Advice Needed Reasonably priced sat finder required - which one?

giraffe

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My Satellite Setup
zone2 mini dish, 19.2 and 28.2
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Suffolk
Just looking for a cheap-ish sat finder to help set-up a multi-LNB setup (13,19,28).

From looking online these seem to be the next step up from the £10 needle ones which I used previously.

Freesat V8 £45
SatLink WS-6933 £40
SatLink WS-6906 £49

Any advice on which of these (or something else) is best to go for?

Thanks!
 

Ghostleader

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My Satellite Setup
80cm motorised Inverto dish with Dark Motor full metal gears, Xtrend 9500HD, Amiko Alien 2+, Amiko Alien 8900, Moded Zone 2 dish with multi LNB goodness! 50 inch full HD LCD and loads of other stuff! lol
My Location
Glasgow,ish!
I have both the Satlinks, the 6906 just gives signal quality & signal strength in % like any receiver does, does show BER which you shouldn't be experiencing if you have good received signal levels obviously. The 6933 does give received power levels in dB ect, but no TV channel demodulation is on board (If that's a thing you would require/like as a bonus) but also does DVB-S2 which the 6906 doesn't do as it's a SD channel only meter due to its age as a model.
 

Ghostleader

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80cm motorised Inverto dish with Dark Motor full metal gears, Xtrend 9500HD, Amiko Alien 2+, Amiko Alien 8900, Moded Zone 2 dish with multi LNB goodness! 50 inch full HD LCD and loads of other stuff! lol
My Location
Glasgow,ish!
I got my Satlink WS-6933 from AliExpress, £33 mate, was during a promo sale, but still cheaper with the same seller just now than eBay, which has been doing my head in recently with these drop shipping sellers that advertise their local as some where in England but the reality turns out to be France, Germany or China the sods.
 

giraffe

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zone2 mini dish, 19.2 and 28.2
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Suffolk
Hi Ghostleader,

Thanks for your message, OK great - you get what you pay for then really! But they do seem much better than the needle ones. I can't really justify the Dr. HD, Will see what the best deal I can get on a 6933 or V8 then.

Cheers,
 

Ghostleader

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My Satellite Setup
80cm motorised Inverto dish with Dark Motor full metal gears, Xtrend 9500HD, Amiko Alien 2+, Amiko Alien 8900, Moded Zone 2 dish with multi LNB goodness! 50 inch full HD LCD and loads of other stuff! lol
My Location
Glasgow,ish!
Hi Ghostleader,

Thanks for your message, OK great - you get what you pay for then really! But they do seem much better than the needle ones. I can't really justify the Dr. HD, Will see what the best deal I can get on a 6933 or V8 then.

Cheers,

A fellow member on here has the V8, (@RustySpoons) and from what he's said about it I'd say your better with the Satlink ws-6933, because of the read out info being far better, there's a full screen mode that displays just the signal quality & strength bars for whatever transponder you have selected so it's easier to see at first glance, that's a bonus, battery life is good also, it's smaller in the hand and has an all round silicone wrap around case also.
 

sonnetpete

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Laminas 1.2M fibre dish with an IBU, on a Clarke Tech USALS motor, covering 57E - 24.5W to an Octagon SX88. Displayed on a 20" Dyon LED TV.

Seperate 80 cm dish on 28E with a Humax Freesat for SWMBO.
Free Sat V8 meter. Sony Bravia 46" LCD, Sony BluRay and Home Cinema.
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Normandy, France
A fellow member on here has the V8, (@RustySpoons)

I have a V8 too and although the 6933 is a darn good meter, it doesn't have the advantage of a display that shows the channel you are receiving which the V8 does. It's not got the range of signal displays the 6933 has but I think it's worth considering, personally I wouldn't think of changing it..
 

Adam792

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My Satellite Setup
Dishes: 80cm (5°W), 80cm (30°W), 60cm Zone 2 (13°E/19.2°E/28.2°E)
Receivers: HTPC w/ TBS6905 4x DVB-S2 PCIe tuner card running TVHeadend, Octagon SF8008 mini.
My Location
Cheltenham
Just to add to this, in case it's helpful for anyone.

I've just got a Satlink WS-6933 and I'm pretty impressed with it.

As others have said, it doesn't demodulate so you need to check you're on the correct satellite with an actual receiver if it's a commonly used frequency/symbol rate combo. However, I'm really impressed with its accuracy with the ability to view the received C/N level. I've just tried it out on my 5°W dish and it's giving me C/N dB levels pretty much bang on the same as those reported by my TBS6905 PC card via the open source TBS drivers in TVHeadend. Reassuring to see it all seems to be calibrated nicely - on both sides!

Also, it manages to lock perfectly well onto DVB-S2 multistream PLS transponders (e.g. 11509H and 12648V) which I wasn't expecting at all! This is the most useful feature for me. Although I guess this might be logical as it's not demodulating the signal (which would require the PLS code - the reason normal DVB-S2 receivers that don't support PLS report no signal I presume).

The one I've got has come with all the usual suspects we receive here in Europe pre-programmed, but the transponder lists are a couple of years old so I will need to do a bit of modification to the lists, but I'm very happy with the purchase.
 
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