This is a great improvement, the mini dish is now the size it should have been in the first place
A good alternative is the Orbital Platinum, which is a solid 'plastic coated' version of the Sly mini dish.
Orbital claim the performance is as good as a 70cm dish - what they actually mean is that it is the same kind of performace as the Sky Zone 2, but they I imagine they don't want moaning from Sly, who think their crisp packet dishes are great.
Hey, who wants moaning from Sly? :-Nooo
I have tested the Platinum against a Triax TD65, a quality 60cm dish, using the same LNB. There was only a 3-4% difference in Quality generally, and 0% difference in about a quarter of the transponders tested (the strongest ones).
From experience I know that is not really significant in the real world, unless the wanted transponder is already marginal on the 60cm dish. Testing was on all the stong sats - 28e 19e 13e and the strong transponders i.e. 51dBW on 23.5e, 9e, 7e (M6 fine), 4.8e, 0.8e (T1 & T2 though marginal), 5w, 30w. The very stongest signals on 16e were starting to break up under clouds but had a 3-4% margin on the 60cm. In the midlands and the south of England performance will be better than that :toke:
So it is a much more compact alternative at 45 x 58cm, compared to the 60 x 65cm TD64. The difference is bigger in 'real life' than the measurements suggest. I haven't tested a Technisat 45cm DigiDish or 45cm Multytenne (28e 23.5e 19e 13e on one dish), which are even smaller and so easier to hide away, but should have a similar performance, but I would not expect much from 16e using the DigiDish. (though I could be wrong, perhaps in London and the south the stongest signals may be recieved, especially when the new satellite is eventually introduced).
The Orbital Platinum will have a better rain fade margin compared to the Sly Zone 1 Mk4, though I haven't tested the MK4. The perforated dishes are always worse for signal Quality / BER due to the imperfection of the parabola resulting from the flattening introduced by the perforations.
You can always rely on Sly to get it right
Humping