There is also The List on SatelliteGuys.US. Most users there are North American, with me being probably the only Cuban , lol.

el-cheapo Linear LNB does not tell me anything , with technology like with women I do not care about their names but rather their performance, lol.

Check Noise Figure values , 0.3 t o.5 being the most common but there are 0.2 dB LNB out there and very cheap. That could account for the difference in the 2 LNB's you have , if you use a Spectrum Analizer you will see a higher Noise Floor for the one that has higher N.F. Check Gain also.

There is Circular FTA signals but they are on C Band , mostly east of 61W I guess. The famous Invacom is only usefull for KU and if you also need the circular DN signals for instance. I would not spend extra money on that one for FTA or FTE (Forgot to Encrypt, lol).

I also have a chineese knock off which is basically the exact copy of STAB 90 but with plastic enclousure and probably the gears are not metallic or high quality. It works ok , thought but should not last many years.

The basics of a communication link are the same and even the terrestrial microwave is very close to the C Band Frecuencies so they behave similarly. The antennas used are also a Dish although the modulation squemes are different therefore behave somewhat different , but in general should be easier for you, like it is for me, than for the average user.

BTW , just an update , not even today the Cuban and Spanish Mux showed pixealation but the rest of the TP on the same sat 30W got affected. I guees my link , with the 80 cm Dish , is more than optimal , then eh?. I was expecting than at least today I should have got affected. With close to 11 db C/N and over 80 dbmicroV (36 % quality pre-BER) measured with the Birdog , I guess I could not improve it more, unless I get a bigger Dish. But this is what I meant by reminding you are a microwave engineer, there is a minimum configuration at the lowest possible cost that will work reliably more than 99 % of the time , so why spending more money on "better" equipment then. After all , that is why we are Engineers, not salesmen, no?.