Question 1:
How good does the Siglent's decoding work? Does it show ASCII characters with recent firmware, or do you just get the HEX values?
Am I correct that the Rigol can either show ASCII or HEX?
This is something important for me, as I definitly want to do some serial sniffing (yes, I do have a cheap Logic Analyzer, but I want to do it with an MSO to be able to see the waveform, too).
Question 2:
If I would have specified on the first post that I only be needing 2 channels, would the technical answer be in favour of the Siglent (which is what I am assuming at this point)? I don't care about marketing strategies, etc. I care about serious bugs, limitations, etc.
Question 3:
This has been asked so many times, I read all I could about it and still I am not sure: how many of you *really* need 4 channels? What *exactly* are you measuring when using 4 simultaneous channels? I cannot come up with a single requirement of mine for that. And yes, as mentioned, I have a small cheap LA if I wanted to analyse many lines. If I would be doubtfull of the waveform, wouldn't it make sense to monitor each one individually?
This question goes on: if people say "go for the 4 channel, you never know if you need them", I then ask: "wouldn't it be better to get a 8 channel DSO? - one never knows...". Am I being silly and 4 channel is really what everyone needs?
And finally: how usefull is the 4 channel DS1054Z, when the sample rate gets divided by the 4 simultaneous channels? It's not like ou will be measuring a 50MHz signal on 4 separate channels at once?
Sorry if these seem lame questions, but it seems everytime one asks these qustions, the thread ends up in a Rigol vs Siglent flame war, which does not help anyone. Right now, I am so in middle of both, I have each DSO sitting on the respective online cart, waiting to make up my mind.
Cheers,
Vitor