Lemon: 030CI

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patpending, Surrey on August 18th, 2006
In making this review I must make it clear that I am a total noob - I have just had a satellite system installed - and I therefore cannot compare this kit with other receivers. First, the name. Lemon! Knowing little of satellite brands, I smirked. As did other forum members. However, it is clear from "What Satellite?" that Lemon make many good-quality, good-value items. Let's face it, if you were going to make dodgy kit to rip people off, you would call it "Not-Break-Down-O" or "Definitely-Not-a-Rip-Off-O" or something...even if it were really no good...you wouldn't call it Lemon... The box itself is silvery and not as wide as a DVD player. Personally, I would have preferred wider and black. However, I think that is the current taste for such receivers. It has a number of connections at the back, many of which I don't use yet. I do use the two SCART connections (TV and one of the videos) and could easily do with another two or three to avoid the use of adaptors. As a noob I underestimated just how much this kit must be treated as computer gear. If there is a problem (particularly "reception is sound only"), the best solution is frequently to switch off mains power and wait a bit. The next most frequent solutions involve checking the connections in and out. Picture quality is excellent. TV listings are, I believe, pre-programmed per satellite. You can set up your own lists to sort the ARDs from the 9 Lives...think you're allowed lots (10?) but two is enough for me... When I first started out in satworld I tried to fiddle with all kinds of settings on the Lemon. It's far more intuitive than that, more like choosing items from a preselected computer list. For professionals there is evidently a PC link available. Otherwise, the software can clearly update itself off the satellite. The remote is tiny and not very obvious to use. The on-off button is top right whereas on my other seven remote controls it is top left. Also, the escape/cancel/return button is not to the "SE" of the OK button but rather isolated, a long way away, all by itself, "due south" - a long way away, rather in the sense in which Ascension Island is due south from London. I am led to believe that a particular advantage of my Lemon is its capacity to take "pay TV" cards in adaptors called "CAMs" about the size of an office COTAG card. In fact, there's not much at all in the way of features at the front of the unit other than on/off, channel up/down and two slots for CAMs. And before you say "oh well, that's OK, I'm not going to need pay TV" bear in mind that many national broadcasters (with the honourable exception of Germany currently) scramble their transmissions as a matter of course. so this Lemon looks like a good choice if you want to see Dutch Sesame Street... Overall, good picture, lots of selection out of lists, can use pay TV...a good entry-level receiver.

Devon on September 9th, 2006
This Lemon 030CI receiver is a nice little 240 / 12 volt unit, and is very very clever, although first impressions may show it to be a little basic. It is extremely fast on channel change and scanning, it does not duplicate channels when searching the same satellite multiple times, unlike almost all other receivers which duplicate all channel every time you search a satellite, it has a very good tuner, wicked favourite menu capabaility with 10 user namable lists of 100 channels each. Loads of editing software available and also good audio quality and capabilities with optical and coaxial digital output as well as phono and twin scarts and also a uhf modulator. The Lemon can be set to come onto a channel automatically after power up. Menus are comprehensive but easy to follow. Little known fact is that this receiver is one of only a couple that have the interactive software needed to watch Premiere sport Portal, with a valid subscription of course. This receiver got good reviews in Tele Satellite magazine, and is good for anoraks as well as beginners. The down side is basic 16 colour on screen graphics, a default option in the first page of the menus and also the unit gets quit hot if smothered inside a cabinet too much. We have sold over 600 units so far and have NOT had one single failure, the big down side is that this model is now discontinued by Lemon/Inverto/FTA and is to be replaced with more main stream basic types, aint that always the case