Vestel Clones / Are all non-Triax saorview boxes the same ?

Capt'n Midnight

started off from here
http://pcmechanic.biz/blog/digital-tv/saorview-digital-tv-receivers-%E2%80%93-the-clone-wars/

Curently as I write this there are only a total of nine different models on Irish shelves. These are as follows; Walker WP10DTB, WP11DTB, WP12DTB-R, Triax TR112, FINLUX SAO634 STB T8010, Akura AVT8010, Laurus T8010, Digihome DI1180 and the Bush Saorview Box.
...
In fact, if you remove the TR112 from the list, there is only one. All other models including the digihome, lauras, akura and the rest are all clones of the Walker box.

And at least one Nordmende boxes is also a clone.
As is the Power City Vision VST 8010
And I'd guess the Alba T8010 is a 8010
What of the Technika T8030 ? (another T80x0 - spot the pattern)
Of course Walker don't make their boxes either,.

So which is the real box ?

The answer is Finlux and Digihome as they are both Vestel brands. I haven't looked into the combo boxes, but I'm fairly sure it's the same story all being clones of the Vestel Digihome DI-TS1124

So do Vestel really make all the boxes apart from the Triax ones ?

The only differences I've seen so far in the ones I've looked at is the front bezel (Nordemende use a Blue LED) , name printed on the bottom of the remote control, number of cooling vents on the bottom of the box and version of the software v8.5 vs. v8.5a .
Though in fairness some of these could be down to different manufacturing revisions over time of the same box.



What effect could this have, if any, on peoples perception of brands and pricing by retailers in the Irish market ?

This would make a great project for some marketing student.

Other question , is there any reason to consider Triax rather than the Vestel boxes ?

watty

I'd rather Vestel than Triax (Vestel also make a lot of the Freeview Brands) and all their R&D for set-boxes and TVs is in UK and USA.

Probably anything else is Chinese designed and made in China (Vestel is Turkish).

Nokia, Amstrad, Grundig, Philips, Telefunken all gone from Set-box market.

Bush is just an Argos Label for random sources as Technika is a Tesco one for random sources and Mitsumi was Currys label and Nikki is simply a Maplin label.

Philips don't do ANY AV gear any more, they have basically sold the badges to others and only do Health Care and Lighting.


If LG and/or Samsung did a setbox with dual tuners, HDD and BluRay player/Recorder it would be good.

The basic standalone set-box market is very short term and little volume of profit. In longer term Vestel and some random Chinese guys the only ones with basic set-boxes and the more up market brands will have PVR/Media centres.

Sponge Bob

Small point Cap'n. Not all Vestel brands are Vestel even though they are of course Vestel

Argos IIRC own Alba and Goodmans and Currys own Digihome but Vestel own Finlux ( which was a Nokia brand as was Salora when Nokia either made TVs or contracted Vestel to make them for them ) and some Irish crowd (IIRC again) owned Mitsubishi Black Diamond for years but Vestel made them.

Old brandnames never die you see, Bush and Nordmende are long gone, and yet not! See this here page.

http://www.vestelpvr.futaura.co.uk/allmodels.php

Capt'n Midnight

Turkey is nearly in the EU so I suppose Vestel is keeping jobs closer to home :pac:

Yes I view the set top box market as temporary as TV's get swapped over to compatible ones over time.

Then the STB can be used in the way people used to use VCR's as a separate recorder.

It will be interesting to see what's available in the market by summer. T2 tuners, real PVR's. Then again we are a small market , I'd have thought we'd have seen more Scandinavian STB's. But griping about which countries standard to follow is a bit late now.

Capt'n Midnight

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Small point Cap'n.
...
Argos IIRC own Alba and Goodmans and Currys own Digihome

so only the Finlux is genuine then

STB

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

so only the Finlux is genuine then

All are genuine Vestel rebadges

Walker were first (but its made by Vestel). Then Vestel submitted 2 models and rebranded them for supermarkets etc. Triax boxes are not made by Vestel.

The article you lined from above is nothing new. It is no doubt lifted from one of the previous posts and discussion on these boxes, probably mine!

watty

some Irish crowd (IIRC again) owned Mitsubishi Black Diamond for years but Vestel made them.

The Crowd that did a management buyout and called themselves Walker. They didn't Own "Black Diamond" brand, they were purely ever an Importer & Distributor. Which is exactly what Walker are today.

Old brandnames never die you see, Bush and Nordmende are long gone, and yet not! See this here page.

We will have Kodak batteries still when Kodak is long gone. JCB, Polariod, Grundig, Kodak batteries may be nothing to do with those Companies really.

Ever Ready though is long gone. Though Eveready (also Energiser) kept the Ever Ready name for quite a number of years. I guess thought people wouldn't notice. Though the UK company founded in 1901, it was part of the US Eveready till 1905 or 1906 I think.

Alba, Bush, Ekco, Murphy, Pye, Vidor, Lissen, Ever Ready, Decca, Kolster Brandes, Philips, Marconi/HMV, Amplion, Portadyne, PAM (Pamphonica), GEC: All at times made Radios, some Radiograms and TVs. All gone.

Capt'n Midnight

Nothing new about rebadging, but will the sheeple notice ?

Would there be any point in naming and shaming retailers ?

Or does anyone care about who makes the box anymore.

STB

People do care when it comes to brand loyalty.

Sometimes they have to go with whatever is available though. No major manufacturer was interested in little ould Ireland due to the numbers.

Original Chassis (tuner modules changed to T4*** )


An earlier thread discussed this whole area before.

Solair

Just shows why we would have been better off just being 100% compatible with the UK FreeView spec. At least that way we'd have had decent boxes!

Are there any decent NORDIG boxes available from scandinavian suppliers? There must be a big of a bigger market if you take the whole NORDIG region into consideration. Most boxes being multilingual, all you'd need to do is swap the power plug or use an adaptor.

lawhec

Solair wrote: »

Just shows why we would have been better off just being 100% compatible with the UK FreeView spec. At least that way we'd have had decent boxes!

If Saorview went to work with the D-Book spec, it would have meant that the initial roll-out (after the "trial") in the summer of 2008 would have necessitated MPEG2 video encoding and no upgrade to HD without simulcast in DVB-T2 MPEG4 at a later date. Holding off to wait on DVB-T2 to be finalised would have delayed the eventual rollout by about 18 months (late winter or spring 2010) or so at the least.

Also while most televisions that are Freeview (HD) certified can select a country in setting it up, the same is not true for most Freeview set-top-box converters which normally have a fixed profile for the United Kingdom country identifier and unable to select any other country. To be compatible with the D-Book spec in this circumstance, either it would have to be updated to recognise the Republic of Ireland country identifier, or the Saorview network would have to carry the UK country identifier i.e. identify itself as a UK originated transmission. Imagine the politics of that one! :eek: Also, you would have had the problems of LCN allocations in overlapping transmission areas (which is only dealt with in the Freeview HD spec in the D-Book, not ordinary Freeview MPEG2 receivers) which different receivers handle in different fashions. By not using the D-Book specification, at least this problem doesn't happen with Freeview (HD) certified receivers that follow the D-Book because they knock all 'foreign' originating transmissions into the 8xx range which depending on the firmware might allow the user to reallocate to a different number. Also 'fixing' such Freeview receivers to allow it to recognise ROI originated transmissions would need a firmware update - while most receivers can now do this via USB or an internet connection, most of the ordinary receivers either need a null modem cable or an OTA download which unless you could receive a UK originated transmission might not be possible to download.

TL;DR - matching the D-Book spec over Nordig may have solved some headaches, but would likely have opened others.

lawhec

I think I've mentioned this before - In the early days of Freeview in the UK, there was a price war to drive down the cost of FTA receivers that had just appeared on the market (they were scarce in the OnDigital/ITV Digital days - the Pace DFTA receiver was the first publicly available when ITV Digital was on its death bed) and a number of popular names released receivers. Desperate to ensure that they were under the £100 mark, margins for manufacturers and retailers were slim. There were set-top-boxes from the likes of Panasonic, Pace, Sony, Thomson etc. along in due course with models badged with Goodmans, Bush, Grundig (by that time the initial company went under), Alba etc.

It didn't take too long for a combination of things to happen - one being that the price of the cheapest receivers available got driven down quite quickly to below £50, this meant that the more high-end boxes couldn't compete on price without making losses and so could only compete on features, for example two SCARTs instead of one on cheaper models, RF modulator outputs and in a few cases (a Sony model being one) allowing the DTT remote to be programmed to control the TV similar to Sky remotes. However it became the case that customers were happy enough with a cheap and cheerful STB to hook up to a TV via SCART without a large amount of bells & whistles. And you've guessed it, most of these cheap rebadged models were either from Vestel (especially later on from around 2004 or so) or from China. Brand snobbery was not as high as one might expect.

The manufacturers of higher-end models started pulling out of the market for Freeview STBs though some did offer good long term support by providing OTA firmware upgrades, the Thomson DTI1000 receiver being one that was still getting new updates five years after it first appeared. The end result was that many Vestel rebadges not only dominated STB sales, but also rebadges of their TVs with integrated tuners dominated the budget end of that market as well, and that continues today. When Freeview+ PVRs started gaining popularity, some manufacturers focused on delivering good models with the budget models still being Vestel rebadged. Humax and Sagemcom (formerly Sagem) have mainly filled the niche that Vestel doesn't reach.

It's worth remembering that ten years ago, most viewers in the UK (and Ireland for that matter) still had CRT televisions, and those with built-in DTT tuners were expensive. Therefore the STB demand was healthy and provided a cheap-ish upgrade. Fast forward to now and with all TVs now sold with DTT tuners the STB market either fills only those with legacy equipment (TVs, VCRs etc) with no DTT tuner, those televisions with incompatible tuners for the required service i.e. Saorview or Freeview HD, and those whom are making use of twin-tuner PVRs. Nowadays its about flat-screen TVs with built in DTT tuners and PVRs with a small single-tuner STB market, one that Vestel fills well.

watty

Unlike UK, the market here for basic non-"true PVR" set boxes will be short lived. There are thus good reasons for most people other than Vestel to NOT release a box now, and when they do, only full PVRs, mostly with ethernet and some with BluRay.

GrumPy

Anyone know where I could source firmware for one of these boxes?

Digihome DI-TS1124. It's the combi Curry's/PowerCity are stocking.

I've upgraded the stock firmware (Think it was 2.3) to 2.8. This adds the SatFree menu, which has a nicer UI and removes duplicate listings (like mutiple channel 4's for example)

I got the 2.8 firmware from a friend, but have no idea where to look for a newer revision, if one even exists. 2.8 seems unstable, the box has crashed 4 times since I've updated unfortunately.

Apologies if this is in the wrong thread! I believe it is the "Vestel" clone though. (Same as STB's image)

FREETV

It is a pity that every Freeview HD box rebadged and manufactured by Vestel will not work with the new Northern Ireland Mini-mux, that's great news for people who have bought and will buy them wholly dependent on it for RTE1 and RTE2, TG4 isn't it? :rolleyes: It wouldn't be difficult for them to issue an automatic over the air update for all of their glitches now would it?

Capt'n Midnight

If you can figure out how to get a DVB-T tuner to decode DVB-T2 I'm all ears

In an ideal world we'd have a single all island system.
Over 85% of people down here already get the UK channels so it's not like much would change in terms of market share, though SKY and UPC would be annoyed at the loss of their "duopoly" (each has a monopoly in rural or cable-broadband areas).


Have the 'glitches' been reported ?

watty

Actually that is only PayTV. If you add FTA boxes (and Freesat), out of Sub Sky and Freevew reception it's much more than that.

Capt'n Midnight

watty wrote: »

Actually that is only PayTV. If you add FTA boxes (and Freesat), out of Sub Sky and Freevew reception it's much more than that.

And of course I've forgotten those who can get UK channels from NI / Wales.

firemansam1

Hi,

Would the remote from a Walker WP12DTB-R box work a Technika T8030

Thanks