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www.TELE-satellite.com —
12-01/2012 —
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
and self explanatory. Right
after the welcome screen,
you have three menu items:
SAT – to measure a satellite
signal, TERR – to measure a
terrestrial signal and SETUP
– to configure the basic set-
tings of the meter. Pressing
a soft key (a button near the
screen) you make your selec-
tion. The very first screen in
satellite mode is already a
measurement mode. At the
top of the screen, you can
see the name of the satel-
lite and a signal strength
measurement result in two
forms: bar graph and nu-
merical. With the left and
right arrows, you change the
satellite until the HD-STM is
able to lock to the signal and
shows its parameters: chan-
nel power, modulation er-
ror ratio (MER) or carrier to
noise (C/N), channel bit error
rate and post-Viterbi bit er-
ror rate. You can also select a
desired satellite from the list
which is displayed after you
press the LIST soft key.
For each receivable sat-
ellite, HD-STM has at least
one transponder stored in
its internal memory. In this
way, when the meter locks
to the transponder, HD-STM
“knows” the satellite name. If
the factory preprogrammed
transponder settings are not
enough for you, you can add
your own custom transpond-
ers. The possibility to manu-
ally add more transponder
data when needed, without
turning to a PC but directly
from within the meter menu,
is an important asset of the
HD-STM. Simpler meters of-
ten do not allow this option.
If your antenna is not yet
set to receive a signal, Hori-
zon’s HD-STM can help you
too. Simply switch it to spec-
trum mode and turn and tilt
your dish until you see peaks
of signals in the spectrum.
Span of the shown spectrum
is adjustable in the follow-
ing steps: 60, 120, 240, 480,
960, 1200 MHz. Once you
maximized the peaks in the
spectrum view, you return
to the previously described
measurement screen and by
switching the satellite name
you identify to which satellite
you have just directed your
dish. If this is not the desired
one, knowing what satellite
you are receiving now gives
you a good hint what to do
with your dish: turn it east-
wards or westwards.
Once your antenna is look-
ing at the right satellite, you
delicately tilt it and slightly
turn it left or right to maxi-
mize all the readings which
the HD-STM is presenting.
Meter sensitivity and resolu-
tion is exactly as they should
be. HD-STM measures chan-
nel power with 0.1 dBµV and
MER and C/N with 0.1 dB res-
olution.
The HD-STM can be used
not only in simple installa-
tion with a direct connection
to an LNB. The meter is com-
patible with DiSEqC switches
and DiSEqC motors. Thanks
to that, you can check if your
customer has a problem with
a DiSEqC device or perhaps
everything is OK with the
switches and a motor but the
receiver itself does not gen-
erate the right DiSEqC com-
mands. The HD-STM can also
detect an open circuit and
short circuit in the cable con-
necting it to the LNB. This is
also a helpful function. Oper-
ating the functions described
above is quite simple thanks
to the very logical menu
structure.
The HD-STM can also show
the constellation diagram for
both QPSK and 8PSK. Having
a little experience, you can
judge how noisy the signal is
just by looking at the graphs.
1. Main menu
2. Satellite finder
3. Spectrum view
4. Span increased to 960 MHz
5. Span decreased to 120 MHz
6. Constellation view (DVB-S2)
7. LNB and cable test result
8. DiSEqC switch submenu
9. DiSEqC motor submenu
10. SD card management
screen
11. Setup menu
12. Selecting a region in Poland
for terrestrial TV
13. Selecting a city in the region
14. Analog terrestrial channel
measurement
15. Digital terrestrial channel
(DVB-T) measurement
16. Constellation of a terrestrial
signal
17. Setting up power supply for
terrestrial antenna amplifiers
18. Logging measurement
results in the memory
When we switched the HD-
STM to the terrestrial mode,
it surprised us by asking in
which region of Poland we
live and even in the vicinity
of which city. That’s because
the test sample Horizon pro-
vided us with had been cus-
tomized for Poland. Should
it be bought in some other
country, it would be custom-
ized with the settings suit-
able for that region. This is
quite helpful as you do not
have to memorize the chan-
nel numbers or frequencies