Mike22 has made a good suggestion. Lets have a thread dedicated exclusively to LNBs
First up, I'll say this. Like most things in life - size matters. If you want better reception, get a bigger dish (assuming your alignment is already spot-on of course!)
Getting a bigger LNB won't make a blind bit of difference, however...
Spend your money on dishes - not LNBs. Once you've gone as large as you can on the old parabolic front,
then start throwing cash at LNBs. The relative
value for money gains are nearly always going to favour a dish upgrade until you get up around the 1.5m mark. Beyond that, this rule starts to break down, as dish manufacturing costs start to leap up exponentially.
Back to the pointy bit. Any old LNB will actually get the job done, right?
Yes, generally it will if it's of the modern 'Universal' type. There's a lot of snobbery surrounding LNBs in my experience. The £2.99 job from Lidl does a perfectly good job and will probably give years of fault-free service on 28E, 19E, 13E etc. Don't waste your money on fancy outdoor kit if this is all you want - if your receiver can lock a signal, then that's just fine and dandy.
As a sidenote, you should also be aware that LNBs used on the ubiquitous Sky minidishes are optimised for 28E, and also for the wider-than-tall elliptical dish face configuration. Don't mix and match with regular LNBs even if you can find a mating adaptor to suit. Unless you really need to, that is 
If you're going to get serious about satellite TV reception (maybe you want to motorise?) - then think on.
Let's say you just bought the largest dish your marriage can withstand and the arguments and sulks have calmed down to the point where you feel it's safe to re-enter the lounge with the remote control. You spend hours poring over every channel on every satellite. This is a hobby. It's not necessarily about watching TV any more - scanning the skies has become fun...
Or maybe you're an ex-pat and well out of your homeland's satellite TV footprint?
Whatever the situation, you demand more from your setup, you've exhausted the possibilities of larger dishes and you have money to spend on an LNB.
Of course, getting a half decent LNB in the first place may have saved you a few quid and a trip up the ladder, but entry level LNBs are cheap nowadays. It won't really hurt anyone's pocket to retire an LNB that cost five quid, and anyway - ladder-climbing is good exercise.
The price of actually buying a replacement can be more significant though. Talking first about low-to-mid range LNBs, there are a myriad of LNBs in this price bracket - i.e. around £5 to £15. Nobody is going to spend hours discussing the merits of 'Lidl' LNBs. They work. When that ceases to be the case, throw it away and buy another. Some LNBs in the sub-£20 price range are actually pretty good though, and warrant plenty of discussion. This is the price band where most hobbyists will be looking for an LNB, and consequently where they'll be faced with the widest choice.
The trouble is, most enthusiasts don't really have the test equipment to accurately measure the performance of LNBs, let alone compare them properly. 'Tests' tend to be pretty hit and miss affairs, none under laboratory conditions and most being largely subjective. OK, that's fine. We just have to accept that's what we've got to work with.
But remember this: there isn't
going to be a de facto performance table. One set of test results or experiences is unlikely to compare directly with another. Eliminating variables in the test rig is important - even if you are comparing results on the same dish. Conversely, comparing results with a mate who has a different dish on the other side of the world is going to throw several large spanners in the works.
LNBs have many different properties. They're not simply a signal funnel. LNBs 'illuminate' the dish face - in much the same way as a torch would if clamped in the LNB holder of your dish. The size and shape of this illuminated area will vary between makes and models. It ideally needs to match that of the dish face. The waveguide in the throat of the feed will have a significant effect on the quality and quantity of the signal that winds up travelling down your coax. Local Oscillators will vary in quality and stability, cross-polar isolation will vary, as will the properties of different outputs on twins and quads... and so it goes on. You can even get these variations within the same batch of LNBs from the same manufacturer!
I guess what I'm ultimately saying is that there is no proven winner or loser. No point getting up on your soapbox and shouting down the opposition. You can't mail order the seventh best LNB in the world for £14.95. You
can however assimilate the experiences of others and make an educated guess as to what will work well for you. At the end of the day, if you're the obsessive type, you will
still end up buying and trying all the most likely candidates for your setup. Only then will you really know the score!
You should also understand that the specifications quoted by manufacturers can be extremely misleading. Frequency ranges and LO frequencies, fine. No problem with basic stuff like that. Noise figures though are a source of much confusion and indeed irritation to those that have any idea about what they mean in real terms. Anything under 0.6dB is good. 0.3dB might actually give you a marginal improvement, but figures lower than than are a con. That's not to say that the LNBs might not be better than those with higher noise figures, but it certainly won't be anything to do with the noise figure itself! Don't be fooled. A 0.1dB LNB doesn't produce any less noise than a 0.2dB LNB in the real world. Unless you live at 0 kelvin, or on Venus.
Top LNBs will start to hurt your pocket. £50 or even £100 will buy you an LNB that will not only get you that elusive transponder, but may have your Mrs. pin you by the throat to the dining room wall with her right hand whilst waving a Barclaycard bill furiously in your face with her left.
Only consider spending this sort of money once you've decided you need to squeeze every last ounce of performance from your setup. You may find that your receiver/tuner is a more cost effective upgrade path than your LNB at this point.
Right, that's enough waffle from me. If you have anything to say about LNBs, their relative merits, or how they have performed for you - let us know here. Try to be as objective as you can, and provide as much supporting information as possible.
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