I bought a new Openbox S10 and..

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I have found through many e-bay "adventures" it is better to pay a little bit more and buy one from a dealer. You will have support after the sale. And you are getting what you expect.
 
I have found through many e-bay "adventures" it is better to pay a little bit more and buy one from a dealer. You will have support after the sale. And you are getting what you expect.
I have been doing business on eBay since 1999, and those are my thoughts exactly. And I must admit it is a lesson I learned the hard way.
 
With these newer receivers, I 100 percent agree. (though mine for all its quirks came from a dealer, not Ebay.) For the "classic" older receivers that someone may want for a specific reason (reviews here, specific features, recommendations, etc) and have been around awhile, the Ebay site seems to do fairly well. The cost is low this way.
 
I have found through many e-bay "adventures" it is better to pay a little bit more and buy one from a dealer. You will have support after the sale. And you are getting what you expect.
Well, maybe. Mine from a WELL known dealer was bad. They kept on attempting different "things" for me to try to get it working. It never did. That took almost three weeks. They finally agreed for me to send it back. That was expensive. Now after being at their location for over two weeks, I still am having a problem with them answering my question, "what have you found out?" It has been a trying time with this "bad" unit. What I am expecting is they will claim it is OK and want me to pay big bucks again to get it shipped back. If that happens it is going to be one expensive S9 and a useless pile of junk.:mad:

RT.
 
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Well I have been messing with this thing some more and I have to say that the DVR feature is pretty sad. You can rewind a live show but you can't rewind then press record. If you try that it just deletes the rewind buffer and begins to record at whatever point is LIVE. For instance, I am watching something. The time is 8:45pm. So I sit there and watch another ten minutes and I think to myself, "hey, this is pretty interesting, I want to rewind and record this." The time is now 8:55pm. I press the rewind button and rewind 10 minutes backwards in time to the 8:45 point then press record to record all the material that was transmitted to me starting at the 8:45pm and everything else forward of that time. So, it is now 8:55pm, I rewind to 8:45pm. So far, so good. Then I press record. BOOM... It totally dumps the buffered video, it's gone forever. It then begins record only everything that was received ONLY from the actual real time that I pressed the record button at 8:55pm.

So if you don't record it as it happens you have no chance to record it at all. The rewind feature is only good for viewing.

And yes, I saw the option in the menu about recording and timeshift. I can't be clear on the meaning of it since it's in Engrish but it says "Timeshift to Record" and I have it set to ON. I ~assume~ that this option is supposed to do what I am wanting to do. But I can't be sure because it's in Engrish. :mad:

My pc, has a timeshift buffer and I make extensive use of it. I very, very frequently rewind something then press record, it's a life saver for me.

And with the clock kookiness, I am out of luck on timed recordings. I wanted to set it up to record the yoga program on RTV every morning at 6:30am while I'm watching the Beverly Hillbillies, so I can watch it later in the day when there is less on worth watching. Since MeTV moved Hawaii 5.0 to 11am I now have a dead zone at 4pm to 5pm that I can use to watch recordings. I'm wishing now that I had a dual C-band LNB on my big dish, I could do something cool with that, I could watch MeTV one and two (or record) at the same time..

Anyway, the S10, isn't cutting it very much.

Also, it seems to be ignoring my settings on the dishes. I have two dishes on it, a USALS motor and a fixed dish for 123w.
ALL the satellites except 123w are set to USALS, no discque switch and no 22kz switch. The dish for 123w is set for NO MOTOR, no discque switch and 22kz ON.

When I do a blind scan of all satellites it moves across the sky and picks up everything just fine until it reaches 105w then it no longer sees anything except the channels on 123w. It doesn't see past 105.

It also said it scanned in 91BEV and it claims that FSTV is on 91BEV. Apparently that's a Canadian pizza satellite. I don't know how it even decided to scan that satellite in the first place and I don't understand why it thinks that a channel that's only available on 123 is now also on 91. Something fonky is going on there... :confused:

I just don't understand why this thing doesn't see any satellites west of 105. 105 and everything east of it comes in great. When I tell it to go to 83, boom, it goes there and it picks up RTV as good as if not better than my other, fixed dish does. 97w comes in great too, so does 101.

When I aligned the dish I used my fancy little meter AND I put the squealy meter on it. I discovered that the fancy meter is good to give me an absolute 100% confirmation that I am on the right satellite and the channel is coming in but the little $10 squealy meter is much better for ultra fine tuning, the needle is very sensitive and responds instantly to a feather touch. So it pays to use both meters.

If I'm getting everything between 83w and 105w then what the heck would cause it to not pick up anything west of 105??

I did confirm that my motor is tilted to the right angle according the my location and per the little Engrish booklet that came with it.
I just don't understand why it only sees half the sky. There is nothing in the way, where the dish is, trees aren't an issue. And I have other dishes aimed at 123 and 125 and they work just fine.

As far as I've seen this thing is pretty limited and lacking. It serves a basic purpose for now though and I paid for it so I'm keeping it. It's not totally useless but it doesn't even come close to what I really want, a full feature Azbox with S2, ATSC and DVR all in one box.

Maybe someday someone will fix the firmware in the Openbox and it will become a little more useful..

I don't see there's much I can do about it except live with it as it is. But I am really confused as to why it only sees half the satellites..

Thanks.. :)


edit: something else comes to mind. I'm wondering if it's possible to add a second LNB to the side of the center one on my motorized dish for the weird skew of 103w? And somehow in the motor settings configure it so that the dish points at say, 105 or 107 but then switches to draw on the side mounted LNB which would then be pointed at 103w? If that makes any sense.. Like, your head is pointed towards one direction but your eyes are looking at something to the side rather than straight forward. If that makes any sense.. :eek:
Or maybe I'm off on a hair brained tangent here?? :eek:
 
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Well I have been messing with this thing some more and I have to say that the DVR feature is pretty sad. You can rewind a live show but you can't rewind then press record. If you try that it just deletes the rewind buffer and begins to record at whatever point is LIVE. For instance, I am watching something. The time is 8:45pm. So I sit there and watch another ten minutes and I think to myself, "hey, this is pretty interesting, I want to rewind and record this." The time is now 8:55pm. I press the rewind button and rewind 10 minutes backwards in time to the 8:45 point then press record to record all the material that was transmitted to me starting at the 8:45pm and everything else forward of that time. So, it is now 8:55pm, I rewind to 8:45pm. So far, so good. Then I press record. BOOM... It totally dumps the buffered video, it's gone forever. It then begins record only everything that was received ONLY from the actual real time that I pressed the record button at 8:55pm.

As far as I know, all FTA DVRs work this way. The second you hit record, you wipe out the timeshift recording. The work-around is NOT to hit the record button. Just turn off the receiver after the program you want recorded has ended. Disconnect the hard drive from the Openbox and connect it to a PC. The timeshift file will be there, and can be copied over to the PC.

Do not turn the Openbox back on with that drive connected until you have either copied the timeshift recording to the PC or renamed it, as it will be overwritten.

The Visionsats work the same way, and I assume other FTA DVRs do as well.
 
As far as I know, all FTA DVRs work this way. The second you hit record, you wipe out the timeshift recording. The work-around is NOT to hit the record button. Just turn off the receiver after the program you want recorded has ended. Disconnect the hard drive from the Openbox and connect it to a PC. The timeshift file will be there, and can be copied over to the PC.

Do not turn the Openbox back on with that drive connected until you have either copied the timeshift recording to the PC or renamed it, as it will be overwritten.

The Visionsats work the same way, and I assume other FTA DVRs do as well.

Oh man, that's a major bummer! But I understand what you are saying to do. I had to read it a few times over but I understand the instructions now. I don't understand why you can't go backwards in time then start recording from that point, my PC theater app can do exactly that.

But I guess that's just how it is. At least I know how to deal with it now thanks to you.. :)

edit: Oh, two other things. I found out how to add a program to the scheduler for recording. I have it set to record the yoga show every morning at 6am to 6:30. It has the option to record every day or once. But with the everyday option apparently it will also record on Saturday and Sunday. I see no way to set it to record on weekdays only. So when I go to sleep do I have to leave the tuner on or off for the recording to happen? I don't see how it can possibly work if it's powered off, it loses the time when it turns on and the "boot" process takes a minute so it would mess up and miss the first minute of the show.

And lastly, in defense of RTV. I watched RTV on the Openbox using a tiny little 7" LCD TV. The signal is in 480i which in reality is only 240 lines high. Pretty old timey yesteryear to be honest. BUT, when viewed on that little screen and the screen is a true 480i screen, the picture looks ~OK~. It looks about as good as TV looked in 1980 which is about the time frame of most of their shows anyway. But when I watch RTV (be it 83w or 87w) on my flatscreen Vizio which is a 720p screen (it also does 1080i) it looks ~horrible~ and I do mean, horrible.....

But if you are going to watch a channel of shows 30-40 years old on a TV that is 20 years old, it looks ok.
 
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Well I took a shot at programmed recording this morning.

This clock thing is hopeless. It doesn't work right no matter what you set anything to, period.

If you set the clock to MANUAL, that's fine. For instance, when you tune to FSTV they reset the clock to be several minutes off of the real time. Not cool.. Why, I do not know but their clock is wrong and it changes the tuner clock to be wrong along with their clock.

RTV, does not send clock info so when you change to RTV and your clock is wrong, it stays wrong.

When you power up the tuner, no matter what clock settings you have selected, be it manual or automatic, the clock is ALWAYS reset to Jan 01, 2010, 100% of the time. No matter what.

If you power up on RTV your clock will sit stuck on Jan 01, 2010, 5:00pm and will just start counting time forward from that date as if that is the actual date and time.

If you power up on RT (Russia Today) your clock will start out at Jan 01, 2010, 5:00pm but within 60 seconds it will reset itself to the correct date and time.

If you power up on FSTV it does the same thing as it would on RT except it's off by several minutes which is the fault of what FSTV is sending down to your clock.

If you set your clock to manual and power up on RT your clock will NOT automatically update from the RT clock. It will start at 1/1/10 5pm.
Setting the clock to manual disables it's ability to automatically update from any source.

You can set the clock automatically by going to RT then changing it from auto to manual update to prevent any channels from changing the time automatically. But, the clock will not keep the time on a power up.

Powering up is 100% fatal to the clock... :mad:

So I programmed the tuner to record the yoga show on RTV at 6am. I sat up all night, as usual and just before I went off to bed I noticed the clock was off by quite a few hours. There wasn't time to change over to RT then back again (waiting on the dish to move) so when the show started I just pressed the record button twice and it came up with an option to set the record time. I entered 30 minutes and then went off to bed.

When I got up this afternoon I checked and saw that the tuner had powered itself off along with the USB disk. The disk turns on and off with the tuner for some reason. I don't know how it does it but it does. I guess that's not a bad thing.

I plugged the disk into my pc and I found the file it recorded. It saved it as a .mpg file and my pc played it back just fine. The sound was pretty much in sync and it looked as I expected it would, like a 1980 VHS recording. It is what it is.. :rolleyes:

The other night I used it to record the new IRT Deadliest Roads. It recorded it into two files, both are .mpg. One is 1gb and the other is like 487mb. :( I'm not liking that it breaks the file up like that. How the heck do you put it back into one file? Or even more important, how do you prevent it from doing that in the first place?

I saw another recording I made a few days ago, a test recording of something on RT. I had just let it record for an hour or two. The file is a .ts file and it was like 2.7gb in size.. I would prefer the files stay in one piece but I would like to have them in the .mpg type, I think the .mpg files are supposed to be smaller?? I don't know.

What I've come to realize is that there are no automatic recordings on this thing.
EVERYTIME before I want something recorded I have to make sure to tune in to RT to set the clock properly then change satellites/channel over to (in this case) RTV so that the timer can then record my yoga show. If I don't do all these manual steps, every single time, the so called "automatic" recording won't happen.

The clock in the Openbox tuners is a shabby sham and a total joke. I see lots of other people complaining about the Openbox clock so it's not just me. I'm here to say that these tuners are designed to be a pirate tuner that gets it's clock from pirated pizza satellites. That they get FTA at all amazes me. I'm sure they just threw in the FTA ability to avoid the legal problems of selling a pirate box. :mad:

I can work with this, I can deal with it but it's really a far cry from what I want and what I need. Once I have all it's little quirks figured out I'll adapt and deal with it. But I certainly would not buy another one of these things nor would I recommend one to anyone. That's MY opinion.
Maybe I'm stupid and can't figure out how to work the thing. Or maybe not. One thing I am not, is happy. But I'll deal with it. It's mine, I paid for it and I have to figure it out and ways around it's many limitations.

One thing I must say in it's defense, if you don't care about recording stuff, if you are the sort of person who only views and never records, then there is no reason why you can't get a lot of good use out of this tuner. The tuner part works great. It's the clock that really burns my backside... But maybe you can figure out a way to fix the clock. If you do, PLEASE clue me in!


Oh, and another thing, I powered the thing down and discovered the timeshift file. I was able to play it back on my pc and save it to my pc and I can cut and save the pieces I want out of it. So the previous suggestion about doing that was correct and extremely helpful. I'm actually going to do that again in a little bit, something is buffering now that I didn't hit record in time for. So I can power down, plug it into the pc and save it. :)


I still have not figured out why the tuner only picks up half the sky though.. :(
 
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when pansats were semi-new (the 3500sd's & the 2500a's) the clock didnt work... as firmwares came out it worked later on.... the reason that they stated was the conversion of 50 cycles to 60 cycles for a real time clock.... the solution was software clock to overcome the hardware clock... <<< im working on memory from that, they may be a bit skewed but it was close to the problem
 
I just want to add that I bought an S10 from the same seller. Like yours, it came with a Euro plug and Euro sat list. Mine does not get hot as you describe, maybe it's because you're driving a H-H motor with yours? I'd be somewhat concerned about the heat issue.

According to the widely published clone test for these mine is not a clone, so yours probably isn't a clone either.
 
I just bought an S10 it has the Euro plug on it. The adapter wasn't good so they are sending another. Also the manual didn't come with it so waiting for it & the new adapter to arrive. I'm going to be using it for NBC HD mux and the PBS HD channels on 125W. I wish I could get the other 3 nets in the clear. I'm just hooking it up to 2 Ku dishes right now maybe a C/Ku dish at some time in the future. I have the feed for it. But the dish I was going to use was torn up when I was moving it.
 
How about one of those programmable learning remotes? I have one from radio shack thats probably 20yrs old, controls up to 8 devices, and even has timers built in. Surely they still have them, or the Harmony remote has a model that will. Teach it the 'record' button on your fta remote, set a timer, point it at the fta box and let it turn your recorder on-the remote has its own clock. And it's accurate! There;s usually more than one way to skin a cat. I used mine to have my IRD move my big dish , tune a channel and then turn on the vcr , record a program then turn it off again, all while I slept. And if it was an analog channel, I could have it move the dish back to a Videocipher channel when it was done recording, so I wouldn't lose my authorization for programming.
 
How well does it work?

It seems fine. The box hasn't crashed or anything like that. I think the blindscanning needs improvement, but that's probably a hardware issue. I feel it misses a lot of feeds. It's an HD receiver that does S2 for $100, so I really can't complain too much.
 
How about one of those programmable learning remotes? I have one from radio shack thats probably 20yrs old, controls up to 8 devices, and even has timers built in. Surely they still have them, or the Harmony remote has a model that will. Teach it the 'record' button on your fta remote, set a timer, point it at the fta box and let it turn your recorder on-the remote has its own clock. And it's accurate! There;s usually more than one way to skin a cat. I used mine to have my IRD move my big dish , tune a channel and then turn on the vcr , record a program then turn it off again, all while I slept. And if it was an analog channel, I could have it move the dish back to a Videocipher channel when it was done recording, so I wouldn't lose my authorization for programming.


Woa.......... This, sounds cool.......... :)
 
The other night I used it to record the new IRT Deadliest Roads. It recorded it into two files, both are .mpg. One is 1gb and the other is like 487mb. :( I'm not liking that it breaks the file up like that. How the heck do you put it back into one file? Or even more important, how do you prevent it from doing that in the first place?

I saw another recording I made a few days ago, a test recording of something on RT. I had just let it record for an hour or two. The file is a .ts file and it was like 2.7gb in size.. I would prefer the files stay in one piece but I would like to have them in the .mpg type, I think the .mpg files are supposed to be smaller?? I don't know.ay to fix the clock. If you do, PLEASE clue me in!

Most PVRs break the recording down into smaller segments in order to be able to record on FAT32-formatted drives. FAT32 has a file size limit of 4 gigs, so I don't know why they break it down into 1 gig segments. But that is why they break the files into smaller pieces. I have no idea why it is not breaking down the TS files into smaller pieces. Must be another bug in the firmware.

I use TS Doctor to reconstruct the segments into a single file. It works with files from my Visionsat and from the Openbox.

Oh, and another thing, I powered the thing down and discovered the timeshift file. I was able to play it back on my pc and save it to my pc and I can cut and save the pieces I want out of it. So the previous suggestion about doing that was correct and extremely helpful. I'm actually going to do that again in a little bit, something is buffering now that I didn't hit record in time for. So I can power down, plug it into the pc and save it. :)

Glad it worked for you. The trick is keeping yourself from automatically hitting the record button when you see a program you want to keep that has already started ;) ...
 
All this is very interesting, though useless to me.

Dee-Ann, I hate to bring this up, but you read a LOT here on Satguys, and the "problems" with the clock have been posted over and over and over. You were aware of this BEFORE you bought your OpenBox S10, so ... why are you complaining? I've had my OpenBox S9 since right around Thanksgiving last year, and still think it's the VERY best receiver (not withstanding the price) that can be had, regardless of clocks working or not.

You keep giving, over and over and over, your demands that ONE receiver do OTA, HD, S2, Timed recordings, plug in the coffee pot AND make the bed. Let's be reasonable here, it is what it is, an HD receiver that also does S2 AND is a PVR. There are a couple of programs that I enjoy that come on at night just as I am going to bed. I wait for them to come on, then set the recorder to record two hours, then go to sleep.

I DO 'feel for you' that this isn't your perfect receiver, but then again, this only cost around $100.

Find the remote that turbosat mentioned, either the old one (if they are still around) or get the newer version that I have seen advertised around.

Also, set the timer on your remote to come on a minute or two early giving your dish a chance to move, then fast forward the first part of the programming that you don't want to watch. This sounds like a delicious alternative to missing out on something that you can't live without.

BTW, at my last check of time, there are still only 24 hours to a day, where are you finding the time to watch all that you record? (smile)

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