4K FTA HD Receivers?

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Exactly why gigabit "LAN" is so important streaming movies and videos from the PC across the LAN is the rural way! Buy used Blu-Rays and TV shows on Blu-Ray, and record shows from the C-Band and archive all this media to PleX. Now you have your own NetFlix in your house. But you could have more 4K content (UHD Blu-Ray, NASA UHD ect), pretty easily.

I'm building my library now, so once I get my dark sky site, I will be ready.
Seems to me it would be a whole lot easier just to plug an HD/Blu-Ray player into the TV and skip the hassle of running wires and/or relying on a Wi-Fi susceptible to RFI, but that's just me.
 
Actually I am talking satellite STBs with internal SATAx hard drives, the only ones I have that have network capability, howbeit 10-100. A UHD capable STB would have to be "supercharged" compared to the current standards anyway. I would consider a new unit with an internal SATA drive (settle for bay with connector) and Gigabyte ethernet...
*Then maybe USB3 connected hard drive might be ok as well... not sure about that though. depends on the buss speed of the STB board I suppose.
Lot faster to transcode the .ts to mp4 and dump the .mp4 file directly onto the Plex server that way.

I have not been able to play UHD video through the Plex server yet, have to down-convert to 1080i, which is fine as I do not yet have a UHD capable monitor/TV. Not sure if it is a LAN bandwidth issue or a limitation to Plex software.

In reality there is not much FTA UHD worth recording yet anyway.
 
Please elaborate! :)

If you have ever seen a clear, starry sky from a place devoid of light pollution then you know what I mean. As an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer I long for the day that I can move out to the middle of nowhere. I am actually jealous of those that cant get decent internet because that means they can actually go out side on a clear night and see the stars. So a dark sky site is one where the city lights are barley noticed as a small light dome on the horizon in a long exposure photo. Where I live the city lights wash out the sky and galaxies and nebulae are fainter then the sky-glow.
 
I know what you mean buy a dark sky site, I live in the desert with slow internet but unfortunately for me my house still has lots of light pollution, I can see color on a moonless night. I can see a very faint milky way here.

My brother has three houses with great conditions, one back in a canyon on 10 acres in California, one in New Zealand on about 8 acres and one on about 40 acres in Wyoming. I on the other hand am much poorer so I try and make do with filters as best as I can. I can at least put up as big a dish as I want here so at least I have that.
 
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Guess I was thinking of something else... rf wise.
Sky here is nice and dark for astrophotography, nearest city is about 40mi away and there is some light from it to the north of us. Nice sky a couple of nights ago, cloudy last couple of nights. So much dew with humidity up near 100% at night here only get an hour or so.
Sorry for the tangent!
 
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Actually I am talking satellite STBs with internal SATAx hard drives, the only ones I have that have network capability, howbeit 10-100.
I wasn't aware they made such beasties anymore.

SATA support in Android TV boxes seems to be fairly thin of late and seems mostly to be based on the Allwinner SoCs.
 
I'm guessing they figure USB 3.0 is close enough, and probably cheaper than SATA to include. Theoretically 3.0 is 5Gbps vs e-SATA at 6Gbps and USB 3.1 claiming 10Gbps. In reality it comes down to the hard drive used, 5200 RPM or 7200 RPM, 8MB cache, or 16, 32, 64. Are they a "green" drive or "black" or maybe you are using a solid state drive. Then consider how fragmented the file system is and even what type of file system you are using, FAT32, NTFS, EXT3, EXT4. Then you can get into Raid array types, RAID 0, 5, 10, or maybe just JBOD. Strip sizes 64K 128K can play a role, then you have read back, write though cache configurations on the actual RAID controller. Endless possibilities when it comes to storage.

I personally prefer a DATA server or NAS and Gigabit Ethernet which realistically is a good match for the standard hard drive RAID array. I need a localized database solution because every TV in my house has a Roku connected and is a PleX client. I only have one TV with the satellite receivers attached and that's the living room TV. However I did install an HDMI spliter to get the DirecTV to the bedroom TV too.

Maybe we just need fiber channel straight to the box :)
 
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Maybe we just need fiber channel straight to the box :)
Thats what I've got now. :biggrin

But it's a subscription cable DVR made by Pace. My house was built in 2010 and Consolidated Communications ran fiber to all the new homes in this development. It amazes me that one tiny little fiber at the service entrance provides TV, Internet, and phone.
 
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Thats what I've got now. :biggrin

But it's a subscription cable DVR made by Pace. My house was built in 2010 and Consolidated Communications ran fiber to all the new homes in this development. It amazes me that one tiny little fiber at the service entrance provides TV, Internet, and phone.

Hard to beat the speed of light! :)
 
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OK this WeTek Play 2 is looking better all the time. I have another question about it, if anyone out there has had a chance to try it out. Concerning The PLEX app on the WeTek Play 2, does it support 24p playback? I ask because currently I am considering replacing my ROKU 4 with an NVIDIA Shield for the native frame rate support of videos files. All of the videos on my PLEX server are 24p and currently this is causing slight stuttering or juddering during play back. The ROKU PLEX app (not sure who is to blame here ROKU or PLEX) only outputs 60Hz unless the video source is HEVC H265. 4K videos respect the framerate for some reason, all others get converted (3-2 pull down I guess) to 60Hz.

So if I can avoid buying the NVIDIA Shield and ALSO combine FTA and PLEX into one device and add 4K FTA as well, I would be ultra ecstatic!
 
Its an interesting question which would definitely need someone with the device to test it out. You might try posting the question on the Wetek forum.
 
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Its an interesting question which would definitely need someone with the device to test it out. You might try posting the question on the Wetek forum.
I have emailed the manufacture, hopefully they will come back with a response soon. Not a bad price for what you get, I paid more for the ROKU 4 and it doesn't even have a DVBs2 tuner. I hope it will be an all in one solution for NASA UHD also.
 
Well I'm about to order a Wetek Play 2, so I will soon have some personal feed back on this device. Please fill free to stop me if you have any warnings, I'm going for a "4K FTA HD Receiver" which is exactly what this thread is about. Only thing that I'm worried about at this point is having to order from Ebay because the Wetek Play 2 is out of stock everywhere. Anyhow I'm really going for a few things here. 4K FTA and Plex in one box. If anyone else has a better solution or knows if the Wetek Play 2 supports 24p playback of MKV files in the Plex app let me know. Else I am just going to order one and find out for myself.
 
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Now that Manhattan-Digital has delayed release of their 4K FTA box, I'm considering getting a Play2. Look forward to hearing your impressions.
 
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