On first impressions the Mediastar HDX9100 looks to be quite a nice fully featured satellite receiver that has had some time spent on the design and development of the receiver functions, something that isn’t to common these days as receiver manufactures and reseller are driven to get the new models out selling ASAP with out some of the testing you might expect.
The first thing I noticed about the Mediastar receiver is that the channel name is displayed on the front panel of receiver a feature I haven’t seen since …

Hot on the heels of last month’s review of Emitor’s G2 Microlook, is their offering for terrestrial TV installers, the Digiair Pro. This is an affordable, hand held meter capable of spectrum display, BER, MER and SNR measurements.
The Av–Comm version comes with Australian and New Zealand analogue and digital channel plans loaded into the memory, making it a simple matter to check levels on any service on an allocated channel.
The spectrum display covers 45 to 862 MHz, and signals can easily be observed on the 60mm LCD display. …

On Monday the 21st of September 2009 Central China Television has re shuffled the CCTV 4, 9, E & F services to a new transponder on Chinasat 6B. This re-shuffle has allowed additional services to be added to this transponder including an Arabic and Russian duplicate service to compliment the existing French and Spanish service on the transponder. The new transponder data is as follows,
Frequency : 4115
Polarisation: Horizontal
FEC: 3/4
Symbol Rate: 21370
This new transponder is much stronger than the previous and will allow reception to be much more reliable for people …

South Korea’s indigenous KSLV-1 launcher lifted off from the Naro Space Centre on August 25, but failed to launch a scientific observation satellite into low Earth orbit.
A previous launch attempt several days earlier was halted when “abnormal data’ was observed during the automated launch sequence.
The launch had been postponed on five previous occasions: — the end of 2007, end of 2008, the second quarter of 2009 and July 30 and August 11, due to Russia’s refusal to transfer technology or problems in acquiring components.
The KSLV-1 launcher is a mix of …

Publicly listed telecommunications firm PT Indonesian Satellite Corporation Tbk (Indosat) is set to launch its second satellite later this month.
Palapa D1 is scheduled to be launched from the Xichang Launch Centre, China on August 31 aboard a Long March 3B launcher.
The satellite, said to have cost US$220 million, was built by Thales Alenia Space and based on their Spacebus 4000B3 platform will carry 35 C band and 5 Ku band transponders.
This satellite has been built without the use of any US made components and this allowed the satellite to be …

Well known Swedish manufacturer  Emitor, recently send us one of their Microlook G2 units for evaluation.
Here’s what we found………..
The first sentence of the User Manual says it all..”This unit is made for exact alignment of satellite dishes” and that is exactly what it delivers. Our experience with Emitor products goes back ten years and we previously reviewed the Satlook Micro several years ago.
Since that time Emitor have striven to improve the product and the G2 represents the pinnacle of that development according to John Lindberg leader of the development team. …

The Autumnal equinox is almost here and solar outages will occur from September 2 to 13.
Easterly satellites such as Inteslat 8 will be affected around 9.00 AEST for periods of up to 15 minutes.
Westerly satellites such as Thaicom 5 will be affected at around 3pm AEST.
To calculate the precise outage time for your location, go the the ionispheric prediction service  on line calculator at:
http://www.ips.gov.au/Satellite/3/1
Satellite systems using auto trackers should have the tracker disabled during periods of solar outage to ensure the dish does not lock to the Sun !!

Malaysias’s blasted off into space at 11.35 am Malaysian time on July 15 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Islands. Launch was delayed for four hours due to a malfunction in the equipment used to load helium into the launcher.
Twenty minutes into launch, the 180kg satellite entered orbit at 685Km above earth, to become the world’s first remote sensing satellite launched into Near Equatorial Orbit (NEqO).
The launch at Omelek Island using Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)’s launcher Falcon 1 went smoothly after the four hour delay. RazakSAT carries a …

A technical problem aboard China’s Sinosat 3 satellite is believed to have caused the outage which occurred on July 14 when all broadcasts from the satellite were cut for 12 hours. During the outage, programs were routed via Chinasat 6b, according to Chinese news website CRIenglish.com.
An official from the China Direct Broadcast Satellite Co Ltd was quoted as saying: ” the glitch wont affect future use of the satellite or cut short its length of service”. The official explained; “ the failure was totally unexpected and doesn’t mean that China …

All those lunar landing skeptics who believe footage from the Moon was shot in a Hollywood studio will have to rethink their theories, as recent photographs taken by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, clearly show equipment and footprints left by astronauts on Apollo 11 and 14 missions. All five Apollo landing sites will be photographed by the Orbiter, which was launched on June 18 this year and will spend at least the next 12 months mapping the Moon.
Photo: NASA