I ordered my LNB from Pete at PSB satellite. The order was relayed to his supplier and was shipped the same day. It was ordered this past Monday and I recieved it this past Weds.
The product arrived in a bubble mailer and was adequetly packed. I would have wished for the spec sheet to be included with the LNB but only the LNB and a plastic F-Connector cover was included in the box. The LO freq was printed on the side of the box for anyone who didn't know what the setting is.
On the negative side it's construction is rather cheap plastic which reflects it's chinese or tiwanese heritage. But what do you expect for $27? Also the LNB was a little smaller around the throat and I had to add a small piece of foam rubber around the holder to hold the LNB securely.
Everything else is all plus. There are little tickmarks on the top of the LNB to assist with adjusting the skew angle for fixed satellite setups. Once the LNB was secure I went inside to test it.
My setup on the KU side is a 100cm dish with my original .6db lnb with a circular lnb tiewrapped next to it for the DBS satellites. I am using a SG-2100 dish mover and a fortec 786V3 digital reciever, a Elecom CR-7007 analog reciever and a SS2 PCI card for the computer.
Yesterday I took the time and went through 11 different satellites and checked the signal strenght on a couple of transponders on each satellite for a base line. When the LNB arrived today I repeated the same test to see what kind of an overall average I was to get.
On one transponder there was a 20 point decrease in quality but I attributed that to the uplinker running a smaller signal budget and so I discarded that anomoly.
The results of my unscienctific test....Ta Da.....
With my original .6db lnb that was the best you could get about 3 years ago I ran an average signal strength of 46.8 on the scale of 1 to 100. With the extreme LNB I ran an average signal strenght of 54.7 on a scale of 1 to 100. That is an increase of 7.9%. Although it doesn't seem like much it has allowed me already to pull in some signals that were unviewable with the old LNB. In addition it should reduce rainfade and help with system stability.
I did notice however, for some reason with my PCI card that this lnb is taking longer to lock on lower symbol rate transponders although it doesn't seem to slow down the desktop reciver at all.
Recommendations: If you have a newer lnb say .4 or so I wouldn't bother as the improvement would be marginal but for the older lnb's of .5 or .6 I would definately get the LNB. It's less than $30 and does make a difference in strength. Of course if you have tree's in the way it's not going to help as it still needs signal to work with.
I will have to watch over time as durability might be an issue. As I stated the outward construction looks cheap but this thing does perform!! At some point I might try the little more expensive Invacom but for now I'm pretty impressed with the improvement for not too much money!!
The product arrived in a bubble mailer and was adequetly packed. I would have wished for the spec sheet to be included with the LNB but only the LNB and a plastic F-Connector cover was included in the box. The LO freq was printed on the side of the box for anyone who didn't know what the setting is.
On the negative side it's construction is rather cheap plastic which reflects it's chinese or tiwanese heritage. But what do you expect for $27? Also the LNB was a little smaller around the throat and I had to add a small piece of foam rubber around the holder to hold the LNB securely.
Everything else is all plus. There are little tickmarks on the top of the LNB to assist with adjusting the skew angle for fixed satellite setups. Once the LNB was secure I went inside to test it.
My setup on the KU side is a 100cm dish with my original .6db lnb with a circular lnb tiewrapped next to it for the DBS satellites. I am using a SG-2100 dish mover and a fortec 786V3 digital reciever, a Elecom CR-7007 analog reciever and a SS2 PCI card for the computer.
Yesterday I took the time and went through 11 different satellites and checked the signal strenght on a couple of transponders on each satellite for a base line. When the LNB arrived today I repeated the same test to see what kind of an overall average I was to get.
On one transponder there was a 20 point decrease in quality but I attributed that to the uplinker running a smaller signal budget and so I discarded that anomoly.
The results of my unscienctific test....Ta Da.....
With my original .6db lnb that was the best you could get about 3 years ago I ran an average signal strength of 46.8 on the scale of 1 to 100. With the extreme LNB I ran an average signal strenght of 54.7 on a scale of 1 to 100. That is an increase of 7.9%. Although it doesn't seem like much it has allowed me already to pull in some signals that were unviewable with the old LNB. In addition it should reduce rainfade and help with system stability.
I did notice however, for some reason with my PCI card that this lnb is taking longer to lock on lower symbol rate transponders although it doesn't seem to slow down the desktop reciver at all.
Recommendations: If you have a newer lnb say .4 or so I wouldn't bother as the improvement would be marginal but for the older lnb's of .5 or .6 I would definately get the LNB. It's less than $30 and does make a difference in strength. Of course if you have tree's in the way it's not going to help as it still needs signal to work with.
I will have to watch over time as durability might be an issue. As I stated the outward construction looks cheap but this thing does perform!! At some point I might try the little more expensive Invacom but for now I'm pretty impressed with the improvement for not too much money!!
