Thread: Joined the Azbox club

After hearing of all the fun you lucky Azbox owners were having (and experiencing a bit of stb-envy from it) I scraped my pennies together and got one.

I bought it from azboxusa on ebay (like probably many reading this did) and I'm quite pleased. I paid for my Azbox Elite last Sunday and had it Wednesday morning, so shipping was very prompt. It comes in a priority mail medium size flat rate box which fits it perfectly with a little room on the end. The power plug adapter was not in the Azbox box itself, but loose in the priority mail box. The first pic shows all the accessories that comes with the Elite: remote, aaa batteries, power cord and plug adapter.

As I've heard in other posts about loose connections, I decided to pop the hood and take a look inside (pic #2). Not surprisingly I spotted the front panel connection was not properly seated and rectified that quickly enough. After that I tried to scrounge a new power cable from my technological bone-yard, but couldn't find anything, so I settled for using the halfway plugged in technique to make the plug adapter work.

I'll leave out all the crap I had to do to integrate it into my entertainment complex (also the fun getting my Harmony 550 remote setup to control it) for another post. Anyhow, I hooked it up, powered it on and was greeted with the setup screen in Dutch. I fixed that, adjusted various settings and updated the firmware to 0.9.3686 (subsequently went to 0.9.3877) and then celebrated by watching Vince Offer selling the Slap Chop in Spanish on Youtube (pic #3). I've got it setup on 99 with my bud and 101 with my ku setup.

I plugged the WD 320gb hard drive that I used with my Coolsat into it for the hell of it. It recognized it and it put a couple of folders on it, but it doesn't want to record to it. I tried it again the other night (with the newer firmware) and it actually said it was recording, but it locked up everything instead. I'll think I'll get another drive, since I've got too much stuff on this drive to clear it off and reformat anyhow. One interesting thing I noticed is that the Azbox won't play .ts files generated by the Coolsat. I'm not really surprised by this, since there isn't much out there that will play the .ts files it generates. Ironically, I tried playing a .ts file I edited and saved with VideoReDo on the Azbox and that worked fine (wouldn't play on the Coolsat).

All-in-all this thing is very slick indeed....kinda' like the PS3 of the FTA world. I'm looking forward to exploring this box's capabilities because I haven't really scratched the surface of it yet since I've been busy.

Congratz!... I'm still saving up for mine.
Question; did you get it from the guy in Miami? reason I ask is I have been watching them on ebay and observing the feedback so when I get enough money I will have all my ducks lined up.

Welcome to the gang of Az'ers ..

DirectDishnet... you falling behind bud.. put that AZ in your Black Friday/Xmas list

DirectDishNet - Thanks. Both of the sellers (azboxusa and azboxamerica) are from Miami. I bought mine from azboxusa since they had shipping for $5 less. No complaints here.

Pro96 - Thanks. I look forward to digging up some 4:2:2 feeds.

Crocodile,

Welcome to the AZBox fan club!

With so many of us opting to buy and use one of these STB's, I think that we will have a great deal of support between eachother.

I was apprehensive to introduce this box to most members as it is still in its infancy stages, but evidently it is proving to be an even better box then I imagined and it is growing fast in popularity.

Woohoo!

RADAR

I was apprehensive to introduce this box to most members.....

Members here?
Didn't you just get one in September?
Others have been using & posting here since May.

Originally Posted by Lak7

I was apprehensive to introduce this box to most members.....

Members here?
Didn't you just get one in September?
Others have been using & posting here since May.

Lak,

I should have phrased that differently as that was in reference to those looking to get started with the FTA adventure and new to the hobby in general. As I did not think that this was a good box for a starting point.

Now that the newer firmwares are working much more smoothly (glitches corrected) and the editor programs seem to actually "edit", I felt that I should reconsider my evaluation.

For the reasonable price and the technical support available, it is a fine box and I believe that anyone who is new to satellite and FTA could manage setting this box up - even with a motor, provided that they at least have some basic computer and networking skills.

RADAR

Originally Posted by Crocodile Locke

One interesting thing I noticed is that the Azbox won't play .ts files generated by the Coolsat. I'm not really surprised by this, since there isn't much out there that will play the .ts files it generates. Ironically, I tried playing a .ts file I edited and saved with VideoReDo on the Azbox and that worked fine (wouldn't play on the Coolsat).

This is probably due to header information recorded on the .TS file by the Coolsat. The Visionsat PVRs do the same thing, and most PC-based media players won't play them back unless you re-mux the file. Note that there is no need to re-render (or re-compress) the file, which would reduce the quality. Just use a re-muxer (I've been using 'Project X', a JAVA-based app, but there are others out there that will work as well)...

Originally Posted by Tron

This is probably due to header information recorded on the .TS file by the Coolsat. The Visionsat PVRs do the same thing, and most PC-based media players won't play them back unless you re-mux the file. Note that there is no need to re-render (or re-compress) the file, which would reduce the quality. Just use a re-muxer (I've been using 'Project X', a JAVA-based app, but there are others out there that will work as well)...

Makes sense that the Visionsat would have the same issue. I've never tried ProjectX, but you've got me curious, so I think I'll have to. I figured that if I have enough patience I'd use VideoReDo to edit all the commercials from my .ts files and reclaim about 25% of the used space on my hard drive, since the Azbox has no problem with the .ts files it generates and it isn't compressed.