New Tektronix TBS2000 oscilloscopes

[Hydrawerk]

If someone can name one new feature in the new TBS2000 oscilloscope which wasn't already present in all entry-level DSO scopes for the past 3-5 years?

That 20Mpoints memory with search and mark capability (in future firmware release) is not common. Active probe support is very uncommon among low-cost scopes.

[Hydrawerk]

It is funny how all other scopes in comparison sheets have 1GS per channel (at least stated by Tektronix guys) and only TBS2000 has 500MS per channel. The ADCs are apparently expensive even in 2016. Come on, even TDS210 has 1GS  per channel.

[Hydrawerk]

Strange, but well, why not.  At least there is fine vertical setting. Not like GW Instek with no such feature.

[pascal_sweden]

Deep memory has been in Rigol and Siglent for several years now. Not considered as a new feature.

Search and mark are only two buttons for now. Any scope manufacturer can put these 2 buttons on their front panel. Even Rigol and Siglent can support this feature eventually. Not considered as a new feature.

Active probe is more like a luxury thing. It is not needed for education purpose. In fact it would be better to have a passive probe, so that the students can learn about the probe settings. Not considered as a new feature, as it is a well known feature on high-end scopes. It is a nice to have, but not a must have, especially compared with the other things that would be more useful in this scope (higher bandwidth, higher sampling rate, intensity grading, decoder options, isolated front-end).

When I was talking about a new feature, I meant a real innovation. Basically I am looking for a reason of existence for this new scope, and without any groundbreaking new feature, there simply is no reason!

[Hydrawerk]

That teaching capabilities with WiFi are quite new, but not needed IMHO. For school I want real scopes that are used in industry, like HP 54600, Tek TDS2000, DSOX2000 or DSOX3000.

[tautech]

That teaching capabilities with WiFi are quite new, but not needed IMHO. For school I want real scopes that are used in industry, like HP 54600, Tek TDS2000, DSOX2000 or DSOX3000.

So do the instructors but they don't get the budgets and have to make do with what's affordable.

[linearphase]

It is funny how all other scopes in comparison sheets have 1GS per channel (at least stated by Tektronix guys) and only TBS2000 has 500MS per channel. The ADCs are apparently expensive even in 2016. Come on, even TDS210 has 1GS  per channel.

I'm beginning to sound like a bigot here:

May be so but in fact faster A to D's little other than add noise and loss of accuracy in a 100 MHz scope. Reasons are:

1. This scope uses good sinx/x interpolation that requires 2.5 sample per cycle to reproduce a sine wave with no more than a 5% envelope error. This means the the DIGITAL STORAGE BANDWIDTH is 500/2.5 or 200 MHZ.
2. The scope on the other hand has only a 100MHz (analog ) bandwidth so it has plenty of samples to accurately reconstruct the waveform. In fact this sample rate would support 200MHz analog  BW.
3. In fact the four channel version of the scope can do 1GS/s on 2 channels. but this is irrelevant with 100 MHz analog bandwidth.
4. At any given price point faster A to D's are noisier, have poorer dynamic accuracy (less effective bits) and generate more heat which often times means adding a noisy fan.

Lessons:

Engineering is a trade off. In the case of a scope a series of complicated and none obvious trade offs.

Comparison sheets by ANY manufacturer are generally crap and obviously biased. Make your own. compare only those specs that are important to you.

Ask the manufacturer of the scope why you should buy his scope. Filter this input based on your experience with the individual you are talking to. Do they know what they are talking about? Have they ever lied or misrepresented a product? Many reps simply just echo what they are told by the manufacturer.

The devil is in the details. If you can not or do not want to compare ever spec in a spec sheet (and even then only a couple of manufacturers guarantee their specs) then you will have difficultly making real comparisons between various scopes. This is not intended to belittle anyone. I know of only a few customers who ever did this in a valid way.






 

[mikeselectricstuff]

The update rate is 10000 times per second. The controls look lively in the demo. It DOES have variable persistence. See the spec sheet. VP is a DISPLAY mode, not an acquisition mode. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder but the handle is normally flipped down when the scope is in use. Then it matches the case. But seriously do we choose a scope by how it looks?

Guys why do we beat equipment up before we know the facts? The website seems to be barely working I know but give it a chance.

VP is not necessarily the same as intensity grading. I see no reference to any intensity control in the UM
AFAICS the 10kwfm/sec is ONLY used to do peak-detect and high-res acquisition modes ( the manual states the latter is not actually implemented yet, p.42).
I see no evidence anywhere of a proper analogue-like intensity-graded display.

[mikeselectricstuff]

If someone can name one new feature in the new TBS2000 oscilloscope which wasn't already present in all entry-level DSO scopes for the past 3-5 years?

er, wifi.... because everyone needs wifi on a piece of kit that lives on a bench, obviously....

[pascal_sweden]

In fact, those overpriced oscilloscopes targeted for education are neither used in the industry, and are neither used by hobbyists. So you learn to work with a scope that is not used by anybody else except instructors. Not very good IMO!

They should use oscilloscopes in the labs, which are used in the industry, or at least which are used by many people. In that case, putting a Rigol DS2000A or a Siglent SDS2000X in the university lab wouldn't be such a bad idea at all. Hardware wise it outperforms the Tektronix education line with several miles, and it is used by many people.

[David Hess]

1400 Euros for 70Mhz, 2-channel 'scope with very basic features... and people are salivating?

Just because it says "Tektronix" on it?

I don't get it. 

Yep, and the RMS measurements can probably be trusted too. 

And its sampling jitter, AC trigger coupling, and ground signal coupling can probably be trusted.

[tautech]

In fact, those overpriced oscilloscopes targeted for education are neither used in the industry, and are neither used by hobbyists. So you learn to work with a scope that is not used by anybody else except instructors. Not very good IMO!

They should use oscilloscopes in the labs, which are used in the industry, or at least which are used by many people. In that case, putting a Rigol DS2000A or a Siglent SDS2000X in the university lab wouldn't be such a bad idea at all. Hardware wise it outperforms the Tektronix education line with several miles, and it is used by many people.

Do you know what students attempt to do to scopes?

No this Tek and similar spec'ed scopes are quite appropriate for the scope teaching lab and I quite see the benefit in today's electronics learning environment of the increased memory depth in these Teks.

[Hydrawerk]

Not sure if Rigol DS2000A or a Siglent SDS2000X survive a 8 hour use per day. I have never seen an erratic knob on a Tek at my university. There were some cracked knobs on few 54600 scopes, well, after some 15-20 years after manufacture.

[David Hess]

So definitely no intensity display then - pathetic, just pathetic. 20M record length is pretty pointless without it.
If that's the best Tek can do years after what KS and Rigol have been doing, it looks like they've pretty much given up trying. I'd be highly surprised if this wasn't a re-badge job from one of the Chinese companies.

Designing an oscilloscope with a long acquisition memory may now be cheaper do to increasing integration than designing one with dual timebases and triggers to support dual timebase delayed acquisitions.  Except for FFTs and special applications, that makes a long acquisition memory the budget option.

My preference would be to have both but budget oscilloscopes do not.

[tautech]

Not sure if Rigol DS2000A or a Siglent SDS2000X survive a 8 hour use per day. I have never seen an erratic knob on a Tek at my university. There were some cracked knobs on few 54600 scopes, well, after some 15-20 years after manufacture.

Until you try one you will never know. 

[linearphase]

MIkeselectricstuff- You are correct they are different. However, every TEK scope that I know of since they invented Digital Phosphor has had intensity grading. I have no reason to assume this one will differ. However, only a handful of non TEK scopes have a hardware implementation of color grading. Even that is only available on the high end models. Most do grading in software which is far inferior in performance. The intensity knob merely an adjustment of  how the various colors get mapped to the screen. This can automatic or user adjustable via a knob or a soft menu. The panel is already quite crowded.

Remember this scope was just introduced today. Much of the material on the web was prematurely released by anxious distributors.  I have already found many links that are broken or that lead to the wrong documents. More importantly TEK has a history of rolling out software upgrades that add features for the first couple of years of a product's life.

If history holds, what you see today is not what you ultimately will get, it is significantly less.

[tautech]

That's why I was saying that they have to make a 4 channel oscilloscope with an isolated front-end AND with a deep memory! For some reason, no manufacturer can realize that configuration!

And why? think back to the discussion in the thread "What is missing in the marketplace".
In order to get the analog data across the isolation barrier there are speed bottlenecks.

[pascal_sweden]

That's why I was saying that they have to make a 4 channel oscilloscope with an isolated front-end AND with a deep memory! For some reason, no manufacturer can realize that configuration!

And why? think back to the discussion in the thread "What is missing in the marketplace".
In order to get the analog data across the isolation barrier there are speed bottlenecks.

If it needs to survive students, it better has an isolated front-end!
That's why I was saying that they have to make a 4 channel oscilloscope with 1) an isolated front-end and 2) with a deep memory! For some reason, no manufacturer can realize that configuration!

Speed bottlenecks are no argument, as the Tektronix TPS2024B can go up to 200 MHz.
It would be the perfect scope, if it only had deep memory!

Instead of reinventing an underdimensioned ugly looking oscilloscope, Tektronix should have improved the TPS2024B oscilloscope, and give it a deeper memory. End of story!

I think that we can compare Tektronix with Nokia and Motorola. First they were innovators, then they started to become second followers, then they became "we suck the least", and now they are surpassed by many others. It's because of their "we think, we are the best" and their "refusal to face the facts" ostrich policy.

[tautech]

That's why I was saying that they have to make a 4 channel oscilloscope with an isolated front-end AND with a deep memory! For some reason, no manufacturer can realize that configuration!

And why? think back to the discussion in the thread "What is missing in the marketplace".
In order to get the analog data across the isolation barrier there are speed bottlenecks.

Speed bottlenecks are no argument, as the Tektronix TPS2024B can go up to 200 MHz.
It would be the perfect scope, if it only had deep memory!

You don't get it do you?
It takes time to fill memory depth, the more memory the more time so this affects the max sampling rate that can effectively be used deep memory and isolated front ends.

Tradeoffs, always tradeoffs.

[dr.diesel]

That might be the worst introduction video I've ever seen as well.

[pascal_sweden]

It is funny how all other scopes in comparison sheets have 1GS per channel (at least stated by Tektronix guys) and only TBS2000 has 500MS per channel. The ADCs are apparently expensive even in 2016. Come on, even TDS210 has 1GS  per channel.

And they deliberately compare it with the older GW-Instek GDS2000A, instead of the newer GW-Instek GDS2000E.

[jjoonathan]

That's why I was saying that they have to make a 4 channel oscilloscope with an isolated front-end AND with a deep memory! For some reason, no manufacturer can realize that configuration!

And why? think back to the discussion in the thread "What is missing in the marketplace".
In order to get the analog data across the isolation barrier there are speed bottlenecks.

You seem awfully sure of this. Is that because you are familiar with the fiber optic options and their price points? Or because you aren't? I haven't spent enough time shopping to have an opinion of my own, but even if I were sure that there was nothing on the market at an appropriate price point, I wouldn't make bets on 6 months from now.

[tautech]

That's why I was saying that they have to make a 4 channel oscilloscope with an isolated front-end AND with a deep memory! For some reason, no manufacturer can realize that configuration!

And why? think back to the discussion in the thread "What is missing in the marketplace".
In order to get the analog data across the isolation barrier there are speed bottlenecks.

You seem awfully sure of this. Is that because you are familiar with the fiber optic options and their price points or because you aren't familiar with them and are repeating old knowledge?

I'm only familiar with the current use of opto isolation for isolated front ends and a fibre optic solution may offer a better solution. 

[nctnico]

There is definitely gear out there which is isolated but those are more geared towards data acquisition and not so much bench top oscilloscopes. One of the projects I'm working on is a data acquisition unit for use in high power HV labs. Even when sitting on the (mains powered) wireless charging station it has a (IIRC) 30kV isolation to ground.

[Someone]

If they want to take the lead, they should come up with a cheap and affordable 4-channel 100 MHz scope with a deep memory and where ALL 4 channels would be isolated. Many universities would buy these scopes for their Power Electronics labs. None of these big companies has real guts to pull of an affordable 4-channel isolated scope!

If someone can name one new feature in the new TBS2000 oscilloscope which wasn't already present in all entry-level DSO scopes for the past 3-5 years?

You sure are making a lot of noise without actually checking the details. They specify a CMRR for the channels, separately to crosstalk, and the manual has:

Two ratings are important to know and understand:
The maximum measurement voltage from the probe tip to the probe reference lead
The maximum floating voltage from the probe reference lead to earth ground

But these specifications are missing from the available documents at the moment. Its entirely possible the scope has floating inputs and discusses using a probe across a resistor to measure currents (with probe settings to read directly in amperes).

Other interesting features (promised for the future) are the 16 bit high-res mode when most competitors only go to 12 bit (or less).