Walker WP95SAT-HD 7 Day EPG

revileandy

Hi folks,

Just reading about this box in a different thread, looks like a shockingly cheap way to get rid of sky.

Can I get the opinions of anyone that uses this box?

What's the EPG like, is it responsive? Good quality info?

Does the record feature work ok?

Any info appreciated,

Cheers,

Andy

zg3409

Basic info here:
http://www.walker.ie/products/WP95SAT-HD.html

WP95SAT-HD

Free To Air Satellite Box
Hd Digital Satellite Receiver
No Subscription Or Monthly Bills
Bbc1 -bbc2- Bbc3- Bbc4
Itv1 -itv2 -itv3 -itv4
5- Bbc Hd- Itv Hd- Ch4 Hd
Hdmi Digital Tv Connection
7 Day On Screen Program Guide
Usb Recorder And Player
Hi-fi Stereo Sound
On Screen Display
Signal Level & Quality Indicator
Infra Red Remote Control
Ready For Rte Satellite
Rte Now Broadcasting Kasat 9e
Installation Service Available
Requires Ka Lnb

---

OK so now the catches:
1) This is not a genuine FreeSat box. This means all the 7 day guide etc may or may not work correctly and things like the red button may or may not work. If some of the features stop working into the future it is unlikely that a "fix" would be released.

2) This is only a single tuner model. If you record something you cannot watch another program at the same time

3) This is not a combo box. Even though it mentions RTE in the spec, in reality for most people you would need a seperate TV aerial and a TV that has Saorview built in. This box will not pick up Saorview even with an aerial. This box is for the UK channels only via Satellite.

4) The front display is Red LED's. These look a bit cheap and are very bright. Channel numbers are listed as 4 digits but generally the first digit always shows zero. E.g. 0101. The FreeSat region is preset to London (meaning you get all the London regional news) but the other regions are available in the 900 range (no way to change this it seems.) Normally a FreeSat box would be setup for the Northern Ireland region to get more local news and weather.

The 7 day guide is quite responsive, especially compared to Saorview digital aertel on some Walker TVs. However each time you put the box into standby it takes about 30 seconds to "init" before it starts working. This is like going back to the good old days of waiting for the TV to warm up!

It has a "non-SatFree" mode to allow viewing of channels that are not on the FreeSAT EPG. Normally channels not on the FreeSAT guide do not provide 7 day EPG. This is normal.

Generally if 7 day guide and recording is important I would recommend a genuine FreeSAT+HD box.
http://www.freesat.co.uk/products/freesat-box-range

The Walker unit is cheaper but only has a single tuner. To record you would also need to purchase a USB hard drive at additional cost. I have not used the recording feature myself and I no longer have access to the box.

If you have been used to Sky then everything else will be a lesser setup.

revileandy

Thanks for the comprehensive response, might be just what I'm looking for.

I'll see if I can get a demo in Powercity.

bulbs2010

there not bad i have installed a good few and had no complaints or service calls

bmm

why is this model saorview approved if it doesn't get the saorview channels?

zg3409

It is not Saorview approved. It is approved for receiving Saorsat, a Satellite based version of Saorview. This service does not carry TV3 or 3E so they recommend it only for people who have got a professional to try get Saorview and failed

Walker SAORSAT Approved set-top-box with satellite tuner

From:
http://www.saorview.ie/product/walker/

bmm

zg3409 wrote: »

It is not Saorview approved. It is approved for receiving Saorsat, a Satellite based version of Saorview. This service does not carry TV3 or 3E so they recommend it only for people who have got a professional to try get Saorview and failed


From:
http://www.saorview.ie/product/walker/

OK, didnt see the "Saorsat" and not much info. on it in the public domain. Is it possible to get a lnb bracket for a standard sky satellite dish to point to "Ka" satelite or would i need another dish?

zg3409

Firstly Saorsat is only recommended to those who cannot get Saorview. A solid dish is recommended, so not a Sky dish. You could get the one dish with 28.2 and 9 East but you would need at least a 90cm solid dish.

Apogee

zg3409 wrote: »

4) The front display is Red LED's. These look a bit cheap and are very bright. Channel numbers are listed as 4 digits but generally the first digit always shows zero. E.g. 0101. The FreeSat region is preset to London (meaning you get all the London regional news) but the other regions are available in the 900 range (no way to change this it seems.) Normally a FreeSat box would be setup for the Northern Ireland region to get more local news and weather.

So essentially the box is behaving just like a Freesat box when in 'Freesat mode' with the channels assigned to fixed numbers which cannot be moved about?

Could you post some photos of the EPG etc?

zg3409

Can't do screenshots. The box is on an island at sea I will probably never be at again...

Yes it takes the freeSat epg. It "steals" it as far as I am aware. When you go into the EPG it gives categories such as movies etc. The channel numbers are the same as FreeSat except there is nowhere to enter postcode and you get london region.

There is a non freesat mode. There was no channels stored on this box under "non SatFree" mode so I did not investiage much.

I would have liked to test this box on Saorsat myself to see how well it works.

t_man

I got this receiver a few days ago, and after initially not convinced I liked it, I'm beginning to like it more. However...

I had problems initially getting the SatFree channels, as I use DiSEqC, and initially scanned all 3 LNBs, which went ok, but when I later did the SatFree scan, only 4 TV channels and 1 radio channel were in the EPG, for some bizarre reason. If I returned the box to factory settings, and choose just a SatFree installation, it was able to find all the Freesat channels, but I couldn't then add the other LNBs, as the box was set up to use only one dish (no DiSEqC). I eventually got both non-SatFree and SatFree to populate channels correctly by setting up DiSEqC, scanning the individual LNBs, except the 28.2E LNB, switching to SatFree mode and finding the Freesat channels, and then switching back to non-SatFree mode and scanning the 28.2E LNB. A bit of a workaround, and not mentioned in the manual, and probably more of a glitch or bad programming.

The channels change very quickly in both modes, no perceptable difference to me, and fast channel switching is important to me, I detest Sky boxes at how slowly they change channels, though maybe they're better now.

The media player works well, I tried some recent avi, mkv and mp4 files, and it played them all fine. Recording works well too, I tested that with an 8GB Kingston memory stick.

Also, contrary to posted above, you can change the BBC 1 and 2 channels region, by default it uses the London ones, but there is a "LCN change" setting, and you can change them there. So a bit like entering a postcode on Freesat boxes.

One thing that is lacking (for me) is that in non-SatFree mode, there is just one list of channels, so no separate lists for each satellite, and worse, no way to arrange by category, like news, sport, music, etc. (it does have all the categories you would expect in SatFree mode though, but only for 28.2E obviously). You can filter the channels based on about 5 or 6 parameters and combinations of, but it's a bit involved, compared to separate lists that just need to be set up once.

I haven't tested it with the Ka LNB yet, but BBC red button works fine. Also, I've noticed in SatFree mode that sometimes it seems to stop responding to remote presses, with the effect that if you think you haven't pressed the button properly, and start pressing other buttons, the system finally catches up with it's self, and you end with switching a few channels, switching back and forth to the 2 modes, and adjust the volume up and down, but it does seem to eventually execute all the codes/button presses the remote sent.

2 other things that I found wrong were with the EPG; I would have expected to see a shortcut button for flicking down through the pages, as it does show the shortcuts for skipping out +1 hour, 1 day, etc. Pr+ and Pr- do skip pages up and down, but it's not shown on the EPG and isn't mentioned in the manual, so not a complete deal breaker. The other thing is that you only get 2 lines of info for the programme you have selected in the EPG, so it's truncated. So a bit shabby in that respect. If you record a programme, and are browsing it in the recordings folder, you can see more info, at least for the ones I tried; if the programme info was longer, perhaps not.

So, I'm a bit divided over the box at the moment. It's miles better than the DM500HD I got a while ago, in that it starts up in about a quarter of the time, isn't as buggy, doesn't have the crappy custom graphics in the images I tried for the DM500HD, and the Walker box is silent. I don't find the red LEDs on the front a distraction; I still have a SL65 which I still love to use, and it has a similar size an light level output. I was looking at other boxes and was thinking they looked nice, displaying the channel name, but can you really see the name properly at 10+ foot?

So, I'm still a bit divided over the box, a few good things, but a few things lacking as well. If I thought that there might be updates to the firmware, or software that I could edit channels lists down on a PC, I might be happier, and even better if there were a few categories to organise lists. There is a favourites list, but having 3 or 4 LNBs, I think you really need a few categories, I do at least.

t_man

Just to follow up on my previous post...

It is possible to read all the information on a selected programme, pressing the info button when a programme is highlighted in the guide will show a pop-up window with all the relevant information, and pressing the same button brings you back to the guide. I couldn't see this mentioned in the manual, but it works, and is legible at about 10 foot on a 26" non-HD LCD screen. I've been testing it on SCART, so am looking forward to testing the box on a 32" HD LCD through HDMI at the weekend.

I also got the Ka LNB connected up again, and installation was pretty harmless. There is a pre-set satellite already in there, so just have to select it (Ka-SAT (9E) I think it was called), press the green button to scan the individual DiSEqC position, and it had the channels in a few seconds. No need to enter any frequencies, or guessing whether it needs to be V or H (like on the DM500HD), it knew it needs to be L.

MHEG text on the RTE channels works fine, just as the red button works on the BBC channels.

The package also included a HDMI cable, wasn't expecting that. And the box has an internal power supply board, preferable to the wall-warts and other laptop type PSUs often seen now, and if the power board craps out after the warranty expires, it might be fixable.

It's also possible to delete channels from the SatFree list, I'm not sure if all FreeSat boxes allow that function. I'm sure a rescan brings them all back again, I didn't try that.

So apart from the issues with the box sometimes falling behind on it's remote control presses, I'm getting more pleased with the box. I was disappointed that there weren't the same scope in categories like the SL65 I've used over the past 4 years, but thinking that there are only 20-odd channels that I might use frequently on 19E and 13E anyway, they can be added to the favourites list along with the RTE channels, and it might be perfectly adequate.

La Haine

Hi there!
I wonder could somebody help me please?

I bought one of these Walker WP95SAT-HD boxes from Power City today and thought it would be straight forward enough to just swap out my SKYHD box and plug this one in. But I'm not getting any channels to show.

I'm probably missing something obvious, but these are the steps I follow:

1. Select Language: English..

2. Country: Ireland.

3. Antenna type: Direct.

4. Satellite: Astra 2 / Eurobird 1 (28.2E).

5. Scan Encrypted: No.

Then I get an option for Regular Scan or SatFree Scan - if I pick SatFree it tells me there is no home transponder found, so I scan Regular instead.

When it's finished scanning after about 5/10 minutes - the information it then gives me is that no channels were found.

Can somebody please help?

Thanks,
Chris

zg3409

La Haine wrote: »

thought it would be straight forward enough to just swap out my SKYHD box and plug this one in. But I'm not getting any channels to show.

Are you sure your dish is working. Can you get any channels on your old Sky box? If you have two leads from the dish have you tested both of them?

La Haine

zg3409 wrote: »

Are you sure your dish is working. Can you get any channels on your old Sky box? If you have two leads from the dish have you tested both of them?

Yup - everything was working perfectly with Dky up until my subscription ended, so everything is now blocked.

All I did was plug in the new Walker box and I did try both cables and no joy on either of them.

St Senan

That Satfree epg operating system/software is not reliable at all. Have you tried to scan the box just for satellite.

La Haine

Hi there,

Sorry, but how do I do that? I was just repeating all the initial steps I mentioned earlier - trying both of my old Sky's satellite cables to no avail.
On one of the screens, where it shows signal strength and stuff - all I get are to red lines - I'm at a complete loss now.

Should it be just plug-and-go, or should ai br repositioning the dish and stuff?

Pastor Toastman

La Haine wrote: »

Yup - everything was working perfectly with Dky up until my subscription ended, so everything is now blocked.

You wouldn't lose all channels when your sub. is up, the free-to-air channels should still work on the Sky box.

zg3409

Yes plug back in the Sky box and confirm you can get BBC1 etc. Do NOT MOVE the dish, as it should be pointed correctly, however if you cannot get BBC1 on the old Sky box, then your dish may have been bent or damaged or you may have a cable problem. Ket us know how you get on.

dmeehan

I have the saorview combo version of this and I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy. It works fine as a saorview & FTA receiver but once the channels are tuned in on the freesat (or "Satfree" as its called on the box) the box seems to die, or behave eractically

That said I havent tried the sat only version.

enfant terrible

dmeehan wrote: »

I have the saorview combo version of this and I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy. It works fine as a saorview & FTA receiver but once the channels are tuned in on the freesat (or "Satfree" as its called on the box) the box seems to die, or behave eractically

That said I havent tried the sat only version.

Are any of the boxes as good as the Sky HD box?

Is the EPG as quick, how is the planner organised, is the control as good?

zg3409

enfant terrible wrote: »

Are any of the boxes as good as the Sky HD box?

Is the EPG as quick, how is the planner organised, is the control as good?

This is a common question. This thread is for the Walker 95Sat which is none of these.

A UK channel only Humax Freesat+box is a very good system but more expensive. There is no equivalent combo box.

La Haine

Hey fellas!
Only home this evening and I checked out my old SKYHD box and I found it could show BBC and stuff.
I noticed that there are 2 satellite cables that go into the back of the box and when I unplugged one on the left I lost the picture.

So, I plugged the Walker back in and used the 'working' cable from the satellite and it's now picking up all the Eurobird stations and stuff.

So thanks a million for taking the time to help!

Chris