azbox premuim + now on flea bay

I have had an AZBox Premium Plus on order for many months. At first I had ordered a second standard Premium receiver, but the retailer I was working with got screwed over a bit and Opensat (or his wholesaler) sent him a load of Elites instead, so I was still waiting for him to get a shipment of Premiums when they announced the Premium Plus.

I emailed my retailer and asked him to upgrade the order to a Premium PLUS model. I am still waiting patiently.

Beyond this ordering dilemna, I primarily want the AZBox Premium PLUS because of the dual tuner option. You see, I plan to set up two separate motorized dishes. One for Ku Band and one for C Band as a "mini-BUD". Having dual tuners in one box versus two separate receiver units would please me for this purpose.

As for the blind scan capabilities, I guess I could live with a 5-10 minute scan time if the channel and TP accuracy was exceptional. Anything over 10 minutes is not very useful for feed hunting. Sure, it can be utilized, but it really detracts from the fun as you might miss out on a great deal of feed captures if you want to scan several sats searching for a game or a news program in a single sitting or during one evening or something like that. You would be spending most of your time watching the box scan rather than watching the programs.

It might not be so bad if you are trying to pull up a game that lasts for a couple of hours or more, but if you are trying to log an impromptu news item, you are going to miss most of it. Since I am more into following the news feeds as opposed to a sports feed, a long blind scan time would really be a detraction for me.

Watching TV in itself is not very high on my priority list, but if I have a FTA setup that was really good (or great) and have at least 24 channels that I am enthralled with so much that if I am stuck at home and inside due to bad weather, that I could have something to watch if I desired, then I would be very happy.

I guess my summation is, if OpenSAT can produce the PLUS with a fair balance between accuracy of the scan and time of the scan, that will be reasonable. However, if it is a 15 minute scan and the results are lame, then I will be very disappointed. Did I say very? How about extremely.

How about this NEW receiver...

It automatically aligns your motor and dish to every signal from the furthest eastern side of your horizon to the furthest west. It automatically knows the precise limits based upon your motor's hardware and set software limits if you need to set them. All you need to do is properly align the dish at the true south satellite for best reception there and the auto-blind-scan takes over.

It scans every 0.2 degrees of the horizon to seek out the maximum signal quality positioning of the motor, then scans each satellite for all bands and fine tunes the motor for the optimum reception on each TP. Once every satellite and TP is logged into its database, the receiver pans back across the horizon and detects (scans) all channels on the logged sats and TPs.

When the total scan is completed, it organizes all the satellites according to their orbital location in either ascending or descending order as well as every TP on those satellites.

When all the scanning and organizing is completed, the receiver selects the genres of all channels that you desire and sets up favorite lists for you automatically. You have to enter specific criteria during the initial setup of the receiver to enter the categories you desire for these fav groups, though. Such as language, and genre type etc. (In other words, you have to create the categories yourself, but the receiver will fill the categories with channels afterwards).

When your receiver is in standby mode, it constantly pans the horizon and searches for updates to all satellites for changes in TPs, symbol rates etc. It won't delete any entries, but will add new updates and then prompt you to save them when you turn the unit back on.

This receiver does all of this within the time that it requires your motor to pan from one end of your horizon to the other and then back again.

What an awesome receiver! Don't you wish that you had one? Don't you wish that something like this really existed? Me TOO! :D

RADAR
 
How about this NEW receiver...

It automatically aligns your motor and dish to every signal from the furthest eastern side of your horizon to the furthest west. It automatically knows the precise limits based upon your motor's hardware and set software limits if you need to set them. All you need to do is properly align the dish at the true south satellite for best reception there and the auto-blind-scan takes over.

It scans every 0.2 degrees of the horizon to seek out the maximum signal quality positioning of the motor, then scans each satellite for all bands and fine tunes the motor for the optimum reception on each TP. Once every satellite and TP is logged into its database, the receiver pans back across the horizon and detects (scans) all channels on the logged sats and TPs.

When the total scan is completed, it organizes all the satellites according to their orbital location in either ascending or descending order as well as every TP on those satellites.

When all the scanning and organizing is completed, the receiver selects the genres of all channels that you desire and sets up favorite lists for you automatically. You have to enter specific criteria during the initial setup of the receiver to enter the categories you desire for these fav groups, though. Such as language, and genre type etc. (In other words, you have to create the categories yourself, but the receiver will fill the categories with channels afterwards).

When your receiver is in standby mode, it constantly pans the horizon and searches for updates to all satellites for changes in TPs, symbol rates etc. It won't delete any entries, but will add new updates and then prompt you to save them when you turn the unit back on.

This receiver does all of this within the time that it requires your motor to pan from one end of your horizon to the other and then back again.

What an awesome receiver! Don't you wish that you had one? Don't you wish that something like this really existed? Me TOO! :D

RADAR
I'll buy this RADARSAT in a heart beat :up:D:D
 
I am curious for mine to show up so I can see what does. Not sure I will unpack it and try it right off the bat. but probably will as it will be too hard to look at it and not try it.

chuck
 
nope. Have the elite.

Dont want to drop more money in a new azbox if it has a very long blind scan time. Yes it has 2 tuner capability (only one tuner is in there) but unless the blind scan is decent enough speed to have the premium + as the only receiver I'll stick with my elite (for 4:2:2/HD) and CS5000 (for blind scanning)

rodger that :up
 
if it was possible to have two motor set ups running at the same time off the one receiver.now i would buy that in a heart beat.

Mapleleaf,

That appears to be ONE of the claimed advantages of the AZBox Premium PLUS model and why I am going to try one. When mine arrives and I get a second tuner for it, I will confirm whether this works or not.

RADAR
 
Well I sold my Elite HD over the weekend.. lately have not had much use, so why not let someone else enjoy it.

Not planning in buying the + anytime soon neither .. (well we'll see huh)
 
For those who are boycotting Rick's forum, I wanted to note here that he says that he tested the Plus, and it has issues with high-bitrate and other finicky feeds that were long ago fixed on the original two models. He contacted AZBox about it and they were as surprised as he was. He's confident that they'll eventually fix them. Me, I'm glad I haven't spent any money on such a screwy company.
 
also there is two tuners but they say its looped out between them.

Where did you see this? I don't understand why or how they would do this? Is it a real loop that you could remove, and insert your own coax. I really want an Azbox that I can put Ku into one tuner and C-band into the other. I was planning on buying a 2nd Elite, and pulling the tuner out of the 2nd one, but then I thought, that if I could get blind scan with 2 tuners, I might invest in that. But if they are tied together, I guess I'll go back to looking for a 2nd used Elite.
 
I really want an Azbox that I can put Ku into one tuner and C-band into the other.
Had a P+ since December.
You can loop one into the other (one of three ways to hook them up) or set them up separately just as you stated and access them individually in the menu.

The problems with DVB-S2 signals are related to FEC's over 3/4, I imagine it will be corrected. This box has improved with every FW release - just like the other two.

Blind scan is a little slower than my Pansat 9200 w/S2+ card but can be configured to top out at 12200 - remember it's also searching for 4:2:2.
 
scan speed

still patiently waiting for someone to scan 91 or 105 at night when there is feeds to let us know how fast or slow the blind scan is.
Not 91 or 105, wanted something with lots of channels.
02/03/10 - from Ricks site:
Ran a head to head scan on G19 Ku, with the Azbox p+ on the Pansat 9200 loop out - watched via pip/split screen. Did H and V separately so the pol wouldn't be changed midstream. All channels and tp's for the sat were removed on both boxes . Had to start one a split second before the other as pressing both ok buttons at the same time did not work.
Amusingly, the Panny froze in the scan screen on the first start and had to be rebooted.
• On the horizontal pol, the Pansat beat the Az by just under 3 minutes.
The Az found 9 tp's to the Pan's 8, both found 46 channels.
• On vertical, again the Pansat was just under 3 min.s faster.
The Pan found 13 tp's to Az's 12, but the Az found 3 more channels, 88 vs 85.

file


It's an apples to oranges comparison, but should provide a reference point.

file


For feed hunting the Azbox can be "sped up".
 
Just my opinion on the Premium Plus
I bought mine from Germany and it has 2 tuners
and they work independently basically is like having 2 receivers
I set up C-Band on one and a motor on the other one and they each work on their own. You could set up Tuner A with a motor and Tuner B with a
different motor but i did not try that, i am pretty sure it will work. You can only
blindscan one tuner at the time, it will not let you do both at the same time.
I tried every possible combination but no go. You can not record on one tuner
and watch tv on the other tuner, again i tried every possible thing but no go.
In regards to the blindscan it's not bed compared to other receivers, the
problem is channel download, it will not only scan channels from the Transponders that it found in the blindscan but it will scan the entire database for that particular Satellite. I would recommend when setting up
the receiver for the first time do not use the Satellites in the database,
set up your own and set up a dummy transponder not a live one, the receiver
will work nicely. Do not delete all the Satellites in the database, make sure
you leave at least one. I set up mine that way and it has never rebooted.

Tede
 
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