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TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 04-05/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
SPAROS SAT HD measure
the system with the use of
Lst02 configuration. No need
to enter transponders data
or DiSEqC commands manu-
ally – the analyzer will know
what to do to measure the
transponders from two sat-
ellites. SConf.xls can contain
up to 50 transponders in
each configuration list (Lst0
through Lst19). Similarly as
Sat.xls, SConf.xls is editable
and generates a CSV files for
SPAROS when an Excel mac-
ro is invoked.
But what to do if we want to
add more satellites or more
transponders – is a manual
entry the only option? No!
You can download from the
Internet INI files containing
transponder data for every
possible satellite. They are
available on the pages with
satellite charts like for ex-
ample www.satbeams.com.
If you follow the instruction
in the user guide, you will
learn how to download the
INI files and import them to
the Excel spreadsheet.
The SPAROS SAT HD can
do more than what we de-
scribed so far. Except for
identifying a satellite based
on its four transponders, it
can read the NIT table and
in this way double check
identification. The analyzer
can measure all parameters
of a particular transponder,
show its constellation dia-
grams and decode and dis-
play video and audio of FTA
channels. It can export the
measurement results to CSV
as well as BMP files. It can
even export spectrum views
as graphics (BMP) as well
as CSV files. Such CSV file
when imported to MS Excel
can be used for creating your
own charts.
At the beginning, we were
worried that it would be dif-
ficult to operate SAPROS SAT
HD because it has few but-
tons. But we discovered that
our worries were completely
unjustified. Menu structure
is very logical and not too
deep. And we were especially
delighted with the operation
of the “tunning knob”. It was
fast and precise at the same
time. There is really no need
for a numerical keypad with
such well designed “knob”.
You can not fully evalu-
ate an analyzer if you do not
compare it with competitive
instruments. So we did it. We
chose two high class, multi-
purpose analyzers (satellite/
terrestrial/cable) with large
graphical displays as our
references to which we com-
pared the performance of the
SPAROS SAT HD. TURKSAT
satellite on 42° East was our
test signal source. We used
a 90 cm dish which does not
give very strong signal from
that satellite at our test lo-
cation in Western Poland.
And thanks to that, we dis-
covered the strongest point
of SPAROS SAT HD. It locked
without any problem even
to very weak signals and as
well as signals with very low
symbol rates. Despite being
apparently more powerful,
its competitors were unable
to lock to many signals that
SPAROS SAT HD processed
smoothly. See the attached
charts with MER results. MER
zero reading means that the
meter was unable to lock.
The tuner of SPAROS SAT HD
is really brilliant!
When you compare chan-
nel power results, you will
see that SPAROS SAT HD is
quite close to other meters
and its results are rather
higher than lower than its
competitors. The other
charts presents MER read-
ings. Here you can see how
many transponders were
receivable for the SPAROS
SAT HD but not for the oth-
er analyzers (zero result in
our chart). Please note, that
except for TURKSAT tran-
sponders, we also included
one strong transponder from
ASTRA1 (11436 MHz, verti-
cal). With such strong signal,
SPAROS measured visibly
higher MER what also proves
how good and noiseless its
tuner is.
Initially, we were con-
cerned that the lack of blind-
scan might be regarded as a
drawback. But when we saw
that its competitors having
the blindscan feature can not
lock to many low SR signals,
we changed our mind. Tak-
ing transponders data from
INI files (instead of trying to
blindscan them) can be quite
a reasonable approach.
However, there is one
thing SPAUN could improve.
If it happens that there is a
non-receivable transponder
on your list, SPAROS will end
up with “Sync?” results in
the transponder list. Howev-
er, it takes a long while be-
fore the SAT HD decides that
it is unable to receive such