Well the seller finally shipped the receiver and it was received yesterday via USPS in only three days from CA to PA. The seller said he was out of town and was sorry for the delay.
Condition:
Remote is brand new (no scratches or marks and has the thin plastic covering the buttons). The receiver also has the thin plastic on the faceplate and is in very good condition. A small scratch appears on the top, but since I received this receiver for only $49 I am not complaining since it was sold in used condition. It also came with a brand new 256MB flash drive.
Setup:
I disconnected my Coolsat 4000 Pro receiver and attached the Coolsat 7100 DVR receiver in its place. I saw that EchoStar was selected and channels such as Showtime and HBO were entered showing that this was probably used for hacking and once the channels were no longer available he decided to sell the box. A password was needed to enter the menu selections. I tried "0000" and it didn't work. After becoming frustrated I logged onto Satellite Guys and discovered that the password is probably "0103". I tried it and it worked.
What I like about the Coolsat 7100 DVR receiver:
1) Component output
2) Excellent video quality. Using composite video output it looked better than the Coolsat 4000.
3) DVR Feature
4) When you press a channel such as "1" it will showe for example "1 - FOX News". The Coolsat 4000 doesn't do this.
5) Blind Scan - I performed a blind scan on both Galaxy 17 (C-Band) and AMC-4 (KU-Band) and in both cases it discovered additional channels that the Coolsat 4000 didn't pickup. I prefer the way the Coolsat 4000 scans in the channels, but this is ok if it sees additional channels.
6) Remote - It also operates my Coolsat 4000 receiver.
7) Graphics - Nice, but I miss a few things the Coolsat 4000 displayed. I wish you could add a .jpg image in the background of the menus instead of displaying the flowers. I don't know why they didn't even display a satellite dish in the background like the Coolsat 4000 Pro.
8) Multi-Picture - This is lacking in the Coolsat 4000. It is a nice feature, but it could be improved.
9) 10,000 channels can be stored in memory compared to 5,000 with the Coolsat 4000.
10) Front panel display - Lacking on the Coolsat 4000. This is nice to have, but I wish more characters were available to display the full channel name and satellite.
11) Signal beeping - Can be enabled for adjusting dish. Very nice and something lacking in the Coolsat 4000.
EDIT: 12) Front AND rear USB port.
I still need to learn some of it's features like the DVR, but overall I feel it was an excellent purchase.
Questions:
1) Could I export my channel list from the Coolsat 4000 and import it into the Coolsat 7100 to save setup time?
2) I downloaded the latest firmware from Coolsat, but the extension is different and STB Tool did not reconize the file type. What could I use?
