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56 TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 05-06/2013 — TELE-audiovision.com
1. Channel Plan just
uploaded from S30
2. Adding a new
transponder to ASTRA
2B channel plan (28.2
East)
and signal started to drop.
If this is more practical for
you, you can even not pay
too much attention to the re-
adout but listen to the beep
the S30 generates. The hig-
her the pitch, the better the
antenna alignment. We want
to praise Deviser for the very
fast response. It reacts im-
mediately for even the smal-
lest movement of a dish.
Our S30 test sample had
16 popular European satel-
lites per-programmed. If the
transponder selection for a
given satellite does not suit
your needs, you enter the
Main Menu (button MENU)
and navigate to Setup - Sa-
tellite Settings where you
can adjust all parameters
of any transponder associ-
ated with the satellite. It is
normal that not all satellite
beams cover the whole con-
tinent, so even if you live in
Europe and you bought the
S30 here, it can happen that
some of the pre-program-
med transponders are not
receivable in your region.
Editing parameters is easy
as everything else in S30.
If you put a little more ef-
fort and install the SatePlan
software on your PC (Win-
dows OS), the edition will
be even easier. Additionally,
you will be able to add new
satellites, new transpon-
ders, enable some of them
or disable others. The editor
software is much more con-
venient than the one we re-
member from S20. It is here
were we noticed the impor-
tant differences between the
new S30 and its predeccesor
S20. Very important: the
S30 can measure DVB-S2
transponders, something
what its older brother S20
could not do.
In this class of meters, the
spectrum view is often just
a gadget of little use. But
not with the S30. Once you
display a spectrum view, you
can set a marker on a trans-
ponder “mountain”, press
the Enter button and the
S30 will automatically reco-
gnize all its parameters (fre-
quency, SR, DVB type, FEC)
and display its measurement
results. It was really a very
nice surprise for us to disco-
ver this. In this way you do
not even have to care about
checking satellite charts.
This is another new feature
in S30.
We were also pleased to
find the DiSEqC 1.0 and 1.1
submenu. Using it, you can
send a command to switch
to a given signal source. We
tested it with a DiSEqC 1.1
switch in our test antenna
setup and everything was
working as expected. Thanks
to this function, you can not
only verify that the antenna
is aligned correctly but also
that the whole distribution
system is OK.
After checking the func-
tions and features, the time
came to compare the Devi-
ser S30 to another meter
and see if its measurement
results are really credible.
We selected a very good and
very expensive signal ana-
lyzer as our reference. Ta-
bles below show the results
for two satellites: ASTRA on
28.2° East and EUROBIRD on
ware, right? Right! You get
all of them in the set. The
software is provided on a
small CD-ROM. Deviser also
provides an Operation Manu-
al in hard copy. The manual
is very easy to follow and its
electronic version is additi-
onally available on the CD-
ROM. The final items in the
set are two female-to-fema-
le F connectors. You screw in
one of them to the S30. The
other one is a spare you can
use when the first one if torn
off due to frequent usage.
The small keyboard is self
explanatory. You have 4 ar-
row buttons and a power/
enter button in the middle.
Below them, there are two
buttons for entering the
menu and leaving it. If you
need to change settings,
you simply highlight it and
the use up/down buttons to
change a digit. Some non-
numerical settings, like sa-
tellite names, can be edited
on a PC and later downloa-
ded to S30 thanks to the
SatePlan Editor software for
Windows.
When you power up the
S30 for the first time you‘ll
truly enjoy its display. It is
very easy to read thanks to
the backlit. The meter starts
with its signal finding window
in which you can directly se-
lect the desired satellite and
its transponder. Except for
the signal strength and qua-
lity bars, the Deviser S30
shows the maximum values
registered so it is very easy
to see that we had turned
our dish a little bit too much