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DATA
TECHNICAL
Manufacturer
SPAUN electronic GmbH & Co. KG
Germany
Web
www.spaun.com
E-mail
contact@spaun.com
Phone
+49-7731-8673-0
Fax
+49-7731-8673-17
Model
BluBox 16
Function
/
to
Head End
Number of inputs
4 (cascadable)
Input frequency range
950 ... 2150 MHz
Allowable input signal power
64 ... 94 dBµV
Number of outputs
2 (cascadable)
Output frequency range
47 ... 862 MHz
Output signal power setting (general)
62 ... 82 dBµV
Individual QAM channel power adjustment
-6 … + 3 dB
range
Number of transponder processed
Up to 16
Number of QAM channels generated
Up to 16
QAM standard
/ ITU-T J.83 Annex A (fixed)
QAM constellations
16QAM, 32QAM, 64QAM, 128QAM
and 256QAM
QAM symbol rate range
1.0 … 7.2 Ms/sec
Power supply
2 x 100 … 240 V, 47 … 63 Hz, 85 W
plus LNB
Jacek Pawlowski
TELE-satellite
Test Center
Poland
+
–
32
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 06-07-08/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
Extremely compact
Single unit converts large number of transpon-
ders to QAM channels (16)
Very clean output signal
BluBox outputs can be cascaded to multiply
the number of QAM channels in the system
output
Well designed application for setting up the
instrument
Installation wizard, basic mode and expert
mode suits both less and more advanced users
BluBox includes two power supplies for extreme high up-time
not possible to descramble the channels of various satellite
PayTV providers and re-scramble them with a different CAS
Expert Opinion
increase the power for the
channels of higher frequen-
cies and decrease for those
at the lower end of the spec-
trum.
The BluBox 16 had no
problem in processing DVB-
S and DVB-S2 signals. Of
course, the content of the
transponder (MPEG-2 or
MPEG-4) does not matter as
the BluBox does not decode
and re-code video of the TV
channels. If something is in
High Definition on a satellite
transponder, it will be left in
HD in the cable network.
SPAUN provides us with
quite a choice of different
settingsfor the satellite in-
put and cable output. For
example, you can set man-
ually the LOFs of the LNB
as well as its changeover
frequency. Explanation for
less advanced readers: the
low-band and hi-band of Ku-
band overlap each other; so
the central part of Ku-band
can be received either with
lower LOF (9750 MHz) or
higher LOF (10600). In a
normal set-top-boxes this
decision is taken by the box
manufacturer and the user
has no freedom to change it.
DiSEqC 1.0 is supported.
You can select toneburst:
off/A/B or satellite A/B/C/D.
You can manually select
the presence of the 22 kHz
waveform as well as the
LNB voltage (13/18 V). You
can edit, remove or add new
transponders like in a regu-
lar satellite TV receiver but
additionally you can label
every transponder, for ex-
ample with the name of the
provider.
Individual channel num-
bers can be assigned to the
TV and radio channels con-
tained in the generated QAM
channels. And if the set-top-
boxes used in your cable
system are supporting LCN
(Logical Channel Number)
functionality, the channel
order in their channel lists
will be exactly as you want it
to be. As mentioned before,
you can block some channels
from appearing in the cable
network simply by removing
ticks next to their names in
the appropriate menu (in the
expert mode).
The BluBox gives you also
some possibilities to ma-
nipulate NIT, SDT and CAT
tables. You can change IDs
of the network, service or
conditional access system.
If you wish, you can re-
place the original network
name with your own net-
work name but you have no
possibility to rename the
original TV and radio chan-
nel. Some expertise is re-
quired when tinkering with
theses settings especially in
NIT processing. Fortunately,
everything is explained in
great detail in the operating
manual. Moreover, the de-
fault settings (without pro-
cessing the tables at all) will
be perfect anyway for most
customers.
To sum up, setting up the
BluBox 16 was a piece of
cake. Everything was intui-
tive and worked as expected.
We encountered not a single
problem. Of course, all our
settings were stored in the
BluBox memory safely and
did not disappear on power
cycling. After some period
of operation, internal fans
were automatically switched
on to keep internal tempera-
ture low. They generated
some noise but this is nor-
mal in professional equip-
ment like computer network
servers. The output signal
was stable and very clean
spectrally. Also the C/N ra-
tio was excellent. SPAUN’s
BluBox 16 did a great job in
converting DVB-S/S2 satel-
lite transponders into DVB-C
cable channels.