Best Digibox model for poor signal areas

Supercell

I seem to have killed my Digibox by plugging a Dragon into its cam slot (Pace model) ..thankfully the Dragon is fine but the Digi refuses to power on (power led remains red) ..curiosity killed the cat !

I just use the Digibox for keeping my Freesat card working..its used in the pc on an SS1 in a Dragon and all is fine with that.
Thing is ..on the Pace i couldnt watch anything ..on same sat cable..but on the SS1 its fine (seems to handle weak signal a lot better) ..but was enough to keep the Freesat card activated..which is why i need a new Digibox.

Any models are known to be better with weak signal or all much of a muchness ?

Tony

Pace 430N seems to work well in EU

Longfield wrote:

I seem to have killed my Digibox by plugging a Dragon into its cam slot (Pace model) ..thankfully the Dragon is fine but the Digi refuses to power on (power led remains red) ..curiosity killed the cat !

I just use the Digibox for keeping my Freesat card working..its used in the pc on an SS1 in a Dragon and all is fine with that.
Thing is ..on the Pace i couldnt watch anything ..on same sat cable..but on the SS1 its fine (seems to handle weak signal a lot better) ..but was enough to keep the Freesat card activated..which is why i need a new Digibox.

Any models are known to be better with weak signal or all much of a muchness ?

Supercell

Thanks Tony, will keep my eye out for one of these on ebay .

Tony

If you are going Ebay then look out for pansonic boxes too. Good luck

MiketheMechanic

Try a Panasonic DSB30 - the king of digiboxes! Really fast software.

MtM

Tony wrote:

If you are going Ebay then look out for pansonic boxes too. Good luck

byte

Yeah I'm just back from Mallorca, and nearly all the pubs with Sky had Panasonic DSB30s and Panasonic DSB31's. A few others had the new Pace 430N.

As for the amount of 1m+ dishes around the place.... :eek:

watty

At end of day, if performance is marginal, a bigger dish is MUCH better than a better Digibox and / or "better" LNB.

See www.smw.se and download the free "link budget" / "dish alignment SW".

You will see how little effect LNB is below 1dB NF.
Put your highest daytime temperature ( 293k = 20 deg C) for Antenna temperature.

The difference between digibox performance is very very small apart from one or two early "dodgy designs" where a strong signal reduced the AGC at front end of tuner too much for the weaker signal. Some of the 0.3dB NF LNBs are less flat frequency response and actually make the weak 2D signal harder to receive.

A very "flat" 0.6 or 0.7 works better in marginal areas than most socalled 0.3dB LNBs

lawhec

I also heard that the small Pace Javlin "Minibox" was also sought after in mainland Europe as it had a sensitive tuner, though its now discontinued and difficult to find.

MiketheMechanic

IIRC the Panasonic DSB31's were slightly "dumbed down" versions of the DSB30's - and the receive was not as strong.

MtM

byte wrote:

Yeah I'm just back from Mallorca, and nearly all the pubs with Sky had Panasonic DSB30s and Panasonic DSB31's. A few others had the new Pace 430N.

As for the amount of 1m+ dishes around the place.... :eek:

byte

Yeah, I think you're right. Though if you've a big enough dish, it shouldn't matter too much.

L1011

Longfield wrote:

I seem to have killed my Digibox by plugging a Dragon into its cam slot (Pace model) ..thankfully the Dragon is fine but the Digi refuses to power on (power led remains red) ..curiosity killed the cat !

Really, why in the name of bejaysus did you try to put a CAM into the expansion port? Its NOT a CI slot, it was never a CI slot....

Tony

MYOB wrote:

Really, why in the name of bejaysus did you try to put a CAM into the expansion port? Its NOT a CI slot, it was never a CI slot....

LMAO

denis1501

I'm in a fringe area and highly recommend the Pace 2600.
regards
D.

watty

Of course if Sky wanted it to be a CI slot....

Try the usual power on reset/Software update. Perhaps Pace use the slot to quickly load the initail UK Sky Software or Italia Sky Software??

Maybe the Digibox thinks its a Dragon CAM instead of a Receiver :-)