Dreambox 500s

William Gates

Is it any good and is it easy enough to install? Also, is there a harddrive on it?

watty

It's very appreciated by Hobbyists. I think HDD is option.

Not the friendlyist thing for someone that just wants BBC, ITV etc for all the family (dons asbestos coat and runs).

jhegarty

HD won't work, at least without alot of modification...

Not the box to go for if you want something easy...

kaisersose77

the new small dreambox supports laptop harddrives:

http://www.hm-sat-shop.de/receiver-digital-dreambox/dreambox-dm-600-s-pvr-ready.html

seems to have gone up 40 euros in a month already which is a joke as it doesnt even come with a harddrive at that price.

I remember when the 7000s was just over 300 euros and now look at the price of the newer revisions! The hdtv model 8000s will probably cost at least 800 euros considering how much of a rip off most of the other models are.

cormacl

If you can't understand the following.. then stay clear of the dreambox..

The 600s model is the equivalent that takes an internal hard-drive (2.5" laptop form). The 500s model can only talk to a hard drive over a network interface in the form of an NFS mount or CIFS share (windows).. and at that tends to have very variable results. Ideally, if you want a PVR.. then go for a model that can take a hard drive.

if you stick with the installed factory installed software, then they are like any other receiver... and while the UI of enigma is terrific, that alone is not generally enough justification.

If you install of the popular variant images, (such as Gemini, which seems to have the biggest following), then you can add much more capabilities to the receiver.

Flashing the alternative images onto the receivers requires a NULL modem serial cable to a PC.. you can substitute a USB-serial dongle if your computer doesn't have a serial port. This is a very common method of flashing updates to receivers.

Alternatively however, if you can provide a home LAN or cross-over Ethernet between the receiver and PC, you can flash images very quickly that way.

Knowing UNIX commands would be a great advantage as you may need to login to the box to troubleshoot, reboot etc.

the enhanced capabilities of the Gemini (& equivalent images) include:

* webserver.
letting you control the box remotely, program recordings remotely if you can access your network from say work

* wide selection of card-reading support for pay TV
With the correct soft CAM emulators installed, you can get dreamboxes to read legitimately owned subscription cards from Sky and a whole range of other vendors. With Sky, you cannot get interactive services to work.. just subscription & premium channels.. no box office stuff. Some people argue that this ability to access paid content on a separate platfor gives you the most flexibility because you can view the channels you want in the order you want.. but my opinion is that you end up watching the same **** but just in your desired order!.

* The ability to FTP off recorded material from the receiver.. excellent for DVD burnage if you like to home-record. This can also be done the other way around if say you want to rip DVDs or just download home-videos onto the receiver for quick access.

* Enhanced EPG
Dreamboxes can be made work with xmltv by means of the MV plugin which can be used to upload EPG detail.. excellent for filling in EPG detail for the UK stations (Sky), which only generally show the now and next program. All that achieves of course, is that you can look ahead on the EPG and program your desired selections.

That all said, the 7025 model that I have uses a different approach of providing timer programming via its web interface.. and that has been harnessed by plugins for the Tv-Browser (tvbrowser.org) application.. giving you the ability to download guides for various channels and then program the receiver to record from within Tv-Browser. For some reason, the MV plugin has not been ported to the 7025 and its Tv-Browser approach of programming has not been achieved using the other dreamboxes.. don't know exactly why that is.

* Photo viewers, MP3, games
The images also support the ability to browse photo directories and are handy for slideshows of stuff etc.. you can play mp3s uploaded to the hard-drive, play Internet radio stations etc and upload games.. tetris, sokoban etc.