Electronix Express EX Digital Satellite Finder Meter for DirecTV - SF-95DR Backlit Plug and Play

I could not line up my DirecTV satellite antennae, so I bought this meter, at a better price than I could find on e-Bay or anywhere else ( by about $35.00!). I still could not get it to work, so I called in a professional installer. It turned out the problem was elsewhere, but I was most impressed with the meter, and so was the technician. He said it worked better than his did, and after fixing the real problem, used mine to line up to the satellite. When I told him what I paid, he said he was going to replace the one he had, and order this one! We had 80 mile an hour winds come through this week, and of course, they blew my antennae off target. Lined it back up in minutes!

I wanted to take one of my high definition receivers from home to my houseboat at Lake Cumberland. I purchased this finder to help with my dish installation. So many told me that it would be difficult to use SWiM on a boat but I found it rather easy. I installed the dish on the radar arch of our 2006, 18' X 80' Sumerset. Once I mounted and leveled the dish, I used the satellite finder in-line between the power insertion block and the dish. I had already aimed the elevation etc. (29 degrees and 70 on the arc) for the area by matching to other SWiM dishes in the area. I left the bolts loose so I could rotate the dish on the vertical mount. I didn't need to be close to the finder meter as it has a tone that you can hear when you are aimed correctly. I tightened down the mount and fine tuned the rotation with the adjustment bolt. I went to the DirecTV receiver and turned it on. The receiver took a few minutes to start up but proceeded through the boot-up. The reception was great and we spent the evening watching Michigan State run all over Wisconsin. As a final note, the tone is much more useful than the meter dial itself. For the SWiM LMB it displayed either zero or ten. When you were in the right place the meter read ten and you would hear the tone.

My dish had a sloppy install and after loosing all signals in some high winds and then tightening up at least 5 bolts my dish was out of whack. I spent 2 hours of trying to re-align with no luck. I bought this meter and had it back in sight within 20 minutes. It's worth every penny.

I bought this hoping to point a rather tricky dish placement. I wired it up as it is labeled - one side to the lnb, the other to the receiver. No signal. Ok. Then I turned the dB knob up and it immediately zoomed up to 10. WTF does that mean? The receiver box shows 0 signal strength. This device is showing what looks like a solid signal.So I take it to a functioning dish installation, and get the same results. So, with the meter on 5, the dish box installation display on the tv showing a good signal, I cover the lnb on the dish. The dish box installation display on the tv immediately drops to 0, but this thing didn't even dip in "signal strength." Apparently it is only showing me continuity of the line, not actual signal strength.1 star because it serves a purpose. Not the one it is sold as, but it is not entirely useless. Also 1 star because its lowest possible.

I bought this satellite finder to make setting up my Direct TV dish faster. It does not help in speed although it does find satellites, and puts you onto a strong signal quickly. The problem is, it is to good at finding satellites. For me it is faster to use my compass. I thought I could just aim the dish in the general direction and hit my satellite but found I was getting so many satellites that I had to use the compass anyway to determine which one was the correct one. Not a bad product for someone who cannot use a compass or is willing to try each satellite found to see if it is the right one for their system.

This is a very easy to use device. It requires no batterys, it is powered by your receiver! All you need to do is plug a standard satellite cable into one end coming from your receiver, and the other end plugs into the lnb on your satellite dish. Just tilt the dish till you hear a beep, the higher the needle moves, the better the signal you have achieved! Hands-free operation with a built in beeper to let you know of a satellite signal lock, and a backlight to help in any lighting condition. Very nice gadget to have in your toolbox, you never know when the next high wind might knock your satellite off target!

Last year, when I needed to align my DirecTV SWM LNB antenna, I studied DirecTV's tech training for installing a SWM system, then bought an ASL-1 alignment splitter for less than $30. When the SWM LNB is powered up without any receiver connected, it puts signals from the 101 satellite out in one frequency band and the signals from 119 in another. The ASL-1 splits these into two different ports. When using my friends expensive alignment meter, I noticed that I wasn't using any of it's fancy features, just a signal strength meter, using the DirecTV procedures for alignment and dithering. I bought this and can align an HD SWM LNB in no time with this inexpensive meter. Feed the 18 volt output of the ASL-1 into one side and the output of either the 110 or 119 into the other port of this device, and follow the DirecTV "dithering" procedure. You will have pinpoint alignment.Feeding the 21 volts from the power inserter into this would probably fry it, so an ASL-1 is necessary just for power.

Does the job, easy to use, and it was accurate while pointing the satellite at home. When I got to the parking lot at a different location though, I couldn't get the dish pointed accurately.