What you should know about the quality of your satellite equipment!

Status
Please reply by conversation.
Please..... Tell me where we can buy quality products at these prices. Do you want a job as our company buyer? I'll pay you the difference between your quote and our price and you can be a rich man! LOL!!!!! ;)

The key word is Quality! I'm sure factories can offer LNBFs for $1.50 or $2.00, but will they last and perform longer than about 3-5 minutes? I'm a believer in the old saying: You get what you pay for. There is also a similar Persian saying that translates into "You pay and you get to eat good soup" :) I'm not sure why they say soup :confused:
 
Another example is that back in the hack era, you would actually see Pansat receivers being knocked off by another factory using the same name and model number.
Have one of them here. a "Pantec 2500". Can work With Pansat or Fortec software
Also remember the "CooCoo" model (Coolsat) and I see an "Ebox" which is identical to a Coolsat 8100 online
 
The key word is Quality! I'm sure factories can offer LNBFs for $1.50 or $2.00, but will they last and perform longer than about 3-5 minutes? I'm a believer in the old saying: You get what you pay for. There is also a similar Persian saying that translates into "You pay and you get to eat good soup" :) I'm not sure why they say soup :confused:

So the person on ebay selling your WS International brand LNB for $8.99 with free shipping is interesting then isn't it. ;)
 
EBay always amazes me. These sellers purchase hundreds of each product, so they get some of the lowest prices we offer and they are happy to profit only pennies, and most of the time in order to compete and take away business from their competitors, they are willing to loose a little rather than to see a customer go to their competitor. :confused:

I don't follow EBay algorithms for the way they pull up results on their product search, but I was speaking with one of our EBay resellers, and he says that EBay looks heavily basis it heavily upon how active a reseller is and the more active they are, the higher their listings show up on searches. Before, when they only had auction style listings and not the "Buy It Now" listings, so they used to base their results based on the expiration date, but now, I guess they have to do it a little bit different.
 
EBay always amazes me. These sellers purchase hundreds of each product, so they get some of the lowest prices we offer and they are happy to profit only pennies, and most of the time in order to compete and take away business from their competitors, they are willing to loose a little rather than to see a customer go to their competitor. :confused:

So are they buying directly from you stateside or are they getting it from the manufacturer FOB at Chinese port?

I guess you missed my point before that when you implied price indicates quality a reseller of your own product has it at the lowest price on ebay for any new linear LNB.
 
Now that we have the ESX5421U 4-degree monoblock, we stopped carrying the bracket.
Thanks Robby!

Having a multifeed on one of motorized dishes working amazingly well in multiple positions, I settled on 2 of your 4-12 brackets to mount GT-Sat LNBs on both sides of Invacom. :) The brackets are strong and lightweight, and I sticked them in-line with a reinforced aluminum profile, but unfortunately the EBay dealer was selling the last few peaces. :) Now want to add a Linear LNB in-between to this mix for AMC4 - G19 reception, still looking for a suitable model. What dish aperture angle your ESX521 Single LNB was designed for? The dish 39" has 70 deg. aperture and longer than average focus distance.
 
Last edited:
For those of you who have not seen our behind the scenes video of our LNB / LNBF, Signal Finder, and Switch factory...

I am curious if the plant is owned by your company or is it a contract manufacturer?

How long does the lnbf line run? What percentage of output comes here to the U.S.?

If that lnbf line runs 24/7 there is no way that all of us at SatelliteGuys could ever use

all of those!!! :eek:
 
So the person on ebay selling your WS International brand LNB for $8.99 with free shipping is interesting then isn't it. ;)

That is the DMX521 for $8.99! You can splurge and get the ESX521 for $9.25! ;)

What is the difference between these units??? :confused:
 
That is the DMX521 for $8.99! You can splurge and get the ESX521 for $9.25! ;)

What is the difference between these units??? :confused:

If you put the specs side by side from the distributor they are identical except for the conversion gain shows 70dB for the DMX521 and 70-75dB for the ESX521.
 
Sorry guys... I was away for a little bit and did not get a chance to visit the site :no

So are they buying directly from you stateside or are they getting it from the manufacturer FOB at Chinese port?

Obviously I will not be discussing my customers purchasing details & habits on a public or private forum, or with a third party! :rolleyes:


I guess you missed my point before that when you implied price indicates quality a reseller of your own product has it at the lowest price on ebay for any new linear LNB.

I have colored red my answers in my earlier quote:

EBay always amazes me. These sellers purchase hundreds of each product, so they get some of the lowest prices we offer and they are happy to profit only pennies, and most of the time in order to compete and take away business from their competitors, they are willing to loose a little rather than to see a customer go to their competitor.

I don't follow EBay algorithms for the way they pull up results on their product search, but I was speaking with one of our EBay resellers, and he says that EBay looks heavily basis it heavily upon how active a reseller is and the more active they are, the higher their listings show up on searches. Before, when they only had auction style listings and not the "Buy It Now" listings, so they used to base their results based on the expiration date, but now, I guess they have to do it a little bit different.

How long does the lnbf line run? What percentage of output comes here to the U.S.?
If that lnbf line runs 24/7 there is no way that all of us at SatelliteGuys could ever use all of those!!!

AS you know, the overseas satellite market is much larger than the N. American market (specially USA/Canada). As far as quantity is concerned, I see more being sold overseas than here in the USA. We are selling lots of ESX521 and ESX522 LNBFs to New Zealand and we also make 10300 LO frequency LNBFs & 10700 LO frequency LNBFs for the Australian market under private labels, in addition to universal LNBFs for the middle east market.

Those lines are not just used for LNBFs, but also used to make switches, signal finders and meters also.
 
When you implied price indicates quality, a reseller of your own product has it at the lowest price on ebay for any new linear LNB.
Prices are not always a reliable indicator of quality. If a company owns an assembly lines in CN, one would expect to find their products offered in US at lower prices than if they buy them from another manufacturer. Each step in supply chain raises price. Also, some brand names try to capitalize on their past successes by asking to pay more, while measurements of their product specs may show mediocre today results. And some no-name products may be in fact made by well known companies, and show superior results al lower prices. Of course, opposite also happens, when smaller companies falsely beef up product specs trying to meet customer expectations. Its not cut and run... :) Rely on independent advice of people and sources you know and trust.
 
I do not mind paying more for quality. If we do not stop the outsourcing of labor work to China our children will wake up one day with nothing.
 
Prices are not always a reliable indicator of quality. If a company owns an assembly lines in CN, one would expect to find their products offered in US at lower prices than if they buy them from another manufacturer. Each step in supply chain raises price. Also, some brand names try to capitalize on their past successes by asking to pay more, while measurements of their product specs may show mediocre today results. And some no-name products may be in fact made by well known companies, and show superior results al lower prices. Of course, opposite also happens, when smaller companies falsely beef up product specs trying to meet customer expectations. Its not cut and run... :) Rely on independent advice of people and sources you know and trust.

I was just making light of WSI implying that their products are superior to those of lower price yet they have/had one of their resellers selling LNBFs at the lowest price on eBay. The statement holds no water if your products have the low ball price. I have been in business and know all the fluff and bravado that business men put forward when it comes to their products. Most men feel the need to talk up their products and businesses with crafty sales techniques yet there are a few who just let their price/quality do the talking.
 
That is generous of you.
It won't even pay the sales tax in the state it gets mfg. in.

You still have to pay sales tax no matter where it's built. Anyway, I was looking at where my new USB to serial port adapter was made and that is Taiwan. It cost $26. So, no one would buy this device for $27 or $28 (or even $30) if it was made in the USA? I'm sure that other manufacturers build these at similar prices but build them overseas. Since newer computers come without serial ports they probably sell hundreds of thousands (if not tens of millions) of these and similar devices (such as USB to analog modem adapters - since a lot of the newer computers don't have these either). Anyway, the Azbox would cost an additional $30 to $40 (maybe more) if made in the USA. A lot of STB's are bought for around 150-200 dollars. An additional 10% is 15 to 20 dollars for those STB's. Are we really that cost conscious? And then there's LNBF's under $100. And we couldn't afford to spend an additional 10% if it puts Americans back to work? Surely it wouldn't cost more than an additional 20% (still an affordable figure) for these devices. Of course, not many people would be willing to spend an additional $4000 (or more) for a car, truck, SUV or van. I guess the profit margin is less if made in the USA. We wouldn't want any "fat cat" to lose a couple of million dollars. The cost of "made in the USA" is more about the CEO's bonus than it is about what an American worker gets paid. Oh well, I'm probably wasting my time with this post......
 
...I think Invacom created great performing LNBF at the time they came out. I was never a fan of the quality, but in that time and era, they were the best performing LNBF on market. There is a difference between a high quality product and a good performing product. A product can be made of high quality parts, but may not perform as good as a product that is made of lower quality parts. Now you see higher quality LNBFs that also outperform the Invacom...

The implication here is that Invacom LNBs/LNBFs are obsolete and made from lower quality parts, and that WSI branded LNBs/LNBFs are higher quality and outperform the Invacoms. Did I read that correctly?

I can't engage in a quality comparison because I have no data to do a meaningful evaluation. I will say my stable of Invacoms met spec out-of-the box when I got them a few years ago, and they still do today (I have the test equipment).

A lot of people pooh-pooh specs here, but I for one have found Invacom to be honest and complete with their products. Their datasheets contain a number of specs you won't find for other vendor's units. Some of these specs are more indicative of real world performance than what we normally see bandied about. Invacom also provides individual unit calibration curves with their LNBs/LNBFs, a practice not in current fashion with their competitors. Admittedly these curves contain a paltry amount of information, but it does give me a slight comfort they went to the trouble. For the record, the curves that came with my units correspond to my measurements within typical error bars.

Out of curiosity I paper compared two very similar LNBFs: the Invacom QDH-031 and the WSI 534U. Both are quad universal Ku devices. I'm quite familiar with the Invacom but have never tried the WSI. One spec that is often overlooked is phase noise. It's not as important for plain DVB-S, but becomes significant for DVB-S2 8PSK. It is very critical for 16APSK and 32APSK. Most other LNB/LNBF specs pale in significance. These are the Invacom phase noise specs:


-65 dBc/Hz @ 1 kHz
-95 dBc/Hz @ 10 kHz
-110 dBc/Hz @ 100 kHz


My compliments to WSI for listing their phase noise specs; not many vendors do:


-50 dBc/Hz @ 1 kHz
-75 dBc/Hz @ 10 kHz
-95 dBc/Hz @ 100 kHz


Of course one wants the lowest possible phase noise (more negative numbers). The Invacom has 15-20 dB lower phase noise across the board when compared to WSI. From what I can measure, Invacom is telling the truth. I can lock tough DVB-S2 signals very easily with them. I've recently even been having some success with 16APSK and 32APSK.

If the WSI units perform as specified they are decent when compared to non-Invacom units, but they are not anywhere close to being top-of-the-line. I suppose the WSI devices might be conservatively spec'ed, but 15-20 dB does stretch credibility for such an argument. In the worlds I've lived in, this would suggest they know by design they can meet that spec with every unit, but the unit to unit variations could be substantial.

I'm sticking with Invacom for critical applications until I find something that clearly outperforms their products. If the WSI units were within a few dB, I'd probably try them out because vendor-to-vendor measurement practices and calibration accuracies could easily account for such differences. But 15-20 dB is a dramatic difference.
 
Last edited:
There are very few performance specs listed for the Chaparral. The NF is specified as 0.8 dB (typical) while cross polarization isolation is 20 dB (minimum). Both are at best unremarkable, and both are easily beat by the Invacom QDH-031 and the WSI 534U. Realistically one would need more information on the Chaparral to make an informed judgment, but what is available is not inspiring.
 
Don't you think, 0.8 db listed for Chaparral is more trustworthy then 0.1 db noise listed for some popular LNB models that actually produce 1 dB noise? About LNB noise temperature, its further decrease makes sense in practical terms only when matched with decrease in dish noise temperature. Actually, some specialists argue that for smaller offset dishes of 0.6-0.9m, LNB noise of 0.6-0.8 dB is closed to limit where it no longer affects received sat signal SNR, especially for CN made lower surface geometry accuracy dishes. In fact they say, further SNR increase depends on decreasing antenna produced noise, for example by somewhat narrowing LNB beam width by finding better LNB position or other means, and also pointing the dish more precisely towards a sat.
 
Last edited:
I don't necessarily trust a 'poorer' spec any more than one that appears highly optimistic. Measuring NF at these levels is not easy and subject to considerable error. Most vendors add the qualifier 'typical' to their specs, which can be next to meaningless if they don't specify any bounds. In the end, there are many noise sources beyond the equivalent noise temperature (or NF) of the LNB and these can easily overwhelm the LNB's contribution as zamar points out.

As I indicated in my previous post, the Chaparral specs are insufficient to make any assessments of the actual performance. I only quoted the NF and cross pol specs because that's all that is provided. They do not differentiate whether this LNB is a top or low performer.
 
They (Chaparral) do not differentiate whether this LNB is a top or low performer.
I guess, WSI takes care of that part: :D

"The "Gold Standard" & Pioneer In The Satellite Industry.

Absolutely The Best LNBF In The Satellite Industry Without A Question!"
 
Status
Please reply by conversation.
***

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)