Decent Digital Satellite Receivers

Mossy Monk

can anyone recommend a decent DSAT receiver. i'm only really interested in FTA and my budget is about €300

seano

click on the link in my profile.

The echostar 707DSB is a flyer

Charles Slane

Tony is selling a Palcom Free To Air Receiver for 179 Euro at his site at http://www.satellite.ie/acatalog/FTA.html which looks like pretty good value.

In the interest of not specifically advertising Tony's site, you could also try a Google search for "satellite receivers Ireland". I'm sure you'd come up with something.

I've been meaning to get an FTA receiver myself for a long time, but just haven't got around to it. Keep us informed on how you get on.

bmg

got a id digital receiver from www.visoduck.de at christmas and am very happy with it.menu same as humax.receiver is €150,with magic cam and programmer cost €375.sent from poland so there was no vat.

watty

I was going to get a FTA receiver this time last year, but got a Hauppage DVBs PCI card. It is now repackaged as the Nexus..

It does TV, S-Video, HiFi audio and digital Audio (5.1 potentionally) like a regular FTA box for your TV /Hifi.

It records direct to disk without recoding the MPEG data, with playback to TV. It has its own DSP and Multimedia Bridge so really is a complete FTA receiver, only using the PC to tell it what to do. (Cheaper ones use the PCs CPU to decode the MPEG).

The built in DSP/Multimedia/TV out will even play non-satellite SVCD and DVD files in MPEG2 format (not commercial VOB files) better than most standalone DVD players even on a 200MHz PC.

Teletext and EPG etc on Screen.
99 TV and 99 Radio favorites
Up to 4 satellite dishes or LNBs via a £20 Global 4-Way Diseq switch (Tony has similar switches).

Real IR remote controller.
Easy to use Notepad to add new transponders to "Autosearch" list for each Satellite.
All SR from less than 3000 to more than 40000
Auto FEC

Very good PC screen overlay as well as TV out

Also receive free IP multicast Data transmissions like Casablanca
Also 3rd party SW to receive MPEG4 streaming video
Optional CI card for CAMs and pay TV cards (not Sky!).
Er... scary 3rd party SW I know nothing about to simulate a CAM and a card...

Works with Sky FTA channels of course, and also German EPG guides. (Sky you get Now & Next).

With correct drivers it works on Win98, Win2000, NT4.0 and XP.
(XP need 200MHz PC and 160M RAM minimum)
(98 need 100MHz PC and 32M RAM minimum)

Need any graphics card that does Direct Draw Overlay properly. A cheap ATI rage II may work, Cirrus GD6466x won't. Any card less than 3 years old will be fine. 3D not needed. If the PC is REALLY old and the 2M video card doesn't work, the built in TVout probabily will still be OK!

TV out / Record TV to disk or Data Reception seems fine even if you are playing a demanding PC game etc as the CPU is not really used. (In fact on a manual PSU, when you "shut down" win 98, sometimes the TV /Audio out is still running! Once I had an NT Blue Screen and the TV out was still going).

Don't go for the cheaper cards with no DSP and / or no Multimedia Bridge. I got better SW / Drivers from www.technotrend.de (free and English pages too) who actually make the card for Siemens, Hauppauge etc. (Nexus = "Premium").

They also do a free Software Development Kit with working C source of Sat TV application. I will use this to try out the HDTV test transmissions in the Autumn, assuming they are DVBs standard. They are 1080 line. I don't know how to change the TV out lines (seems to be automatic for NTSC /PAL, I had NBC feed in NTSC), but the PC overlay has to be set to correct number of lines. Since the only thing I can see a HDTV picture on is the PC monitor or a borrowed TV/SVGA LCD projector, a full screen VGA output at 1024 or 1200 lines should be enough to see it.

ThunderStorm

Hi Watty,

i have tested WinTV PCI FM card. The inherent problem i have found in Hauppauge tv cards (at least in analogue) is that they change the resoultion to 800*600 when u switch to TV mode(full screen). This is quite weird. I am just wondering if u had faced the same problem in case of digital card or not? I have tried the pinnacle PCI TV card too, it didnt have that problem but its pic quality wasnt too good.

thanks in advance
TS

metrosub

you could try ebay and find a good second-hand one from Germany