Sagem Picnic Box Manual

kah22

Hi Guy I've just taken delivery of a new Sagem IDT81 (picnic box) main reason is to get RTE digitally and I'm receiving that digital signal very well indeed.

The but is Curry's didn't include a manual. I've been onto customer support and they've contacted their head office asking them to send me out one, but I'm assuming that is going to take at least a week, if not longer. I'v done a search on Google but can't find an online version anyone got a digital version that they could email me, I really would be grateful

Any advice on ordering the channels would be helpful e.g. RTE appears away down at the bottom of the list, I'd like to take it up near the top but I can't figure out how to select and move. Any ideas?

You can contact me at hartk10 at yahoo.co.uk

Bogger77

I got one of these boxes at home, but from memory there's no way to change the order of the channels. I think it's because of sky's involvement in box design, they've tried to create a sky box for DTT.
I wont have access to the manual til after the weekend.

kah22

Can you set up a favourites and list something like BBC1, 2, UTV, Ch 4, Ch 5, RTE 1, RTE 2, TV3 TnaG and then whatever else after that.

As I said above no manual so I'm stumbling in the dark

Darth Maul

Yeah setup a favorites list and include all channels including the test channel or else it will revert to the default channel list when you scroll past the last channel.

The manual is useless,
to set favorites go to the menu and favorite lists. go to favorites b and add all the channels you in the order you want. back out set it as default, job done

TVDX

Once you have scanned in the channels and are viewing a channel, simply press the - program button instead of the + and it will scroll through the channels in the right order while in TV mode.

kah22

I'm quite sure that this board is well aware by now of how the Sagem IDT81-SD picnic box freezes on a very regular basis. Now I have to ask myself the question is this because of the box design OR is it because of the signal strength.

I asked a question about why the box freezes on another forum and received the following reply:

Some boxes have very different sensitivities and the signal strength needs to be at a 50% minima for stable pictures.

Anything significantly lower will result in freezes and lockups. You might be able to boost the signal with an aerial amplifier but if you want to get one make sure it is a variable gain version - start at 1x and increase slowly whilst monitoring the levels to see if it helps.

my signal strength is coming in at between 22 percent and 39 percent while my signal quality gives a reading of 98 percent, which seems quite impressive. So is it the box or a design fault.

Just before writing this message my box froze while I was doing some channel hopping: no sound, no vision. I left it alone for the fifteen or so minutes that it took me to put this post together and still it hasn't moved

TVDX you wrote: simply press the - program button instead of the +

Silly question I know but which is the program button, there is none marked as such on my remote, and remember I haven't got the manual

Many thanks
Kevin

polyfusion

The program + and - buttons are the P+ and P- buttons respectively, for changing the channels.

My box hasn't frozen at all; I was using it last night with "rabbits ears", and the signal was very low, like 18% on the top bar and maybe about 45% on the bottom bar, but the picture was fine; only when the dog moved close to the aerial would it begin to break up.

The only glitchy thing I've noticed is that sometimes (1 out of 5 times perhaps) when in EPG, the picture stays small while the text disappears. Going back into and out of EPG usually fixes that.

Did you get a manual in the end? I can put together a scan if you still need one.

Tough times

I've one of these boxes and it works fine except when I turn the station over. It takes up to 20 seconds for the picture to settle. There's a breakup of picture. After that it's generally fine.

Signal strength is over 50% most of the time.

Sam Russell

I have one of these and if it is left on for a long time, then I get picture break up. It is proberbly overheating. The box is cheaply made plactic with inadequate cooling (like none) and the underside gets hot.

There is a definite fault with the logic. If you press the top left hand button to force Scart selection, it puts on the 'mute', which then has to be reset.

It needs a software upgrade, which is unlikely to happen.