-satellite
experience using your computer. TELE-satellite has been given the opportunity to have a closer
look at the DVB-S PCI Sat CI card.
As the name reveals, it will be necessary to
open the case of your computer to install this
tuner card. For those who do not feel all too
comfortable with the idea of fiddling inside
their PC’s, a USB version is available. But it
should be pointed out that the USB version
does not have a slot for a CAM.
The requirements for the PC are relatively
low, thus a computer running Windows 98SE/
ME/2000 or XP with a 500 MHz CPU, 128 Mb
RAM, a VGA card with 8 Mb RAM and a sound
card with MS DirectX 8.1 should be able to
handle all the basic features of this card. Why
would one want to use a PCI-card instead of a
fully-grown set-top-box you might ask? Well,
first of all, a PCI card lets you watch satel-
lite TV on your PC’s monitor and more impor-
tantly, it lets you easily record your favorite
broadcasts on the PC’s hard drive, edit them
and furthermore even burn them onto a DVD.
All this with very little effort and at a cost that
is far less than a “fully-grown” digital satellite
92 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com
receiver with a hard disk and perhaps even a
DVD burner. DigitalRise provides all the nec-
essary software on the CD that comes with
the card.
But there are far more features offered to
the more advanced users or those who would
like to start experimenting: Most of today’s
graphic cards offer a DVI output, something
that is not very common on satellite receiv-
ers. This would allow you to reproduce video
content without any loss of quality on most
of today‘s TV screens. Thanks to special
software freely available on the Internet,
the user could then achieve performances
like Line doubling and de-
interlacing; features
usually only fea-
sible with expen-
sive hardware.
Converting into
the more com-
pressed MPEG
4 format and streaming of live content into
a local network (wired or WiFi) is thus easily
achieved.
Today’s PC’s are equipped with processors
ranging between 2 and 3 GHz and they come
with motherboards that are accordingly fast
and powerful. They are even capable of han-
dling HDTV streams without using more than
25 – 30% of its resources. This is the reason
why this DVB-S PCI card does not contain a
hardware decoder but relies on the PC and
software for Windows for the decoding of the
received streams. The advantage of such a
set-up makes this card future proof and ready
for the new HDTV broadcasts, MPEG-4, WMV,
WMA-pro, OGG and AAC formats that will
certainly become available in the very near
future. Most of the traditional set-top boxes
cannot handle this kind of reception.
DigitalRise provides free of charge on their
website (www.digitalrise.biz) updates for the
official software and alternative softs, as
well as a support forum where fans of this
card can exchange their experiences, dis-
cuss their issues and learn more about its
numerous features. The moderator of the
forum, Mr. M. Jussel, willingly contributes
with problem-solving advice and helpful
hints. Fans are also encouraged to develop
their own software. The source code is made
available to the programmers amongst our
readers. Another feature of the DigitalRise
DVB-S PCI Sat CI is the presence of a CAM
interface. It will accept not only most or all of
the known modules such as Viaccess, Seca I
& II, Conax, etc., but the more “intelligent”
Matrix, Dragon, Joker and so on. Rumors
have it that some alternative software would
allow certain fans to experiment further with
this material… but for obvious reasons, we
won’t go into any more detail here.
Installation
on the PC
The package contains the PCI card, one
CD for the software, the drivers and the user
 Digital Satellite Tuner PCI Card with CI TEST REPORT

manual plus there’s also a standard sized
remote control and the corresponding infra-
red receiver cell that connects to a USB port
on the PC. After the proper installation of
the tuner card into an empty PCI slot and
the connection of the coaxial cable from the
antenna, you can reboot your computer and
insert the CD to install the drivers and the
software. The entire process will only take
a few minutes. You are now ready to launch
the “DVB-TV” program provided by the man-
ufacturer (remember, there are alternatives
as well that can be found on the Internet).
For our tests, we used the one provided on
the original CD.
As with every digital satellite receiver, the
first step is to set up your antenna configura-
tion. Here, you have the choice between a
single LNB on a fixed dish, simple DiSEqC,
DiSEqC 1.0, DiSEqC 1.2 and USALS. All of
the various LNB local oscillator frequencies
(LOF) for the C-Band and the Ku-Band are
supported. Once this step is completed, you
can start the satellite scan. A very large
number of satellites from all around the
world are presented in a drop down list, and
if the one you are looking for is not in this
list, you can always set it up manually. The
computer where we installed this tuner card
is a Pentium 4, 2 GHz machine with 512 Mb
of RAM. That is more than enough power
compared to the minimal requirements of
the manufacturer’s specifications. First, we
used a DiSEqC 1.0 antenna with two LNB’s
(on Hotbird 13.0° east and Astra 19.2° east),
and then we connected a dish mounted on a
USALS motor. The software correctly recog-
nizes your local coordinates and drives the
antenna towards the selected satellite, but
somehow slower than with other receivers.
But, it’s the channel scan that demands a
lot of patience. On a satellite like Astra or
Hotbird it can take up to 45 minutes for each
of them! You could take an extended lunch
break if you plan to scan several satellites
at one time. The program will hopefully have
delete the ones you don‘t want to keep in the
list, move them into favorites lists, etc., just
the same way as with most of today’s set-top
boxes. The only difference is that this chore
is now done via the mouse and the keyboard,
a much more convenient way than fiddling
on a remote control. The scan provides the
option of storing either ALL the available
channels or only those that are FTA by acti-
vating the appropriate radio button on the
screen. Unfortunately, even when selecting
the FTA-only option, it still managed to store
all of the available channels.
Everyday Use
The user interface on the PC screen
is made up of two parts: one is a window
representing the television screen and the
other is the “command console” inspired
by those for CD or DVD players like “Real
Media”, etc., but adapted to integrate all the
necessary controls for a satellite receiver.
Additionally a third part can be called
up that lists all the channels in memory.
Double clicking on one of the channels will
bring up the contents that are being broad-
cast in the window representing the TV
screen. Here again patience is a virtue: six
whole seconds are required to switch from
one channel to another. If channel surfing is
your favorite pastime, you won’t have much
fun with this tuner card. The EPG comes up
on a separate window after a click on the
appropriate button on the console (again
some time is needed before the list is dis-
played) and allows you to set the timers for
recording. Recording can also be accessed
directly from the console by clicking on the
Expert conclusion
+
The DVB-S PCI Sat CI tuner card offers a low cost, pleasant and
rewarding addition to your multimedia environment for the individual
who likes experimenting and has the necessary time. It has many fea-
tures and a promising future.
red “Record” button. There’s also a time
shift function that freezes the picture on
the frame you were watching last when you
pressed the appropriate button. You have
the choice of returning either to the live
broadcast or follow-up from the moment
of the interruption. Recorded content on
the hard disk can be called up in a list and
selected for playback. It is also possible to
import any MPG compliant files from other
sources and play them back through the
DVB-TV interface. All of these commands
can also be accessed via the well-designed
remote control.
Additional software can be downloaded
from the DigitalRise website or alternative
sources (see Forum) that will allow you to edit
your recordings i.e. by cutting out unwanted
parts or convert recordings into formats that
can be stored on a DVD, etc. Depending on
your multimedia hardware, all this content,
be it movies or music, could then be distrib-
uted to other monitors or computers via a
wired or wireless LAN. It seems that the pos-
sibilities are only limited by the user’s imagi-
nation. The same is also true for the use of
the conditional access module.
Last but not least, another software pro-
gram, available free of charge from Digital-
Rise, can convert this tuner card into an
Internet via Satellite modem for a one way
system where the user sends out the request
on his traditional phone line but receives the
date from the satellite at speeds compara-
ble with those of a broadband connection. Of
course, this application requires a subscrip-
tion with an appropriate provider.
Yanis Patalidis
TELE-satellite

-
finished scanning by the time you get back Test Center
France
home. Nevertheless, all available channels
are recognized. You can store them in a folder The major drawbacks are the very long channel scan times and also the lengthy
(by default a folder will be named based the channel switching times plus all the other functions that require analysis of the data
actual date of the scan). Of course, it is pos- stream like teletext or the EPG.
sible to modify the names of these channels,
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International 93
 TEST REPORT Digital Satellite Tuner PCI Card with CI Info-Box

DVB-S PCI Sat CI

Digital Satellite Tuner PCI
Card with CI
TECHNICAL
DATA
Distributor DigitalRise Home Entertainment
Systems

Website www.digitalrise.biz

Model DVB-S PCI Sat CI

Function Digital satellite tuner PCI card with CI

System Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP,

Requirements 500MHz CPU or above,
128MB RAM or above, VGA Card
with at least 8MB Memory

Input 950~2150 MHz

frequency range

Symbol rate 2~45Msps

SCPC compatible yes

C-band compatible yes

DiSEqC 1.0, 1.2.

USALS yes

Teletext yes

EPG yes

Channel memory unlimited

94 TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

Your questions, our answers
www.tele-satellite.info
Ron Roessel
answers your questions
HDTV
When tuning to an FTA (Free-to-Air) MPEG2
channel, what is needed to view an HDTV
channel, for example SatcoDX7, Galaxy 11,
Fox HD 2? Thanks
Unfortunately, a standard MPEG2 FTA
receiver will not decode HDTV signals. In
fact if you try to tune to an HDTV signal
with a standard receiver, in many cases
the receiver will be very unhappy with that
and lock up on you. It would be necessary
to turn the receiver completely off (unplug
it) and turn it back on after waiting a short
time (30 seconds or so). If you want to view
HDTV signals, you need an HDTV compat-
ible receiver. These receivers are available
but come with a rather hefty price tag. Also
make sure that the signal you are trying to
receive is indeed FTA. If not, then all bets
are off.
Brazilian TV in Washington
I am very new to FTA satellite reception and I
am reading as much as possible to be better
informed. I would like to buy an FTA system
that is capable of receiving free Brazilian
programming in the USA. Is that possible
with a 31-33 inch dish or not? I don’t want
to buy the wrong dish and receiver. Can you
give me direction? Also can a dish receive
C-band and Ku-band at the same time, or is
it just one or the other?
Unfortunately, most of the Brazilian program-
ming available via satellite can only be found
on the Brasilsat series of satellites. Their
beams are pointed to Brazil and not towards
the USA making reception here impossible.
There are a few Brazilian channels on Intel-
sat 805 at 55.5 deg west but these cannot
be received with a 31-33-inch dish since
this is a C-band satellite. You would need
a much larger dish for this, on the order of 8
feet in diameter. 10 feet would probably be
better. Another thing to consider: from the
state of Washington, Intelsat 805 would be
very low on the horizon so trees or build-
ings could definitely be a problem since the
antenna elevation would only be about 7
deg. or so above the horizon. The NSS 806
satellite at 40.5 deg west would be another
possibility but this satellite is even further
east and just barely below the horizon from
where you are. And regarding C-band and
Ku-band reception at the same time, yes,
this is possible. A C-band dish can also be
used to receive Ku-signals as long as it has
a combined C/Ku feed/LNB assembly. Keep
in mind that the smaller Ku dishes cannot be
used for C-band reception.
I have a single dish and I am using two LNB's
connected to a DiSEqC switch to a single
receiver. Now I want to connect my neigh-
bor’s receiver to my antenna so that both he
and I can watch every channel. Remember,
my DiSEqC switch has one output. Please
how can you help me? And if I connect
via the loop output from my receiver to my
neighbor’s receiver, is it possible to watch
every channel?
Yes it is possible for you and your neigh-
bor to have receivers connected to your
single antenna system. If you connect his
receiver to the looped-through output of
your receiver, then both you and your neigh-
bor can watch satellite TV. But there are
limitations. If you are both watching TV at
the same time, you and your neighbor can
only watch TV channels from the same sat-
ellite and also only those channels that are
on the same polarization. And if you are
using universal LNB’s on your dish, then
you are further limited to watching chan-
nels that are either on the upper or lower
Ku band. It is the first receiver that controls
the DiSEqC switch and the selection of the
upper or lower Ku-band. But clearly this is
not the best solution. There is a better way:
replace the single output LNB’s on your dish
with twin LNB’s. Each LNB would then have
two independent outputs, one for you and
one for your neighbor. Simply route the first
pair of outputs through your DiSEqC switch
and then to your receiver (like you have
now). Connect the second pair of outputs to
a second DiSEqC switch and run that output
to your neighbor’s receiver. This will let you
both watch any satellite TV channel that you
want at the same time totally independent
from each other.
Keeping the Existing Channel List
I have a new FortecStar Blind Scan FTA
receiver with an old C-band dish and a new
FTA Ku-band dish in the backyard. With all
of the Ku-band channels preprogrammed
in memory, I wish to scan all of the C band
www.TELE-satellite.com — TELE-satellite International
TSI Team
channels on the same satellite. Will it erase
all of the previously programmed Ku-band
channels or will it just add to them when
scanning the C band channels?
Since I also have a FortecStar Blind Scan
receiver, the answer to this question is
easy. Yes, you can scan both Ku-band and
C-band signals on the same satellite and
it will simply add any new channels to the
end of the existing channel list. The existing
channel list will not be erased. For example,
Intelsat Americas 5 has both Ku and C-band
signals. If you scan first for Ku signals and
then scan again for C-band signals, You
will get a list a both Ku and C-band chan-
nels with the Ku-band channels listed first.
Keep in mind that every time you want to
switch from watching a Ku-band channel to
one that is C-band, you have to go into the
receiver's menu and change all the neces-
sary parameters (LOF, DiSEqC switch, etc.)
so that you can watch the C-band channel.
A better solution might be to set up two dif-
ferent satellites in the receiver: one for IA-5
Ku-band and the other for IA-5 C-band. In
this way you won't have to go into the menu
each time to switch parameters between Ku-
band and C-band channels. The receiver
would treat this as two different satellites
even though the dish is pointed to the same
satellite.
US Channels in the Middle East
I am currently in Iraq. I bought a Strong
4800II receiver here locally. I am not able
to pick up any US channels. News or BBC
would be nice; anything in English. Is there
a card I can buy or anything I can do?
Unfortunately, there's not much you can do
to get FTA US channels in Iraq. One option
would be the Orbit TV Network (www.orbit.
net). This is a PayTV service that provides
a number of US channels among others to
the Middle East in the Ku-band on the Arab-
sat satellites at 26 deg East and the Intel-
sat 10-02 satellite at 1 deg West. Available
channels include CNN, Disney, Cartoon
Network, ESPN, etc. The Arabsat satellite
would appear to be the best choice since
there is a fairly strong Ku-band beam over
Iraq. Another option would be AFN. If you
are in the military, you should be able to get
the necessary PowerVu receiver so that you
can take advantage of this service. AFN is
on the Intelsat 10-02 satellite at 1 deg West
but in C-band. C-band reception requires a
much larger dish than Ku-band reception.
95