Can I ask one question, but please let me preface this by saying I am NOT trying to receive anything illegally. Lately I've mostly been using TBS tuner cards to receive satellite signals and I find that about the only time I ever hook up my receiver anymore is to check signal strengths. But the one thing my old receiver will not do is blind scan DVB-S2 signals. I have thought a few times about maybe getting one of the really cheap receivers for just the once in a blue moon that I want to blind scan a satellite and check signal strength/quality, and was hoping to find information on how well they work for this purpose. I frankly don't care if the receiver is pretty much a piece of crap for actual viewing, as long as it's CHEAP, has halfway decent blindscan capability (especially on DVB-S2), and can display signal strength and quality on some kind of relative scale.
But the impression I get is that discussion of some of these boxes is now forbidden because they can potentially be used for piracy. I understand that, but I was under the impression that these really only worked as piracy boxes in other countries that used certain types of keys that we don't use here. Our DBS systems are so different from the rest of the world's, and even 20 years ago I remember hearing that it was a fool's game to try to pirate signals here because they change the encryption so often that you'd pay more trying to pirate signals than by just subscribing. So I'm wondering, even if some of these boxes do support piracy in Europe or Asia or Australia or someplace else in the world, you can't use them for that here, right? I basically just want to know whether if I were to go ahead and buy one at some point whether I could be accused of having a pirate box if I only ever used it in the USA.
Again, I'm not trying to buy a pirate box, my goal is simply to spend as little as possible on a device I can take with me out to a dish while trying to tune it in and where I won't feel too bad if it fails in a couple years or accidentally gets broken. I don't care if it gets AC3 audio, I don't care if the color sucks, and I definitely don't care if it can get encrypted signals, I just want CHEAP and preferably legal in the USA, if not in all parts of the world. As an aside, it kind of strikes me odd that inline satellite meters haven't fallen in price - if you can get a cheapo receiver for around $20-$50 then why does anything other than a very basic, non-smart satellite meter cost so much more?
EDIT: That iSmart receiver may be a solution, if anyone gets one I'd be interested to know how well it blind scans.