Triax MPEG-4 DTT Receiver & HD Satellite and SD DTT MPEG 4 Combi Receiver

Tony

Just spoke with the guys in Armstrongs who say the Saorview certification is held up with software issues.

watty

That's the advantage of certification. You can't be 100% sure for future simply using off air signal or reading the specs and ticking the boxes. Teracom actually verify compliance.

There is always a small risk with non-certified products, even when they "tick all the boxes".

Sam Russell

Yes that is true, but certification requires compliance with all issues, however trivial. For example, the detection of the signal strength needs to be displayed in a particular way that in no way effects the day to day operation of the unit.

I think that RTE NL should work towards self-certification as any modification of a unit would require re-certification. In other words, every new model needs a new certificate. Surely, once a company has certified a product, it is able to self-certify compliance.

It is a system that is not over-worked by the manufacturers. They appear to be happy to ignore the whole Saorview process.

watty

Well given the "false starts" to Irish Digital since 1999 and number of False start dates due to STUPID PayTV process from 2007 to 2010, I can understand that.

Philips appears to think we still using 2001 spec and not Nov 2008/Feb 2008 spec. (MHP rather than MHEG5).

I'm afraid self certification is a bit of a non-starter. Perdition is that way.

Tony

Sam Russell wrote: »

I think that RTE NL should work towards self-certification as any modification of a unit would require re-certification.

RTE ruled this out when I met with them.

Sam Russell

Tony wrote: »

RTE ruled this out when I met with them.

Any reason?

Tony

Sam Russell wrote: »

Any reason?

They said they did not want to go that way becuse of others experience but to be honest I did not understand the logic.

Between 20K saorview certifiction fee and triax limiting the wholesale chain I don't have too much faith in the marketing logic going on here to be brutally honest. Triax box costing 60% more wholesale than the ferguson combo makes no commercial sense at all if growing the market is the object.

STB

Tony wrote: »

They said they did not want to go that way becuse of others experience but to be honest I did not understand the logic.

Between 20K saorview certifiction fee and triax limiting the wholesale chain I don't have too much faith in the marketing logic going on here to be brutally honest. Triax box costing 60% more wholesale than the ferguson combo makes no commercial sense at all if growing the market is the object.

And you are right if you want to ship lots of units you dont control distribution, unless of course you are trying to control the price. Well the product isnt certified as yet so there is no controlling factor.

Just looking into this area of MHEG5 bundling. I have come across a box that is widespread on the satellite market for all the wrong reasons (yes one of those boxes that thinks its your birthday) retailing for €90. Its being cloned to death. However the original manufacturers have a new Twin PVR version of it which has a modular approach to tuners and is based on the ST 7105 chipset, oh yeah it does MHEG5.

watty

Once you bother to figure out MHEG5, it's a zero cost.

Guessing:
I'd say teracom was picked when someone was sure Boxer was it for payTV. There are much cheaper certification labs. Sadly people can't be trusted to self-certify.

Sam Russell

Tony wrote: »

They said they did not want to go that way becuse of others experience but to be honest I did not understand the logic.

There is no logic if they are insisting that every iteration of a design must be re-certified. Take Sony, they produce a range of TVs, do all need seperate certification? Oh, what a surprise, no Sony TVs have been certified.

If the requirement was that a representative product was certified, and then the manufacturer could self-certify products after that. In other words, having cleard the jump, he knows what is involved. He then applies his new found knowledge to his complete range. Most products in a range are based on the same chassis and firmware with modifications where necessary. The following year's products are developments of this years. That is the way the business works.

It is ridiculous to expect manufacturers to go along with this nonsense.

Apogee

STB wrote: »

Just looking into this area of MHEG5 bundling. I have come across a box that is widespread on the satellite market for all the wrong reasons (yes one of those boxes that thinks its your birthday) retailing for €90. Its being cloned to death. However the original manufacturers have a new Twin PVR version of it which has a modular approach to tuners and is based on the ST 7105 chipset, oh yeah it does MHEG5.

Does this box have a name or is it the fourth secret of Fatima?

byte

Apogee wrote: »

Does this box have a name or is it the fourth secret of Fatima?

I assume it's some Dreambox model? *shrug*

liamtech

Does the new triax support BBC Red Button Features through satellite - being MHEG5 one would assume it does - But my mother always warned me about assumption being the mother of all **** ***!

I just think potential users should know all of the facts and features, which are currently unknown

Tony

Since its a Freesat feature would this not be unlikely unless they find some way of making it work with an internet derived EPG?

liamtech wrote: »

Does the new triax support BBC Red Button Features through satellite - being MHEG5 one would assume it does

STB

Apogee wrote: »

Does this box have a name or is it the fourth secret of Fatima?

Ahh theres interest. Such a drama queen, I know.

Interesting thing. 2 models under this name on the market. One has an Ali chipset (the one that is all over European/British websites under a variety of names including Openbox S9 but with single tuner and aimed at c/s clientele).

The other (this one) from the original OEM has the ST 7105 and is the new PVR twin tuner version. Because the other one is so rampant, its difficult to get your hand on this one, mind you its only new.

Some of the components dont inspire confidence. Infact they look like they might burn your house down, but you asked...... I dont have a price yet. Anorak Warning: Contains pictures of insides of box and modules etc.

http://openbox.ua/receivers/s9/

I've a list of new linux boxes coming out - many you may have seen before but which are now being released under new names with available modules (wifi etc). I'll post them in a new thread, there are a good few.

watty

Tony wrote: »

Since its a Freesat feature would this not be unlikely unless they find some way of making it work with an internet derived EPG?

I've heard that the red button is independent of Freesat EPG, because it's MHEG5.

Anyone with Sat card in Win7 PC care to comment?

watty

Unless it can take a Dual Tuner USB stick for DTT, it's not a full DTT/Sat PVR solution.


2 x PCI DVB-S2 S3200 Technotrend and 2x DTT in a single USB Stick on PC.

Gerry Wicklow

watty wrote: »

I've heard that the red button is independent of Freesat EPG, because it's MHEG5.

Anyone with Sat card in Win7 PC care to comment?

On my hybrid FreeView / FTA satellite Win7 setup the coloured buttons are only available on DTT and function perfectly. (MHEG5 text and ch301 content)

liamtech

The 537 does function with BBC interactive services - but thus far only with their textual services - the multi-screen options are as of yet inaccessible - i received confirmation when a friend got one of these boxes this morning - i dropped over to see it in action - VERY IMPRESSIVE - Might actually be worth the money - The menu system is extremely freesat like - down to the way it scans channels, and the layout - id say a few firmware updates from now and who knows!

Hopefully he will send me some pictures and i will post them

The fact that his multiscreen options are not working does not mean they wont work for everyone - i notcied the signal quality and strength of 12441V was very low from his satellite dish - I also noticed previously on my freesat box that in times of severe weather multiscreen use became unstable - And there are 48kmh winds today

Antenna

STB wrote: »

can be used to daisy chain to another satellite box and only then would you be able to watch the same transponder.

More than just the same transponder - other transponders of the same polarisation and same (either High or Low) section of band. That's approx 25% probability.
For example with the first receiver on Channel 4, you will have some BBC1 regions working (such as BBC1 London) but not others (such as BBC1 NI) on the second (chained) receiver

http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html

Antenna

STB wrote: »

Kilkenny
Okay go to the dvb-t tuner and manual scan channel 52.

Mt Leinster, which is what would be covering Kilkenny city is not on 52. I assume its still on Ch 45.
You're thinking of a transmitter which is in south County Kilkenny listed on 52 for DTT to cover Carrick-on-Suir etc. But it doesn't cover the whole county of Kilkenny as well.

Winters

liamtech wrote: »

The 537 does function with BBC interactive services - but thus far only with their textual services - the multi-screen options are as of yet inaccessible - i received confirmation when a friend got one of these boxes this morning - i dropped over to see it in action - VERY IMPRESSIVE - Might actually be worth the money - The menu system is extremely freesat like - down to the way it scans channels, and the layout - id say a few firmware updates from now and who knows!

Hopefully he will send me some pictures and i will post them

The fact that his multiscreen options are not working does not mean they wont work for everyone - i notcied the signal quality and strength of 12441V was very low from his satellite dish - I also noticed previously on my freesat box that in times of severe weather multiscreen use became unstable - And there are 48kmh winds today

Here is a picture of BBC text running earlier that I took. It wont show the video streams like my Sky box does but these can be tuned in separately anyway.

Only thing I can't figure out at the moment is how to re-arrange the channels. Somewhat annoying having the ones I use regularly all scattered about even after deleting a load of the channels which prove to be nothing more than a waste of transponders on the astra satellites. Going to check out the pvr this evening once I finish cleaning up space on a spare hard drive.

Mayo Exile

liamtech wrote: »

The 537 does function with BBC interactive services - but thus far only with their textual services - the multi-screen options are as of yet inaccessible - i received confirmation when a friend got one of these boxes this morning - i dropped over to see it in action - VERY IMPRESSIVE - Might actually be worth the money - The menu system is extremely freesat like - down to the way it scans channels, and the layout - id say a few firmware updates from now and who knows!

Hopefully he will send me some pictures and i will post them

The fact that his multiscreen options are not working does not mean they wont work for everyone - i notcied the signal quality and strength of 12441V was very low from his satellite dish - I also noticed previously on my freesat box that in times of severe weather multiscreen use became unstable - And there are 48kmh winds today

Could/can you manually tune in these BBC multi-screens and store them in as separate channels on this box using the VPID/APID numbers available on websites such as Lyngsat I wonder?

watty

I wonder why the Text application works and the "button" application doesn't?

None to check on Saorview yet unfortunately. Pity they don't have a simple demo or game. There are plenty of free MHEG5 game demos they could stick on on the Carousel.

watty

Mayo Exile wrote: »

Could/can you manually tune in these BBC multi-screens and store them in as separate channels on this box using the VPID/APID numbers available on websites such as Lyngsat I wonder?

I imagine they appear as Stream1 .. Stream6 etc. They do on DVBviewer, ProgDVB and every Setbox I've ever set up on an automatic scan.

The problem is dual, quad and hex stream frames where the MHEG5 takes one part of frame an shows it either full screen, PIP or embedded in text at correct shape.

BBC are planning on increasing interactive content.

Maybe there will be software update.

Apogee

watty wrote: »

I wonder why the Text application works and the "button" application doesn't?

Perhaps because the 'red button' application redirects to the streams which are identified specially in the Sky/Freesat EPG and the MHEG5 app can't readily identify those streams on a FTA box?

ISTR it took the BBC quite a bit of time to implement the multiscreen red button on the Freesat boxes, long after they were initially launched.

watty

That's as good an explanation, actually best I've heard.

I can't get my head round a solution to that without it essentially being a Freesat box, seeing as I don't even know how an MHEG5 app identifies a video/audio stream even on plain vanilla DVB.

liamtech

It seems like a fine digital box- according to my pal the menu system is a bit annoying- the channels are completely out of order with no way to move, edit or rename them - All one can do is delete channels - Havent found a solution for him yet -

In short the 537 has many benefits of freesat - but some of the hindrance too - such as being incapable of moving channels in the guide -

Most curiously he reports the unit does not pick up the BBC feeds discussed above?!?! The only boxes im aware of that have this issue are freesat boxes - this only serves to reinforce the idea that this box is a freesat box in all but name!!!

STB

Antenna wrote: »

More than just the same transponder - other transponders of the same polarisation and same (either High or Low) section of band. That's approx 25% probability.
For example with the first receiver on Channel 4, you will have some BBC1 regions working (such as BBC1 London) but not others (such as BBC1 NI) on the second (chained) receiver

http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html

Em - Most people operate favourite channel lists and dont have the whole of Astra's satellite regional results in their pruned list. I know this because I have went through a lot of satellite/combo boxes and know their limitations. The litmus test is for which is when it comes to recording on a single tuner dvb-s2/combo box and what you can watch whilst recording, which diaplays channels on the same transponder only, normally 3-5 channels. The very same principle for the very same limitational reasons. And never ITV/Ch 4 and BBC.

Antenna wrote: »

Mt Leinster, which is what would be covering Kilkenny city is not on 52. I assume its still on Ch 45.

You're thinking of a transmitter which is in south County Kilkenny listed on 52 for DTT to cover Carrick-on-Suir etc. But it doesn't cover the whole county of Kilkenny as well.

And I keep making that mistake. Your absolutely right, Mt Leinster to the east is covering Kilkenny City, on 45 not Suir Valley which is on 52. Cheers.

Mayo Exile

watty wrote: »

I imagine they appear as Stream1 .. Stream6 etc. They do on DVBviewer, ProgDVB and every Setbox I've ever set up on an automatic scan.

The problem is dual, quad and hex stream frames where the MHEG5 takes one part of frame an shows it either full screen, PIP or embedded in text at correct shape.

BBC are planning on increasing interactive content.

Maybe there will be software update.

Cheers watty. Was thinking of this as I stored the BBC streams at 12.441V (stream 3 0 etc) as individual channels on a Strong FTA receiver using the VPID/APID numbers. Handy way of getting them if you cant access them interactively. 7 streams are available at this frequency.