Received the meter by mail service 19 days after the eBay purchase (starting to wonder if I had been taken by an international seller).
The manuals are provided in English and Chinese. As pointed out earlier, the English translation is truly painful! The STB menu language and display controls can be selected as English or Chinese, but the defaults are in Chinese.
The satellite list is for Asia is provided with no other satellites programmed. A satellite, transponder and individual channels may be directly entered. The unit has a flash port for firmware / satellite list updating (which sticks out in a position that could potentially be damaged). I have emailed the manufacturer and requested editing and programming software. Also requesting a few tweaks to the OUI and may end up carrying these as a low end installation tool.
The housing is attractive and appears durable with the exception of the flip top visor / cover, but the PCB board is visible when viewing the unit from the back. This unit would certainly have issues in real world weather conditions.
The screen resolution is adequate to read the menus. The menus were easy to navigate and within minutes added several transponders from several satellites. The unit supports 22KHz switching and DiSEqC 1.0. No motor control or additional DiSEqC commands (USALS or DiSEqC 1.1, 1.2 or 2.0).
An IR remote control is included and makes programming much faster than using volume and channel up/down buttons.
Strange for a unit that is promoted as a satellite meter not to display a full screen meter. No single button press is available on the front panel to display a signal meter. To display a meter, the installer must either carry the remote to select the INFO button or use the front panel buttons to enter the menu, select Information then a lower 1/3rd Signal Strength and Signal Quality meter appears. When the Information screen is displayed, the front panel LED displays the Signal Quality.
The satellite position calculator did not provide correct azimuth calculations and appeared to not provide magnetic deviation calculations either. The elevation calculation was nearly correct based on other calculators.
The presence of Games reminds the user that this is a standard STB chassis in a portable enclosure.
Battery life was around 3 hours powering a single output GEOSATpro SL1 LNBF. Charging is by included 8.5vdc wall adapter with radial plug connection and took about 2 hours to bring up to full.
There was great sensitivity latitude in the Signal Strength and Signal Quality meters and small changes in the dish aiming or LNBF skew were instantly reflected and seemed quite accurate. Locked onto low symbol rates quickly and controlled 22KHz and DiSEqC switching accurately. Channel acquisitions are very quick. Entered the TBN Galaxy 14 C-band transponder with HD channel and the unit played audio, but most importantly the unit did not lock-up.
When I was done testing, I just got a kick out of sitting back and watching Standard Definition satellite TV on the 3.5" screen with this neat little unit! Tool for the professional installer? Probably not. Tool for the backyard hobbyist or weekend installer? Definitely!
