Titanium PLL LNB Misinformation

[el bandido]

Do I really need a narrow band lnb for a wide band signal???

There is a line of lnbs that have recently been introduced called Titanium. These lnbs are of PLL design and have a high price tag when compared to other fta lnbs. False or misleading information about these LNBs is being generated by a few people that are trying to sell or advertise these lnbs. Soon you can expect to see some posts, threads, or advertisements by people using these lnbs stating how well they work. Let's look at few facts and some information from manufacturers to see if we need a PLL type lnb for our FTA systems.

PLL is a common abbreviation for Phased Locked Loop. DRO is a common abbreviation for Dielectric Resonator Oscillator. Most of our FTA lnbs are DRO in design. A PLL lnb will be more stable than a DRO lnb.
Cheap Ku band PLL lnbs have been on the market for quite some time now, and it is typical to see reports by people claiming that these PLL lnb will latch or lock weak transponders better than the DRO lnb that the PLL lnb replaced. I am sure that some of these people are being honest, but it is also obvious that some posts and articles are nothing more than bleeding heart sales pitches designed to get you to spend money for the latest and best lnb technology.

If PLL lnbs are so great, why aren’t all lnbs PLL in design? Would not Dish Network and DirecTV use PLL lnbs in their systems if they were better at catching signals? PLL lnbs have been in production for well over a decade so the technology is not new.
One thing new is people trying to convince other people to replace their FTA DRO LNB for a PLL lnb with claims of better performance and more received channels. Swedish Microwave and Norsat have been manufacturing PLL lnbs for a long time. The main target market for their PLL lnbs seems to be commercial data customers. A stable lnb is much better on a weak and narrow signal. By narrow signal, I mean a transponder that is less than or around 1 mega symbol (1000SR). How many transponders do we have that are this small? You probably will not to see much difference between a PLL and DRO lnb on a transponder with a SR of 1000 IF the signal being received is wide band such as a a tv picture.

I think the bottom line is there is not much of a practical use for a PLL type lnb in the FTA market. The only real reason a FTA PLL lnb exists for FTA television is to separate you from your money. The majority of people that purchase and install a PLL lnb will not realize any noticeable difference in the received signal from the satellite. They may see an increase in the Q signal or some other FTA level but in the real world, the received signal from the satellite will stay about the same. Any increases in received satellite signal strength will be very small.

Attached are some.pdf files that have been gathered from various sources. I suggest that you read them and do research before you go out and buy an Expensive Titanium or other PLL lnb.
I also wish the new Titanium lnb company the best of luck, but I would prefer that they dazzle us with brilliance and realistic prices rather than baffle us with BS and high prices! EB

Quote taken from SES-Triple-Feed-White-Paper-Ver-1-0:
PLL LNB VS DRO LNB COMPARISON

An interesting finding of the study is that for this specific application DRO-based LNBs performed better, in the aggregate, than PLL-based LNBs. It is well known that PLL LNBs are more stable than DRO LNBs since they utilize a more stable internal reference source (crystal oscillators) or they make use of an input from a stable external source. It follows that for low bit rate applications and/or small carriers (e.g., 50 kHz wide) PLL LNBs typically provide better performance. However, SES’ testing suggests that DRO LNBs provide acceptable performance for signals with large bit rate carriers (such as DVB-S2 video signals) and in some cases actually outperform PLL LNBs

[el bandido]

Attached is a .pdf describing a backyard test that compares a Titanium c band lnb to a Geosat Pro C2 c band lnb. In this test, the new Titanium C band lnb is able to lock 5 transponders that the C2 lnb is unable to receive. I really do not know what to make of this test.
Is the C2 lnb a piece of junk that cannot lock some transponders? OR Is the Titanium c band lnb so good that it outperforms a DRO lnb in almost every shape form or fashion?
I bet the outcome of this test would be very different if both of these lnbs were sent to a reputable labratory for testing.

C band PLL lnbs have been around for a long time, but I think Titanium is the first company that has targeted the fta community, and try to fool us into thinking that we need this type of lnb for our wideband signals.
Some people may actually see slight or even large improvements when using the Titanium c band lnb, but these gains could probably be credited more to differences in FTA equipment rather than the PLL c band lnb itself. It would not suprise me at all if this new PLL C band lnb could not lock some transponders that a DRO lnb has no problems locking in some fta systems. EB

[TV Broadcaster]

Here is my 2 cents. For Commercial S2 HD use with a server based receiver the PLL LNB does infact make the equipment preform better. We have a Pitch blue unit that will throw a fail on feed quality if we don't use a PLL LNB yet the signal is perfectly usable and viewable by a FTA receiver but the Pitch blue receiver card says Fail. So like you said the difference backyard users will benefit will be minable to the normal user. Pathfire receivers seem to be less critical and just about any FTA LNBF works fine and no fails. ill let ya know in the future if they make any difference in my stand alone Tandburgs or my new Upcomm Commercial stuff as we intend to try one as we do up grades. I will say the best thing you can add is a WISP Filter if your using the polorotar lnbs on C band as these will clean up your signal failures 50% but these filters do run 300.00 for a good one but you will say goodbye to signal drop outs on a clear day.

Happy Holidays Pilgrims

[rrob311]

That is a fine comparison because I have the same dish parked at the same bird right now. I am running my hypermegasat sourced dmx242 lnbf. I will see if I can lock all of the transponders on that list.

[el bandido]

Some of the transponders in the sales pitch list may not be active now or the symbol rate may have changed. The sales pitch list is a few weeks old now.
My cheap Pauxis lnb was able to lock some of the transponders I checked that were missed with the Geosat DRO lnb. No surprise there and no need to get a pll type lnb to receive them either.

I have purchased two Geosat lnbs. One was a ku band lnb and the other was a c band lnb. I was neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with the build quality of these lnbs. They were what you would typically expect for a non-commercial piece of fta equipment. Neither of the Geosat lnbs stayed on the dish very long. They were swapped out for lnbs that worked better with my system. The Geosat c band lnb did a good job, but it skipped a few transponders that some of my other c band lnbs would get. I was surprised to see skipped transponder issue finally admitted by the guy that was selling it!

For now, I will pass on purchasing the new PLL c band lnb from Titanium. Good luck to the people that buy this PLL lnb thinking it will work miracles! EB

[Costactc]

I have had wideband corotors on my 10' buds on 2 seperate occasions and they were equipped with expensive norsat lnbs. I didn't like the way some tp scanned in with reversed polarity and I always had to play around with the skew. When I slapped cheapo lnbs on the signal quality was at the same level as with the more expensive lnbs. I finally got so frustrated that I removed the corotor and have been using lnbfs ever since. More expensive doesn't always mean better.