COMAG HD25 Poor Signal Quality

BuzzG

Hi Folks, Bought a Comag HD25 Sat box recently in Germany for the German FTA HD channels. Existing box is MicroM SD box and has Signal Strenth 90%+ and 75 - 78% quality on most transponders on Astra 1. Dish is Triax 78cm. Funny thing is with this new box only getting 42% signal quality even on ARD transponder and that's as good as it gets :eek: Anyone have similar issues? Could it be a dud receiver? Hooked up to Sky Dish which was professionally installed and it's reading about 55/60% quality. What do ye think?

SalteeDog

Have you noticed any difference in the picture quality (perhaps check the weakest channel during a heavy rain-shower)? The 'quality' scale isn't necessarily standardized across receivers.

BuzzG

Have read some reviews on Amazon.de for this receiver and poor signal strength and quality has come up a few times for it. It perhaps works fine in Germany where Astra 1 is primarily focused but perhaps not so well in Ireland. The MicroM which is the existing receiver I have on the Astra 1 dish is fine, it rarely gets knocked out by rain ... only really heavy rain and usually the Sky receiver on the Sky dish goes before it so don't think it's my dish and set-up.

zg3409

I would not worry unless you have picture problems. Some people think a higher quality number means your box is better than another box of a different make.

For that reason some box makers lie and give high quality figures to make their box look good. It's equivalent to a phone manufacturer giving "5 bars" signal when 3 bars would be more appropriate. Apple were caught using that trick.

You will notice some transponders will give different quality.

The only way to compare like with like is to keep reducing the signal until the box starts to freeze and compare with different makes.

Having said that some boxes are "deaf", and all lie about quality. It's hard to blame the box or the dish unless you have a proper meter than gives impartial bit-error-rate (BER)

If the picture is OK then don't worry, if picture is blocky, which is should not be on a 78cm dish then peak the dish slowly.

Liameter

Reminds me of the days of CB radio when "rig doctors" would turn up the calibration potentiometer of the signal meter to make it read higher and idiot users would think they were transmitting/receiving better.