08-09 - TELE-satellite International Magazine

HISTORY
TELE-satellite Archives
Amstrad SAT 401 SDU 80
A couple of years ago, putting up a satellite dish
at home was a rather expensive experience and
therefore a step only taken after serious negotiations
within the family. After all members had
pointed out their opinion, the next step was talking
to the engineer who had to install the complete
installation. Today, the situation has changed a
lot. A complete installation costs only a fraction of
what it was in the early days, and installation is just
a matter of plug-and-play. Buying a satellite dish
and an analogue receiver has become more of an
impulsive buy. Amstrad has recognised this market
and has therefore introduced a new set with an
80cm dish, a mono block LNBF (for both Astra and
Hotbird) and the analogue mini receiver SAT 401.
It comes rather complete. Only cabling is not
included, but then again that is so very difficult to
be predetermined in length. This set comes with
an 80cm dish made of stainless material. Although
putting the parts together is a real piece of cake,
the included manual will give thorough explanations
for those still unfamiliar with it. Although mainly
targeted at the Astra/Hotbird market share, this
set will also do perfectly well in any other situation
where there is a separation of 6 degrees between
two satellites. The included SAT 401 analogue
receiver offers 400 channels, most of which are
already programmed with the major channels on
all satellites between 42° east and 34.5° west.
On the front of the receiver, a large four-digit display
indicated the current channel id. When programming
the receiver, it indicates the current values.
Also positioned on the front are the emergency
operation buttons. Since the receiver is rather small,
it features only two Scart connectors. One for your
television set and one for a VCR or decoder. Two
phono jacks supply your stereo with the proper
stereo sound. Although a mono block LNB in fact
consists of two LNBs in one housing, still only
one cable is used to connect. A rather remarkable
specification is the reception frequency range
which stretches from 800 up to 2250MHz. This is
a rather large spectrum. Terrestrial signals can be
combined with that of the receiver. Unfortunately,
Amstrad decided to use an old-fashioned adjusting
screw for setting the appropriate output channel.
The remote control is much bigger than
we expected. It has 16 keys and a numeric
keypad. In daily use however, you will only
use five of them. The rest is used for programming
stuff like 22kHz, satellite A or B, sleep
timer or other programming facilities.
176 TELE-satellite — Broadband & Fiber-Optic — 08-09/2009 — www.TELE-satellite.com
In practice
Putting the parts of the dish together is very
easy. However, we missed some information
on the appropriate elevation angle. But
since we are dealing with a smaller dish, this
also means the opening angle is much larger,
making it therefore easier to find a signal
using the famous trial and error method.
For central Europe, put the dish in a more or less
11 o’clock position and the first signals should
be received. Amstrad assumes you will use a
universal LNB with this receiver and therefore
the values are pre-programmed, but these can
of course be changed to 10.0, 10.75, 11.47 and
5.15 (for C-band reception). But since we are
talking about a complete kit here, why should
we be willing to change these values? In fact,
this is the only programming you would have to
do prior to start using the receiver. Although the
receiver can be reprogrammed according to your
personal needs, there is no need to do so when
using it in conjunction with the supplied dish and
mono block LNBF. DiSEqC (v1.0) takes care of
the selection of the right satellite. The SAT 401
doesn’t feature an on-screen display but the front
display makes programming real child’s play.
For every channel, the video level can be set in
two steps. Audio frequencies are simply chosen
from a prefixed list and for de-emphases you can
choose from 50µs, 75µs, J17 or Stereo (Panda
compatible). Although not really being Wegener
Panda, the system performs well and offers a
crystal clear sound. The quality on audio level
also shows on the video side of the receiver.
A fine tool is the offset function on the
remote control. It enables you to finetune
the audio and video frequency.