LNB Help
Page
Satellite Dishes come in two
flavours, Off-Set or Prime Focus. An Off-Set dish normally has the boom arm
that holds the LNB, sticking out from the bottom of the dish, and the Satellite
signal bounces off the dish, into the LNB at a tangent. Prime Focus dishes normally
have the LNB mounted, pointing directly into the center of the dish, invariably
mounted on three tripod legs. We supply the Invacom range of LNB's, which have
been proven to work well in fringe areas, including the Azahar region. Forget
the Invacom single output version, as it gives no more output, than cheaper
alternatives. The Twin and Quad output LNB's, are the ones to go for. $KY Digital+
& Humax Foxsat with PVR receivers require a minimum of Two outputs. When
working with 1.35M dishes only the Twin/Quad version should be used, any spare
outputs are left unconnected, alternatively they can be used for addition receivers
(or neighbor's can share a dish). Prime Focus LNB's do not come with a Feed
Horn, the Feed Horn is part of the Dish. If your prime focus dish does not have
a Feed Horn, we sell one that is designed to be universal. Please be aware that
non standard prime focus dishes, may require additional fixings/drilling etc,
to mount the Feed Horn.
Signal to Noise ratings of LNB's
(quoted in dB's), should be the way you can judge if one LNB is better
than another, generally speaking the lower the dB number the better, unfortunately
this is not the case. There are two ways manufacturers can measure a LNB's noise
rating. One way is to sweep the whole of the frequency range of a LNB, and pick
a frequency that yields the lowest Noise rating, and publish that in the sales
literature. The other way is to take an average reading of the Signal to Noise
rating, and publish that. The first one is not telling lies, just one being
less honest than the other. For example I have compared an old Echostar 0.6dB
LNB, against a 0.2dB Illusion LNB, on the same dish. The Echostar LNB knocked
spots off the Illusion.
About 5 years ago, I went to
the effort of setting up a "slightly too small" dish outside my workshop,
so I could do a side by side comparison of all the LNB's I had available to
me, these included the Sharp, Lidl, Illusion, MTI, Tecatel, Invacoms, and a
couple of others. I set the LNB's up with a proper BER meter, then connected
each LNB in turn to a PACE 2600C1 tuned to BBC1 NW. All except the Invacoms
gave pixelation on this channel.