AZBOX AzBox miniMe American edition version 1.70 firmware

pwrsurge

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Pub Member / Supporter
Aug 7, 2007
919
30
Canada
AzBox Canada and AzBox US are proud to announce the release of firmware version 1.70 for the AzBox miniMe American Edition.

This new version includes the following enhancements.

Bug fixes:
- Greatly improved blind scan accuracy and performance. A blind scan on "quick mode" now only takes a few minutes and works relatively well for satellites with high SR transponders. However, "detailed mode" is recommended when scanning satellites with low SR transponders. Long standing issue reported by several users and developers - Thank you
- Fixed locking issue with certain low symbol rate transponders introduced in firmware version 1.65 . Issue reported by scopus - Thank you
- Improved performance when deleting channels. Issue reported by QA
- Miscellaneous minor bug and GUI fixes

Available for download now via the Internet update function on network connected receivers or download via our support page to install using your USB flash drive.



Best regards,
 
Last edited:
I looked on the support page, but I can't find a manual to download for the miniME AE.

An owner's manual for the AzBox miniMe American Edition is in the works and will be released soon. As the GUI changed significantly with the 1.50 firmware release and many new features were recently added, we had to redo some sections of the manual and take many screenshots again.

However, we recently posted a few current screenshots here.


Best regards,
 
Last edited:
AzBox Canada and AzBox US are proud to announce the release of firmware version 1.70 for the AzBox miniMe American Edition.

This new version includes the following enhancements.

Bug fixes:
- Greatly improved blind scan accuracy and performance. A blind scan on "quick mode" now only takes a few minutes and works relatively well for satellites with high SR transponders. However, "detailed mode" is recommended when scanning satellites with low SR transponders. Long standing issue reported by several users and developers - Thank you
- Fixed locking issue with certain low symbol rate transponders introduced in firmware version 1.65 . Issue reported by scopus - Thank you
- Improved performance when deleting channels. Issue reported by QA
- Miscellaneous minor bug and GUI fixes

Available for download now via the Internet update function on network connected receivers or download via our support page to install using your USB flash drive.



Best regards,


PwrSurge
AzBox Canada & US

Pleased to report detailed scan works a treat for low SR now at my end. Good job guys!
 
An owner's manual for the AzBox miniMe American Edition is in the works and...
I wouldn't consider a product without a manual so I don't need to hear anymore. Not because I need the manual necessarily, but this tells me the product isn't finished yet. I'm not picking on Azbox. When I asked about the manual for another popular receiver, I was told at the time the manual wasn't available. I knew then that the receiver would not be ready "in a few weeks" because good manuals take a lot of work. And the receiver wasn't ready until many more months had passed.
 
I have been using this firmware since its release, and I like it. Two bugs I have found. In radio mode after about an hour or so the sound will start to break as if it were a weak signal. This was fixed some time ago in Enigma 2 with new drivers I believe. A quick channel up and down cures it. Also when you are in the signal Analyser the box will sometime restart. Sometimes also after deleting channels the box will also restart randomely. Here in the UK I have set the tuner timeout to 30 and blindscan on quick with both SR and freq range set at 1000 and it works a treat!
 
Thank you for your feedback. We are currently in the process of coding a new firmware version and will try to fix the issues you reported.

Please note that in regards to blindscan, the freq range parameter (i.e. Step size) is actually ignored when using "Quick" Scan mode as the tuner driver uses a fixed step size of 20700 when using this mode. If you wish to use a lower step size for more accurate scanning, you must use "Detailed" Scan mode instead along with your desired step size. However, it will take a while to blindscan using a 1000 step size so you may want to use a slightly higher value such as 2500.

In the upcoming firmware update, we will make this more obvious by greying out the Step size field when quick mode is selected.
 
Thanks for the reply. I have used the detailed over here, and didn't notice a great deal of difference, apart from it taking a while to complete. Another issue regarding blindscan, if you try to abort the scan that doesn't seem to work, I had need to do this because the tuner had locked, a reboot by holding the power button was the only way to return the box to normal. Can we expect a new version before Christmas?
 
Pwrsurge,

Could you check into trying to get Cozi on 103ku to stream. As I said before, the web app works pretty good. However, I just get still pictures with Cozi. Maybe, because of the video format?

Thanks, Catamount
 
A few blindscanning bugs:

Hadn't used blindscan for about 5 months, so deleted all channels.

Scanned 103W and got everything expected - worked great

Tried scanning 97 and 93. Nothing after 8 scans. Tried quick/detailed/rebooted and no channels would scan in.
Manually scanned first vertical transponder on 97 which brought in some channels. After this blindscanned the rest okay.

Biggest issue -- If I find 11 TP's, during the scan process after scanning 11 of 11, it jumps to scanning 12 of 29. I think it keeps adding the default transponders, which gives me double channels.

Strangely it never happened on 103 or 93, just 97W.

Catamount
 
A few blindscanning bugs:
Scanned 103W and got everything expected - worked great

Tried scanning 97 and 93. Nothing after 8 scans. Tried quick/detailed/rebooted and no channels would scan in.
Manually scanned first vertical transponder on 97 which brought in some channels. After this blindscanned the rest okay.

I suspect this happened because a blind scan was done on a satellite with no existing channels which could have prevented DiSEqC and/or motor commands from being sent. We will test this scenario and make adjustments to the firmware if this is the case.

In the meantime, the easiest way to prevent this issue is to leave at least 1 channel on each satellite so that you may easily switch to any satellite by using the yellow button. If you are unable to have at least 1 channel scanned on a certain satellite before doing a blind scan, you may use the "Test signal" function in manual transponder scan first which will display S & Q on the selected transponder and cause the DiSEqC and/or motor commands to be sent.

Biggest issue -- If I find 11 TP's, during the scan process after scanning 11 of 11, it jumps to scanning 12 of 29. I think it keeps adding the default transponders, which gives me double channels.

Strangely it never happened on 103 or 93, just 97W.

This is because you had the "Use NIT" option turned on when you blind scanned which adds any transponders from the Network Information Table (NIT) of any transponder scanned that's not already on the satellite list. Since the transponder frequencies found using blind scan most likely differ slightly from the ones found in the NIT, this may cause duplicate channels in being scanned.

It only happened on 97W in your case as most non-provider satellites such as 103 or 93 don't have NIT enabled on their transponders. Make sure that "Use NIT" is turned off before scanning which will prevent this issue from occurring again.
 
Last edited:
Just cause Azbox Canada wrote the cheque doesnt mean Azbox Canada wrote the firmware. I highly doubt Azbox Canada has any programmers on the the payroll, I would guess they are sub contracted, and where are they Canada? doubt it. Asia? maybe, India ? maybe.

Does it matter? to some people. Does the quality differ? depends, sometimes it doesnt, sometimes it does.

Really depends how much you care about your product your selling. If you care alot you can find developers in Asia/India that do care, and it might even be slightly cheaper then here in NA. But if you dont care about the quality you can find developers that will work for a few $/hour, crazy cheap.

Funny thing is we wouldnt be having this conversation if the code was open source...

UDL
 
Even if the code was open source, you'd still have to worry about getting documentation for the chipset -- which I suspect is part of the reason for the problems in the first place. The Linux STB I use for example, the Amiko Alien 2 -- there must be more than half a dozen versions of Enigma2 released for it, and a few versions of Neutrino, but not a single one has even attempted to implement blind scan, because the documentation is proprietary. (There's nothing wrong with the blind scan on the factory-supplied software, which isn't in any way related to Enigma2, but the network media player part of it is slow and limited in codec support, and the network video streaming is buggy. Both of these work fine in E2 from what I've heard, but I just can't get past the lack of blind scan, and cold-booting to switch between OSs is painfully slow -- they must've used the cheapest flash memory imaginable!)
 
Did AzBox Canada, Opensat or the manufacturer in China write and test this firmware ?

Our development team is based right here in Canada where the AzBox miniMe American Edition firmware is coded. It is important to have a certain amount of development for any satellite receiver located in the same geographic area as where it is being marketed as there are always unique requirements and issues which are location specific. Although it is cheaper to hire overseas developers, a lot of time and effort can be lost in explaining to them our unique requirements and issues facing specific channels can be difficult to resolve without access to the actual satellite signal.

We are making significant progress in our upcoming firmware update which will increase performance, simplify the user interface and add new features. In the meantime, we would appreciate your feedback on the current 1.70 firmware version.
 
Our development team is based right here in Canada where the AzBox miniMe American Edition firmware is coded. It is important to have a certain amount of development for any satellite receiver located in the same geographic area as where it is being marketed as there are always unique requirements and issues which are location specific. Although it is cheaper to hire overseas developers, a lot of time and effort can be lost in explaining to them our unique requirements and issues facing specific channels can be difficult to resolve without access to the actual satellite signal.

We are making significant progress in our upcoming firmware update which will increase performance, simplify the user interface and add new features. In the meantime, we would appreciate your feedback on the current 1.70 firmware version.

I am not sure how to approach this correctly because you did give me this box as a gift but I will try to be gentle.

At one time I was a software engineer that developed customizations of a popular ERP software package. On my first project we had a team of employees from our company that tested any changes we made before the customer tried them in a test environment. The job of this QA team was to not only try to break my customization but to find embarrassing mistakes like typos and basic functionality that did not work.

There are basic functionality issues that should have been caught in house before any customer could buy this box. Your "team" has released several updates for this receiver yet never seem to have tested the remote for simple button functions. This is stuff that Opensat would have found in Alpha tests long before they shipped anything to you the distributor. For basic issues to get this far on a $200+ receiver seem amazing to me. Now maybe everything did work at Opensat before they went out of business and your "team" has done something to change functionality. Either way when you press a button that is labeled with a function and it does something else out of left field is embarrassing.

I did put team in quotes because I get the feeling your team may only have one member especially after reading some comments over at Ricks. I really don't care if this is a one or two man operation or if it operates out of a store in a strip mall . If you're a small business be proud of it, be honest and avoid exaggeration. If the products work people are going to buy them no matter the size of your operation.

I was going to post a review with some of the issues I found but I can post them here instead if you like
 
I am not sure how to approach this correctly because you did give me this box as a gift but I will try to be gentle.

I too was the recipient of a free contest receiver, and it does make you respectful of your review. The miniMe needs a serious overhaul of the software that drives it. The hardware is there and 4:2:2 puts a very nice picture on your tv. The software reminds me of the Ensigma 2 OS. That is for advanced users, the miniMe is even beyond that level.
I would like to see an OS like the Manhattan has, the easiest to use FTA box I have used. Menus flow into sub menus that make sense.
 
I am not sure how to approach this correctly because you did give me this box as a gift but I will try to be gentle.

At one time I was a software engineer that developed customizations of a popular ERP software package. On my first project we had a team of employees from our company that tested any changes we made before the customer tried them in a test environment. The job of this QA team was to not only try to break my customization but to find embarrassing mistakes like typos and basic functionality that did not work.

There are basic functionality issues that should have been caught in house before any customer could buy this box. Your "team" has released several updates for this receiver yet never seem to have tested the remote for simple button functions. This is stuff that Opensat would have found in Alpha tests long before they shipped anything to you the distributor. For basic issues to get this far on a $200+ receiver seem amazing to me. Now maybe everything did work at Opensat before they went out of business and your "team" has done something to change functionality. Either way when you press a button that is labeled with a function and it does something else out of left field is embarrassing.

I did put team in quotes because I get the feeling your team may only have one member especially after reading some comments over at Ricks. I really don't care if this is a one or two man operation or if it operates out of a store in a strip mall . If you're a small business be proud of it, be honest and avoid exaggeration. If the products work people are going to buy them no matter the size of your operation.

I was going to post a review with some of the issues I found but I can post them here instead if you like

Thank you for your initial feedback. We are aware that the LANG and SUBT keys on the remote control are not mapped correctly. A ticket is already open and this will be fixed in our next firmware update as for this release, we are focusing on simplification of the user interface and improving the overall user experience.

With a small development team comprising of two developers (one senior and one jr.), one QA and myself as the Business Systems Analyst (BSA), we can only focus on one main area for each firmware release. When we launched the AzBox miniMe American Edition just over 1 year ago, there were some critical performance issues when tuning channels, scanning certain transponders and doing blindscans which were resolved in our past firmware updates. Now that these are resolved, we are focusing on improving the user experience and adding new features for this upcoming firmware update.

You have to take what they say over at Ricks with a grain of salt. He has been doing everything in his power to discredit us ever since AzBox Canada was created and became the distributor of AzBox products for the Canadian market. We tried to collaborate with him in the past in order to try and improve AzBox products for the North American market but he simply sees us as a competitor and has even banned us from posting in his forum and actively deletes any posts made by members supporting our efforts. :eek:

Regardless of this, we remain committed in improving the quality of AzBox products for the North American market and appreciate the feedback and support from the loyal users of our products right here on SatelliteGuys.US.
 
Last edited:
***

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 2)