Why you should change your old TV analyzer
It's all about productivity. Comparing TV analyzers.
Putting to test two of the most popular TV analyzers from PROMAX under the same conditions. A TV EXPLORER face to face with a RANGER Neo Lite, the entry-level model from the RANGER Neo series.
The competition will consist of four tests:
Sweep speed
A good sweep speed allows detecting in real time the disruptions, interfering signals and sporadic signal level drops. A poor sweep speed makes all the previous examples undetectable for the human eye. And the antenna alignment is more efficient if the spectrum has an immediate response.
In this context, the RANGER Neo thanks to their high digital processing speed (allowing a sweep time of up to 70 ms) make the work much more efficient than the TV EXPLORER.
The digital processing of a RANGER Neo achieves faster sweep times than those of a TV EXPLORER.
Moving the cursor through the spectrum
Until the touch screens came up, moving the cursor through the spectrum could became a tedious task because we only were able to control its position (in very small steps) using physical buttons such as encoders or keys. The only way to speed up the movement was defining channel tables to preset the frequency steps.
Thanks to RANGER Neo's touch screen, all it takes to move the cursor is pressing on the desired location.
Decoding HD services
When a system is being configured, the final and definitive quality test is the television services decoding. Most platforms are moving nowadays to the HD broadcasting using the H.264 or H.265 codecs, laying aside the TV EXPLORER technologies that only supported MPEG-2 for digital television.
In other countries such as Spain, December 31st 2022 marks the standard definition switchoff: All the digital terrestrial television services will have to be broadcasted in HD.The fact is this is the date that will render the TV EXPLORER unusable.
It is not possible to decode HD services using a TV EXPLORER because its codec support is limited to MPEG-2.
Service acquisition speed
The TV EXPLORER was the first TV & Spectrum analyzer that was able to detect and automatically decode analog channels and digital services (AUTO ID function). The user presses a key and the device identifies the signal and self-configures to the required parameters for the digital services.
The RANGER Neo takes this function to the next level, since the auto identification is up to 6 times faster and takes place as the cursor is moving: There is no need for the user to take any action by pressing buttons.
We have improved the service acquisition speed by speeding it up to 6 times.
In addition, the RANGER Neo have greater support for second-generation digital standards (DVB-T2, DVB-C2, DVB-S2). Now, in the case of the satellite, most multiplexes have abandoned the DVB-S standard to use DVB-S2, moving out of the scope of the TV EXPLORER.
PROMAX is a leading manufacturer of test and measurement systems, broadcast and TV signal distribution equipment. Our product lines include measuring instruments for cable TV, satellite TV, broadcast, wireless and fibre optics networks, FTTH and GPON analyzers. DVB-T modulators, IP streamers or IP converters (ASI, DVB-T) are among the company’s latest developments.