Boy do I get kinda lucky on Craigslist with Satellite stuff..

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pro96

pro96

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Jul 18, 2005
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While browsing craigslist yesterday night, I found a seller thru Craigslist selling a Dreambox 500s satellite box. Asking price $50.00.

dreambox_dm_500_s552.jpg


I message the person and said if you come right now you can have it for $25 bucks. It was like 10pm last night locally, so although it was kinda late and risky I said watta heck. Well turned out the seller was like 2 miles from me (LOL) so i was there in a few minutes.

Like i've done in the past, I do not take exact change with the intentions that the seller will not have change. I told him, you have change for $40.00? and of course he did not, so he settled for $20.00.

Asked him why he was selling, he said it was too complicated for him to figure out due to not having the original user manual.

So walked away paying $20.00 and went straight home.

Anyone here have this box in use? how do you like it?
Didnt really have a chance to look for the user manual last night nor this am since I had to be at the office so damn early. Does it have blind scan? Also noticed that there are only composite video/audio out and scart out. How well will the scart work if I can get me an adapter (Scart to yPbPr) seen on ebay.

Any input on 500s users will be appreciated.
 
I dont see blind scan on the specs. Full service scan is probably just a transponder scan

The Dreambox 500S is the smallest Linux satellite TV receiver, with 1 x Smartcard-Reader.

1. 250 MHz IBM PowerPC Processor (350 Mips)
2. 2 LED status
3. Linux Operating System
4. Full automatic service scan
5. Supports directly bouquet-lists (indirect unlimited)
6. Supports multiple LNB-Switching control (supports DiSEqC)
7. 1 x Smartcard-Reader
8. Unlimited channel lists for TV/Radio
9. SPDI/F nterface for digital bit stream out (AC-3 / DTS)
10. MPEG2 Hardware decoding
11. Channel-change time < 1 second
12. Fully adaptable OSD in many languages (skin-support)
13. 100Mbit full duplex Ethernet Interface
14. Supports EPG (electronic program guide)
15. 1 x Scart-interfaces (fully controlled by software)

here is their website
Startseite | dream-multimedia-tv.de
 
Thanks Iceberg.. true to been small, this is the smallest sized FTA receiver I have ever used. In fact, its the size of an OTA Digital converter box. hehe.
 
pro96 said:
Like i've done in the past, I do not take exact change with the intentions that the seller will not have change. I told him, you have change for $40.00? and of course he did not, so he settled for $20.00.
Click to expand...
Someone once asked me in what context do I use the term Cheesedick. I will simply refer all future inquiries to this posting as I shake my head ruefully. :no
 
riffjim4069 said:
Someone once asked me in what context do I use the term Cheesedick. I will simply refer all future inquiries to this posting as I shake my head ruefully. :no
Click to expand...

hehe, don't hate caz u didnt buy this
 
redilyn said:
I have a Dm500, i think its great.

Not only can you use it for fta you can also use it as a streaming box to play movies from your computer to your tv.

If you decide you want to sell it let me know :)
Click to expand...

Wow thanks, finally an end user with this unit. Thanks for that info. Can't wait to get home and see what this baby can do.

As far as selling.. ummm, prob not any time soon.
 
I love dreambox's I have multiple. they are the best thing since sliced bread.

the dm500 is heavily cloned, stay away from gemini images (firmware) until you know its a clone or authentic.

the 500 does not support blindscan, so you;ll need to make yourself a good /var/etc/satellites.xml file with all the correct tp's in it.

get it networked, its alot easier to work on as you can ftp and telnet in. plus use the webinterface. you can even stream content to and from the box to the pc.
 
Cool, thanks for the info so far guys.
 
many of the clones start with the same MAC address, thats how gemini was killing the bootloaders, if the MAC was fake they nuked it.

problem is the 500 is really popular and the manufacturer stopped production about 2 years ago, so clone manufacterrs picked up the slack. some better then others, no quality control. some are better then the orig, most arent.
 
updatelee said:
many of the clones start with the same MAC address, thats how gemini was killing the bootloaders, if the MAC was fake they nuked it.

problem is the 500 is really popular and the manufacturer stopped production about 2 years ago, so clone manufacterrs picked up the slack. some better then others, no quality control. some are better then the orig, most arent.
Click to expand...

I don't know if mine is clone or authentic, but for 20 bones can't complaint. I did some FTA scanning and works excellent. And even though it don't have s-video not component out, the PQ via composite is really clean compared to other fta brands I have tried.
 
there are tests to tell, yes its defn a clone. unfortunatly there are clones that will pass those same tests. so basically if your mainboard looks like its a clone, then it is, if it doesnt, it still might be

if the mac address is wrong, its a clone, if its right, it still might be a clone

clones mac address sometimes are wrong, they should be starting with 00:09:34 as that range is assigned to dream multimedia. many clones dont though and thats how gemini was identifing them.

newer dreambox's use the dreamcrypt card to tell if its genuine, dreamcrypt is a CA card that dmm tried to get popular with providers, it failed and they had no more use for it till someone realized 'hey only we have these not clones' so new dreambox's like the dm800 and dm8000 include the card glued in on an iso on the mainboard.

well clones are showing up now with those too now, so....

its a cat and mouse game.

if you know you have a clone stay away from gemini, if you suspect its a clone stay away from gemini, if you know for a fact its genuine give gemini a try, it has some nice features like manually entering in the vpid/apid/pcr handy for those hidden channels you sometimes find.

btw checkout dvbsnoop, it can be installed on dreambox's easy and has some incredible features, think tsreader in a command console.
 
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