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 …

The first service cutover from Asiasat 2 to Asiasat 5 was successfully conducted on September 17 at 22.15 UTC. All services are planned to be transferred by the end of September. Already many viewers are reporting increased signal levels from this new satellite.
Asiasat 5 is a Space systems Loral SSL1300 satellite with 26 C band and 14 Ku band transponders. The C band footprint covers 53 countries from Russia to New Zealand and from Japan to the Middle East and parts of Africa.
This new satellite offers 2 high …

Hot on the heels of Senator Conroy’s announcement last month that there would be no 4th free to air television network for Australia, comes the news that Telstra is believed to be planning the release of a PVR called “T Box” by the end of the year.
According to a news item on the Big Pond News website, this strategy would allow Telstra to offer its own (Big Pond) content, which it already does to Telstra broadband customers, with no bandwidth charges.
It would also place Telstra in direct competition with both …

Japan’s indigenous H-2B rocket successfully launched the HTV cargo transporter on September 11 for a week long voyage to the ISS. The launch vehicle flew smoothly, and at 15 minutes and 6 seconds after liftoff, the separation of the HTV Demonstration Flight was confirmed.The HTV was designed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to transport supplies to the ISS. On this demonstration mission, the HTV is carrying 4.5 tonnes of food and supplies, and was scheduled to dock with the ISS on September 18. Launched from the JAXA Space …

Palapa D1, owned by Indonesian telco Indosat, suffered a third stage launcher mishap on August 31 during the launch sequence from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China’s Sichuan province. Consequently the satellite was placed in an unusable orbit.
Failure occurred 20 minutes after liftoff as the third stage was scheduled to ignite for the second burn of the launch. The 13 metre long third stage, powered by two YF-75 liquid hydrogen and oxygen engines capable of generating 35,000 pounds of thrust used on most long March launchers has never failed …

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. …