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

Very convenient and easy to use since there's no external power source required. Just connect between the dish and the receiver, make sure to connect both since power is supplied by the receiver. It sure beats trying to either see or listen to the receiver or having to have a second person. May not need to use it often, but for the price, it's worth having one around.

After cancelling my Dish Network service, I noticed the dish would still bring in the monthly screen savers. The dish was removed when my house was re-roofed and I wanted to aim the dish. The satellite finder helped me zero in on the satellite and re-establish the minimal service still active on the dish. My one caveat is the short coax jumper that came with the satellite finder is of poor quality and the two-piece fitting came apart trying to attach it to the satellite feed in the house box connection. I had to find a better jumper. Otherwise, I would have given it five stars.

Package shipped on a Monday, and I received it the following Wednesday. This tool was completely dead on the system I needed it for; wouldn’t power on. I tried it on a known good working system, dish that is perfectly aligned, and it powers on, but shows no (0%) signal strength. The coax cable that comes with the tool is far too short. There's no phone number or email for support. Overall this was a poor purchase on my part, but after reading reviews for this, and similar tools it's a crapshoot to receive one that's in good working order.

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.

Ok the products acts more like a geiger counter. it detects the signal as you get closer to it and shoots up when you hit the sweet spot. now it makes it a lot easier to find (at least for directv) if you set the dish at 35 degrees. you should use an angle locator. then theres three parts to it. rotate the base east and west until your device spikes at its highest. lock it in at the bolts. then up and down. finally the dish has a slight rotation it needs to do. but look and your signal strength indicator on your screen in the living room, and try to get to 97 percent or higher signal strength.. it may take some time for you to figure it out. but this device does help..

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.

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.