Thread: Samsung DSB-4700

I recently had the opportunity to test out the Smasung DSB-4700 receiver.

When I took it out of the box, I noticed it was a nice size unit. The first thing I liked was the 2 sets of outputs and on the front I can control the box (channel up/down, volume)

Hooked up the feed from the motorized and away we went. The remote is simple yet productive. Not a lot of buttons but you really don’t need a lot. Turned the unit on and you are greeted with 4 options
-Installation
-Channel Organization
-Parental
-System Setup

So I went into install and entered my pin code. I tried to find a way to turn that off but I couldn’t. Oh well. Entered 0000 and got into the meat of the setup. Here is where you will be most of the time if you are in the menus. I had to set my LNB LO. Scrolled through and found AMC5. It gives you the option for 2 LO’s, a Diseqc, 22k and a motor. So you could have a motor, diseqc and a 22k switch all hooked up and it will work with no issues. The only drawback of entering the dual LO’s is if you have a Universal, a newbie might not know how to set it up (some boxes you have a “Universal” option)

I went into the manual scan to see what was in there. There are a LOT of transponders loaded in it (including a lot of feeds transponders). This screen I like because you can do a manual scan, network scan or PID scan all from one screen. No need to search and find them. Found 12182 H 23000 (New York Net) and got a nice signal. The meter does read a little low compared to other boxes but its stable. Doesn’t really move much which is good. Scanned that in and away we went. In the manual scan, you can go to where the frequency is and press right or left arrow and the frequency goes up or down. This might help fine tune some stations or to make a homemade blind scan.

There is an option for auto scan which you can go through and set it up to scan all the satellites you have programmed in. This was pretty cool as I hooked up 3 satellites via a 4x1 diseqc switch (G10, G4, AMC5). Went into the screen and said “yes” to the satellites I wanted to scan and hit OK and went and got a snack. It scanned all the transponders logged into the box on those 3 satellites and in 5 minutes I had a bunch of channels.

The onscreen is nice and crisp. Press “info” and yo have ALL the info in an easy to read screen. The bottom line is interesting as it tells you who owns the transponder (in some cases...some cases it doesn’t say anything). Press OK and it shows the channel list. You can sort it a few ways. Options are transponder, favorites, alphabetical or service provider. The one thing I really like about the box is one button and a little thing pops up with what your options are. There are 4 color buttons on the remote and the “pop up” tells you what each one does. Very neat! No need to read the manual

I looked for a blind scan and it doesn’t have a full blown blind scan. It has a SMATV option, which allows you to search for new frequencies with a known symbol rate. It gives you an option to enter up to 7 different symbol rates and it will scan all the frequencies using those symbol rates. Well, since 3979 is a common one I selected that and made the rest 0 and away we went. Now this was the Sunday of the airplane crash, so the feeds started popping in like crazy. In no time I had 16 feeds. The scan is thorough, it skips the frequencies by 2 MHZ and alternates polarity as it scans. So it goes 11700H, 11700V, 11702H, etc as it scans for feeds. Once it gets done with the first batch, it starts back over with the 2nd Symbol Rate you entered.

I went through the channel edit options and renamed a few channels and moved channels around with ease. Once again the “pop up” button works wonders. Press that and voila, easy to remember options.

I did not try the motor option. Maybe down the line.

All and all this is a really nice box and would work great as a main box or a 2nd box. I’ll have this one set up on my G10 setup as I can hook 2 VCR’s up for lots of G10 recording

Some of the features of the box are
-2 sets of a/v outputs
-easy to use menus
-simplified remote with nice big buttons
-various scan options (manual, auto, network, PID)
-multiple satellite scan (tell it what satellites to scan and away it goes)
-options to use a motor, diseqc and a 22k switch at once
-stable signal bar (this is big in my book. Hate having a bouncy signal bar)
-SMATV scan (this works good in finding news feeds)
-4 color coded buttons that do a multitude of options.
-S-Video & Dolby Out

The only drawback that I found was the clock automatically sets via the satellite. There is no way to change this. There are timers but if the clock is off, the timers are useless. I did have a stable clock on AMC5 when I was on both of the main TP’s so I did set some timers and they did fire off without a hitch

I want to thank WSI Digital for letting me try out the receiver. I really enjoyed playing with the box and the fact I knew how to operate it without reading the manual even makes it better

www.wsidigtal.com

Nice review, Iceberg...

I've had good luck with Samsung products..

One question though - with 2 VCRS hooked up how do you record 2 different programs with 1 receiver.. And is this a rare option..

This unit has only one tuner but before I got my 2 hard drive/dvd recorder, I use to record a LOT on tapes (only record on SP so you get a good picture)

So when I would be gone on weekends, there's lots of stuff on G10 to record so 2 machines was needed. Now with the HDD, its not needed as much

but hockey season is just around the corner

Very nice review Iceberg. You are absolutly right, the 1 drawback is the blind search, but other than that, it's a realy nice and solid unit. Lot's of our dealers are starting to love this new receiver and the failiure rate on them is very low too (none so far). Samsung makes pretty good & reliable STB receivers.