Zgemma H7S for a newbie to Enigma

dulpit · 02-10-2019 04:30PM #1

Hey all,

Going to be ordering one of these boxes on friday (#payday) and I'm hoping to get plenty of help here should I run into trouble. I've read over a bunch of threads, so think I know what to do to start with, so we'll see how it goes. This is to replace a cheap Manhatten freesat box and saorview into TV, which themselves replaced sky about 6 weeks ago. I miss my recording/etc.

I haven't seen much here yet about this box, seems for my needs as a better option than the Tiviar that has been discussed here quite a bit.

Couple of initial questions:
1: I've seen this box on sale from World of satellite for £111, which seems fair I guess? Any vendors I can trust or should actively avoid?
2: I know it doesn't matter too much, but I can chose which firmware to flash, any major preference between openvix, openatv, openpli/etc? I was leaning towards openatv, mainly because I've seen it mentioned here loads already.
3: I have a 1TB HDD from an old laptop that was rarely used, I assume that this is fine to begin with? If all goes well, happy days, and if not, I imagine it's easy to swap out?
4: I've picked the zgemma as it's a triple tuner, seems quite well specced and is relatively recent, the 4k doesn't matter a whole lot. Is there any obvious alternative I should look at?

Thanks in advance.

Gerry Wicklow · 02-10-2019 07:54PM

My personal preference is openATV. The HDD should be fine and as you say is no biggie if it doesn't work out. The HDD will be formatted to the EXT4 linux file system so if you have anything precious on it now do a backup. If I was in the market now, I would also be getting the Zgemma instead of the ageing Tiviar. At the moment there is no useful FTA 4K but the box would also be able to play 4k files / Youtube etc.
When ordering be careful to order the "H7S" which has 2 DVB-S2 satellite tuners and one DVB-T. They also do a box with a very similar name but it has 2 terrestrial tuners and only 1 sat.

dulpit · 05-10-2019 07:53PM

Ordered and should be with me Tuesday all going well.

My initial plans are as follows, which I assume will be straightforward:

Scan in the Saorview channels
Scan in the FTA satellite channels
Sort out bouquets
Get 7 day EPG sorted for the satellite channels
Set up how to ensure that the channels auto-update if frequencies change

Come to think of it, the first thing I'll do is install the HDD - would it be right to assume that the box will auto-format it, and I don't need to do that elsewhere first?

The high horse brigade · 05-10-2019 08:01PM

You'll have to initialise the hard drive in software.
Install the autobouquetsmaker plugin, set your Saorview region and set it to the NI Freesat region then it will create all Saorview and Freesat bouquets for you. Set it to run daily
Next install crossepg, configure it to opentv 28.2 and set it to save to your hard drive not internal flash on a daily schedule.
The picons you can copy from my Tiviar image post

dulpit · 08-10-2019 08:43AM

This came yesterday. Came with OpenATV, played with it a little, then tried OpenVIX which I preferred the look of, so stuck with that. Scanned in the Saorview and Satellite channels and installed autobouquetsmaker and crossepg and that seems to be working now. Didn't get much of a chance to do more than that, but was able to see the channels in an order that makes sense. CNN wasn't HD though, so that's annoying..

I also tried viewing details on web browser and the GUI did pop up easily, but not sure how much I can do with that access. I tried on mobile also, same - it appears but not sure what's next.

I wanted to be able to stream channels to laptop - which I could via VLC, but couldn't see an easy way to do same on phone, any advice?

Will try to play with this much more later this evening if time allows.

The high horse brigade · 08-10-2019 08:53AM

dulpit wrote: »

This came yesterday. Came with OpenATV, played with it a little, then tried OpenVIX which I preferred the look of, so stuck with that. Scanned in the Saorview and Satellite channels and installed autobouquetsmaker and crossepg and that seems to be working now. Didn't get much of a chance to do more than that, but was able to see the channels in an order that makes sense. CNN wasn't HD though, so that's annoying..

I also tried viewing details on web browser and the GUI did pop up easily, but not sure how much I can do with that access. I tried on mobile also, same - it appears but not sure what's next.

I wanted to be able to stream channels to laptop - which I could via VLC, but couldn't see an easy way to do same on phone, any advice?

Will try to play with this much more later this evening if time allows.

On your laptop download the m3u file and open with VLC, on Android get the dream player app

Gerry Wicklow · 08-10-2019 10:32AM

dulpit wrote: »

This came yesterday. Came with OpenATV, played with it a little, then tried OpenVIX which I preferred the look of, so stuck with that. Scanned in the Saorview and Satellite channels and installed autobouquetsmaker and crossepg and that seems to be working now. Didn't get much of a chance to do more than that, but was able to see the channels in an order that makes sense. CNN wasn't HD though, so that's annoying..

I also tried viewing details on web browser and the GUI did pop up easily, but not sure how much I can do with that access. I tried on mobile also, same - it appears but not sure what's next.

I wanted to be able to stream channels to laptop - which I could via VLC, but couldn't see an easy way to do same on phone, any advice?

Will try to play with this much more later this evening if time allows.

The appearance is just down to the skin. You can download and install new skins under the plugins options.
CNN HD is available on 11672 H 23000 2/3 DVB-S2 8PSK

In the webif interface, the screen icon beside a channel will open that channel in your media player. The left-hand icon gives the full EPG for that channel. Clicking the program description will give more details. Clicking the channel name will switch the box to that channel.

AFAIK openATV is based on the same core as openVIX. It's a while since I checked but I found openATV had far more options / plugins available

dulpit · 09-10-2019 07:59AM

Update: downloaded dream player from google play store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.cyberdream.dreamepg.player) which worked a treat in testing streaming on a few channels, so that was cool. One thing I didn't figure out yet is how to get a combined EPG. Maybe I'm being an idiot, but with everything installed when I click EPG I get the EPG for the current view (so if I am watching RTE it will just be Saorview), if I am on BBC it might be the full Freesat, or else might just be the entertainment bouquet, depending on how I went into BBC in the first place.

My main goal would be that clicking EPG would bring up a full list of all channels, with numbering based on Saorview being 1 - 20 or so, and Freesat starting at 101. The bouquets will be handy to narrow down at times, but is this somebody that's easy and I'm just missing the obvious menu item?

Gerry Wicklow · 09-10-2019 09:27AM

Sounds like you are working with the factory default bouquets. You should create a list (in my case favourites above) which merges Saorview and satellite in one listing ordered as you wish. It's not clear in the above screen-grab but the satellite channels begin just below the Saorview ones.

tech · 28-04-2020 02:49PM

did you manage to get this fixed? also can you get Saorview HD on the interface when you scan for channels?

dulpit · 29-04-2020 09:22AM

tech wrote: »

did you manage to get this fixed? also can you get Saorview HD on the interface when you scan for channels?

In the end I decided to go with the ABM defaults, so RTE1 is 1, BBC 1 NI is 101 and then there are sub-sections above that for the various sky categories (e.g. entertainment, sport, news, etc). So for me I need to switch between the different sections using the sideways arrow buttons. Works for me.

tech · 29-04-2020 09:47AM

thanks, i can only get RTE / Net in NO HD

I have tried to re scan and still no joy

NewClareman · 29-04-2020 02:39PM

dulpit wrote: »

In the end I decided to go with the ABM defaults, so RTE1 is 1, BBC 1 NI is 101 and then there are sub-sections above that for the various sky categories (e.g. entertainment, sport, news, etc). So for me I need to switch between the different sections using the sideways arrow buttons. Works for me.

The bouquets can be edited, as you please. There is a “ReadMe” file with instructions at:⁩ ▸ ⁨⁩⁨Root⁩ ▸ ⁨⁩⁨usr⁩ ▸ ⁨⁩⁨lib⁩ ▸ ⁨⁩⁨enigma2⁩ ▸ ⁨⁩⁨python⁩ ▸ ⁨⁩⁨Plugins⁩ ▸ ⁨⁩⁨SystemPlugins⁩ ▸ ⁨⁩⁨AutoBouquetsMaker⁩ ▸ ⁨⁩⁨custom.⁩ Using these instructions as a guide, you can create/modify a custom mix file to modify bouquets as you please. It’s best to keep changes to a minimum and use spare epg positions, if practical.

The advantage of using a custom mix to create a combined uk/irl bouquet is that, unlike using favourites, channel changes are handled automatically.
If you place this custom mix file in the above custom directory you will have the Saorview channels integrated into the various bouquets.

The “Main Channels” is an additional customised bouquet, with the main Irish and UK channels. (This is obviously a personal view of what the main channels are.) BBC 2 is the NI variant, which is only available in SD. (That may have changed, haven’t checked in a while.)

The updated bouquets are created automatically by ABM, when you do a new scan. Apart from editing them with a custom mix file, you can configure which ones are displayed in the ABM configuration menu.

Zgemma H7S for a newbie to Enigma

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