Amiko Alien 2 - first impressions

[pacificrim]

I've had my new Amiko Alien 2 for a week and a half and in that time I've had limited time to see what it can do.

The 2 things I noticed almost immediately are - 1) Scan multiple satellites with motorized dish 2) Delete all channels
The Alien 2 cannot do either of these. I have a whole bunch of duplicates and I didn't care because I was just going to delete them all and then set it up how I like later.
Now do I have to FTP in and start editing .xml files? Had I known it can't delete all channels easily, I would not have blind scanned 97w.

Since I got my box activated yesterday and was recording something last night, I noticed that I can't record from satellite and access IPTV. If you attempt to - for example you are recording, go to Menu and click on the Portal icon while in Menu - the box crashes and only a hard power reset will fix it. You can record and watch something from the LAN, or the attached drive. Not sure why the difference.

 

[mc6809e]

To delete all channels or a particular satellite select MENU --> CHANNEL --> Organizing Channel --> Group (the RED button). Then you select the group of channels you want to work with: ALL Sats, a specific SAT, or several other selections. Then press the GREEN button for Options and choose what you want to do: Select ALL, Unselect All, Select Others, or Select TP. Press the Right Arrow key on the remote to move to the active options and choose from LOCK, DELETE, or SKIP. Press the OK key and a Confirmation box pops up asking for a Yes or No. Select Yes and the action is taken.

I've also scanned multiple Sats on the Alien2 when I selected them from the Satellite list in the Satellite Install list.


Ernie

 

[pacificrim]

Thanks for your reply. Good to know about deleting. As for scanning multiple sats, I tried it and it doesn't give the option to Blindscan. It'll only scan TPs and also it doesn't delay to move the dish in TP scan mode and just starts the next dish scan immediately. It says it in the manual that each sat needs to be manually scanned separately. Then again the manual also says stuff like:

"Timeshift is a aptotic big recording. When is full, it will lost the head file to still recording."

Thanks

 

[toucan-man]

"Timeshift is a aptotic big recording. When is full, it will lost the head file to still recording."

Sounds like it will overwrite your earlier videos if it runs out of space. Is this the way other boxes do it ?

 

[RT-Cat]

Sounds like it will overwrite your earlier videos if it runs out of space. Is this the way other boxes do it ?

Toucan-man,
I had no idea you could read Chinese English. Good job!

 

[pacificrim]

I like the Alien 2 so far. The blind scan works well but I'd love an update to blindscanning multiple sats. I would also like to see a satellite box that will schedule a scan - daily, hourly, etc. I noticed a post from a year ago saying 10750 would be added to the LNB options, but as of now it hasn't. It can be added manually.

Also I found that it won't play audio on WMV files. I searched the problem and confirmed from posts that is the case. A lot of the webtv channels don't work. They're listed, but in red say "moved".

 

[. Raine]

Toucan-man,
I had no idea you could read Chinese English. Good job!

Chinglish!

 

[dougruss]

I like the Alien 2 so far. The blind scan works well but I'd love an update to blindscanning multiple sats. I would also like to see a satellite box that will schedule a scan - daily, hourly, etc. I noticed a post from a year ago saying 10750 would be added to the LNB options, but as of now it hasn't. It can be added manually.

Also I found that it won't play audio on WMV files. I searched the problem and confirmed from posts that is the case. A lot of the webtv channels don't work. They're listed, but in red say "moved".

Yes...Under "Edit Satellite" Menu....Select "LNB".... "USER" and Enter 10750... "OK"......and "Exit"........Save Modify...."YES" !

 

[pacificrim]

Yes, it can be added manually. It could be added manually last year too, but was to be a dropdown by now.

 

[pacificrim]

Yesterday I was minibudding my dish to watch the superbowel. When I tried to change motor settings from USALS to Diseqc, the Amiko Alien 2 would crash. Every time. Any thoughts on a solution?

 

[Jim S.]

That problem existed in the original software, but it was fixed fairly quickly if I remember correctly. If you're using current software, I can only suspect a corrupted satellite database

 

[mc6809e]

There's a thread over at FridgeFTA from July of last year about this along with the method for fixing the problem.

Ernie

 

[pacificrim]

Thanks for the info.
I found it: http://www.fridgefta.info/forums/showthread.php?tid=32161&highlight=diseqc+usals+crash#axzz2sEomQjC9

It looks like my options are to load from factory default, delete all channels, or restore from my backup. hmmm.

 

[mc6809e]

I'm running the latest firmware, 1.2.69.

Not knowing whether the "Set USALS" bug had crept back into the firmware, I made a backup of the database and then selected the "Set USALS to all Sats" option in motor setup. After saving the settings, exiting Setup and checking several of the C-band sats I saw they had been changed to USALS. I went back into Setup and changed a couple of the C-band sats back to DiSEqC1.2 without any problems. I then restored the database from the backup I'd just made.

At this point I'd have to agree with Jim S and say that your database was somehow corrupted.


Ernie

 

[primestar31]

Look on the bright side: if this was a MicroHD with a corrupted db, you'd be boot-looping right now...