I bought a new Openbox S10 and..

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I'm not an electronic technician but it's not unrealistic to expect an fta receiver to keep better time than a dollar store digital watch. I have a 20 yr old vcr that can be unplugged for an hour and when I plug it back in it has the correct time.

Seems like most FTA receivers can't keep proper time even if they're set to "manual" Is that correct?
 
There are a few out there
GeosatPros
Visionsat
Manhattan
Coolsat 8000/8100
I thought the newer Pansats did too
 
I still say I've seen multiple people say that recent firmwares fix the clock on the S10 (only). I'm pretty sure that it was at the fridge that I first read it. I doubt that they got it fixed just for them, since every time I've seen the guy brag about getting a new update directly from the factory, it's come out at the usual sites at the same time or immediately after.
 
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)

Photto

Yeah, it is what it is. It is a $100 gadget from China. My bad for expecting a quality item from that country. :(

My dad cut the Euro power cord off his and replaced it with a US cord. I'm taking mine over to have him do the same for me this afternoon.
I put a little personal desk fan from Walmart aka "China Direct" near the tuner and disk so it stays cool now.

I guess I want too much for my money. :(

I still want a single machine that does everything. I ~want~ one. I can't afford one at the moment and I can't find one yet but I'm going to keep looking and hoping.

The motor. This is the first time I've really dealt with one that belonged to me. I had my folks' system here for a few days but I never tried recordings and such with theirs. So it didn't occur to me to have the thing move the dish early, your suggestion makes complete sense and I will definitely redo the schedule I had made for it to take this into account. Having a little extra padding at the beginning isn't a deal breaker at all.
I have just been used to the PC which is using a switch only. When I change channels it's not exactly instant but it's very quick, like maybe a 1 or 2 second transition from one channel to another. The PC stays running 24/7 so there's no boot/wakeup issues.

So this new tuner behaves in a very, very different way than what I am used to. There's going to be an adjustment phase of getting used to it.

As to the clock, I had read on here that people had given up on the S9 clock, that it was a lost cause. Another reason I bought the S10 is because I have read that the S9 is an abandoned tuner, they have discontinued making them and support for it doesn't have long to live.
I had read that the S10 clock worked. That is a big part of why I bought and S10. Perhaps I didn't read deep enough. :confused:

I'm trying to figure out how to get around the kooky clock problem by being creative in how I program the thing. I guess I will have to be sure to have it tune to RT before any actual recording for a few minutes before to get the right time then tune over to where it needs to be a minute early to cover the motor issue so that the recording isn't cut off at the start. It's extra BS to have to go through but it seems the only way to deal with it until the manufacturers fix the clock problem (which I doubt will ever happen)..

The other option, the remote control with it's own clock, it seems to me to be a much better solution than "creative programming" and I'm definitely going to be researching that.

This tuner, I had no expectations of it being a "one box does it all" replacement for the PC. I bought it to tune in FSTV and LPBS because the PC can't or won't. I never could figure out if that's the app or the tuner card but that doesn't matter, it doesn't work so I bought a tuner that I knew would get these channels. It would be nice if this thing could record shows from time to time automatically according to a schedule. I'm a documentary junkie and then there's the yoga show that comes on when I'm usually asleep. I no longer have a dish aimed at 83w on the PC system so the only way I get RTV is either by the S2 channels on 87w which are flakey and unreliable or the motorized dish on the S10.

As for finding time to watch everything, there are several times a day when there are gaps that I call the Dead Zone. 1am to 4am is usually one such zone. History is running stupid informercials and MeTV runs two war shows and Rawhide, none of which I am a fan of. So there's three hours I can catch up on shows recorded earlier. During the afternoon I watch The View and The Talk and then the various courtroom shows, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Judge, People's Court, etc.. But the local OTA channels have juggled shows around this past Monday :mad: and some of them have moved to channels I can't get because they are to the West and my antenna points North to pick up the ~majority~ of the local channels. So that leaves some dead spots in the middle of the day. And weekends, there's lots of time to play catch up on recordings. But now with MeTV adding so many new shows on the weekends, it seems there will be lots of stuff to watch now.

I realized that I can put a new LNB on my big dish that has two outputs. One could go to the PC as it does now and the other could be fed into the S10. Because there is soooooo much stuff on 87w this would allow me to watch one thing on 87 and record something else on the same satellite. I would leave control of the dish strictly to the PC. The dish really never moves anyway so it's not a big deal, as far as the S10 would be concerned, 87w would be a fixed dish that doesn't move, I would put it on a discque switch in the same fashion that the dish at 123w is now being used. I can't see any reason why I couldn't do such a thing.

So, the clock and DVR problem, I'm in the process of figuring it out and learning to adapt to it. It's not the end of the world that there are problems with this because this is not my main system for watching TV and was never intended to be. Yes, I am :mad: about the clock being so shabby but I'll live. I bought it, I paid for it, it's mine now and I'm keeping it and will adapt to it.

Oh and another thing I figured out, I can put the disk near enough to the PC where it can be in the middle of the PC and the tuner. They make a USB switch box with A/B buttons on it. So I can plug the PC and the tuner into the switch box then the disk into it. Then I can power off the tuner, press the A/B button and it will connect to the PC. I can get my files off, clean the disk, press the button to reconnect it to the tuner and power the tuner back on. So getting files off of the disk wouldn't be such a nightmare. I'm looking on ebay for one, I saw one at the Dollar Store but it was like $20 (Hey! What happened to the DOLLAR part of that??) and like the cables, I'm sure I can find one cheaper on ebay.

I still haven't figured out why it only sees half the satellites though. But I suspect that's not an issue of the tuner but rather one of the motor and or the dish. I need to keep digging on that. The problem with the search feature here is that when you search for something and enter two words into the search it shows you ALL the posts that contain either word. I can't find an option to search for only posts that contain "both words" only. If I search for "openbox dish arc" it shows me ALL the posts that contain openbox and all the posts that contain the word dish and all the posts that contain the word arc. That gives you thousands of pages to dig through and 99% of them are unrelated. On ebay for instance you can put stuff in quotes and cause it to search for that exact term. I don't know why I'm having trouble with this part of it, I made my folks dish work just fine, twice. Once here and again at their place. I dunno...... :confused:

Thank you guys for the suggestions, this is all helpful and eventually I'll get it all sorted out and things will go better..

:)
 
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I haven't yet tried several words in the search mode, but ~maybe~ this would help. Try adding a plus sign (+) between the words so they run together, such as (without the quote marks) "Openbox+dish+arc" and see if that helps. I don't know, but it's one of the things I would try.

Maybe someone more experienced will jump in and try answering that one for you.

Photto
 
I tried using the + sign between terms on the search and it still shows up irrelevant stuff. :(

On the other hand, I adjusted the record time for my yoga show backwards by 1 minute and it worked great!
There is a minute of nonsense at the start but because I left it to record for a 30 minute chunk it stopped recording at 5:29 and cut the commercials off the end.
This is making me think that I should try to have it move to RT to update the time at say, 5:50 then at 5:55 I can program it to move to and view only but not record RTV. Then it can start recording at 6:00 and stop at 6:29. I saw an option in the event scheduler that says "channel" vs the obvious option of "record".. So I'm assuming the "channel" option just tunes to a channel without recording it. I haven't tried it yet and the manual makes no mention of it that I can decode. Unfortunately for me, I was never taught Engrish in school so I have to figure these things out the hard way..

Oh, and another thing. Some channels, it will not allow you to record in "PS" (whatever that stands, for I don't know). Some channels when you press record it will ask you if you want to record in ps or ts. And some channels it will give you that same option while you are setting up a scheduled recording. Some channels though, the option is greyed out or not even offered to you, it will record some channels ONLY in the .ts files. I don't understand this. And the option seems to shows up at random though rarely will it pop up with the offer. I've only seen it do that about a half dozen times since I started messing with this thing. In the DVR setup section I do have "PS record" set to on. So I don't know why this thing does what it does but it seems to have a mind of it's own.

Another thing, previously when I would press the favorites button it would stay locked in on the favorites list. Today it won't. When I press the channels list it brings up the list of ALL the channels. So I have to go back and press the favorites button then the dish starts moving to something I do not want to go to and I have to wait till the message "moving dish" goes away to be able to select the favorites list.

It's just being really difficult today and I don't know why or what I did to make it give me a hard time..
 
Oh, and another thing. Some channels, it will not allow you to record in "PS" (whatever that stands, for I don't know). Some channels when you press record it will ask you if you want to record in ps or ts. And some channels it will give you that same option while you are setting up a scheduled recording. Some channels though, the option is greyed out or not even offered to you, it will record some channels ONLY in the .ts files. I don't understand this. And the option seems to shows up at random though rarely will it pop up with the offer. I've only seen it do that about a half dozen times since I started messing with this thing. In the DVR setup section I do have "PS record" set to on. So I don't know why this thing does what it does but it seems to have a mind of it's own.

PS means Program Stream, or MPG file. TS is Transport Stream, the difference being that a transport stream may contain more than one program, or video stream. Multiple stream recording is irrelevant with the Openbox, since it will only record the video stream being tuned at the time, but that is the difference between the file formats. TS recording is required on channels that use MPEG-4 (or AVC) encoding. Therefore, MPEG-4 AVC-encoded channels will not give you a choice of PS. Channels on which the box gives you a choice of TS or PS are MPEG-2 encoded.
 
OK, I am smiling as I type this, so I hope you will too.

Maybe it's reading Satteliteguys and it's rebelling about the bad mouthing you are giving it.

Just a thought.

Photto

(edit: Maybe you could try adding the quote marks AND the plus sign?)


You may be on to something there! :eek:


PS means Program Stream, or MPG file. TS is Transport Stream, the difference being that a transport stream may contain more than one program, or video stream. Multiple stream recording is irrelevant with the Openbox, since it will only record the video stream being tuned at the time, but that is the difference between the file formats. TS recording is required on channels that use MPEG-4 (or AVC) encoding. Therefore, MPEG-4 AVC-encoded channels will not give you a choice of PS. Channels on which the box gives you a choice of TS or PS are MPEG-2 encoded.


AH HA!!!!! Ok..... Thank you! :D

I didn't know these little particulars. I am enlightened today. :)

I'll play around with recording and pay more attention to what channels are 2 or 4 mpeg. I suspect things will start to make a little more sense to me soon. This weekend I have some time planned for fixing the motorized dish so it gets all the satellites. That's still making me bonkers. Slightly cooler weather is on the way so I will be more motivated to get outside and do more. I put together another dish a nice gentleman gave me. I need to figure out how to get an LNB on it though. I have no clue what brand or type of dish it is but it looks like one of the Andrew types. I think this one is a good candidate for the Cuban satellite.

I also want to put a very good, high quality LNB with dual outputs on my big dish so that I can feed my two tuners at once from 87w.

I am beginning to realize the potential of having two totally separate systems and multiple dishes.

If I could just overcome the limitations and shortcomings of all these things.

I'm seriously concerned that I may be getting bats in the belfry with all this stuff.

In a way, I wish that I could have just one HUGE dish with no trees. I saw a big dish that's like a big letter C and it has a LOT of LNB's in it.
I can't remember what they are called so I can't google a picture up but I saw one on a PBS homepage a few months ago.

I'm afraid I'm headed towards this sort of nightmare if I don't curb this thing soon!

satellite-ball.jpg



:)


Edit: found it! I'll trade ALL my dishes for ONE of these..
 

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interesting. I thought the S10 was designed with the US plug
Mine came with the US plug, North American satlist from 30.0°W to 139.0°W. On the front a green light indicate a chnnel lock and Red indicates standby. Clock seems to work, as I set it to Manual. I have not recorded any stuff to check clock accuracy. Oh, it seems to runs kind of warm, but not hot. From all indications, I have the newest version of the PenBox S10.
 
Babadem,

Were did you get the OpenBox S10 with the US plug. My OpenBox S10 came with the US plug i am looking to get one more openBox S10.
 
Babadem,

Were did you get the OpenBox S10 with the US plug. My OpenBox S10 came with the US plug i am looking to get one more openBox S10.
I got mine from FridgeFTA. Oh, and I'm having issues with audio hickups, and freezing videos.
 
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I got mine from FridgeFTA. Oh, and I'm having issues with audio hickups, and freezing videos.

I had similar problems until I switch to a bigger dish which has cured all the problems that your describing. Now I was on 91W and it just seemed that the S10 had lower signals strength than another receiver using the same dish. So I changed it to my Channel Master 8' and it's been solid ever since.
 
I had similar problems until I switch to a bigger dish which has cured all the problems that your describing. Now I was on 91W and it just seemed that the S10 had lower signals strength than another receiver using the same dish. So I changed it to my Channel Master 8' and it's been solid ever since.
That's not the case with me. The problem seems to be "GE" HDMI cable hooked to a 2X1 HDMI (all the HDMI ports on my TV are occupied) switch by "GE" then to my HDTV. I have temporarily disconnected the 2X1 HDMI switch and connected the S10 OpenBox directly to my HDTV and everything is now working fine! :D I will be replacing the 2X1 switch with a better one soon.
 
That's not the case with me. The problem seems to be "GE" HDMI cable hooked to a 2X1 HDMI (all the HDMI ports on my TV are occupied) switch by "GE" then to my HDTV. I have temporarily disconnected the 2X1 HDMI switch and connected the S10 OpenBox directly to my HDTV and everything is now working fine! :D I will be replacing the 2X1 switch with a better one soon.

What you are describing certainly sounds like a HDMI handshake issue.
 
Well I have a solution on the way for my disk problems.

I've found it to be massively inconvenient to have to get behind stuff and swap cables every time I want to get files off of the Openbox disk.

So I waited for the right time and I found a great solution at a killer price!

EIGHT CENTS......usb switch box I bought.jpg



I had some ebay bucks credit due to me, it was like $4.89 Big whoop..
But then I found one of these for $4.97 From, China. :( Where else?

But, it was only 8 cents out of pocket to me so I went ahead and bought one.
Free shipping on this so you know it's true value to them is probably about 10 cents, if that much.
They must sell these things at a loss or a near zero profit. I dunno.
I'll have the joy of tossing the Engrish manual :mad: straight into the trash without bothering to turn the first page.

It's about 3+ weeks away from arrival so I'll have to tough it out for a bit longer but for 8 cents I figure I can't go wrong here..

I hope.... :rolleyes:
 
I'm not sure if a USB switch is a good idea. If there is a read/write operation going on while you switch devices, it can create all sorts of problems. There is a reason these devices aren't commonly available in the U.S. ... Be sure to power down the STB before switching to a PC, or if on a PC, be sure to use the "Safely remove USB device" icon before switching.
 
Tron, if the S10 is all that much like the S9, there is also a "Safely remove device" on there also, rather than powering down the S10, she can just 'remove' the devise then connect to the PC, although I am not all that sure how she will be doing that if it already IS connected .... through "My Computer" or some such?

I guess she'll let us know when the new toy arrives.

As stated once before, I solved that problem with just a l-o-n-g USB cord, made it a whole lot easier to remove the HD and take it to the computer ... but What The Heck, that was almost a year ago and I haven't seen a need to change that (yet).

Photto
 
Oh yes, I know about using the "safely remove device" stuff. There's an eject icon on the pc and something in the S10 menu like Phottoman mentioned as well. So I will be sure to exercise caution and follow proper procedure before pushing any buttons..

:)
 
So, I took my S10 to my folks house today and we did a little surgery on it. :cool:

Dad took a little bitty fan off of and old computer board, he cut a hole in the cover of the S10 and bolted the little fan in.

There was a thing on the back that said 12v. He got power from that for the fan.

There were a few items in there that I took the liberty to deem "useless power vampires".

There was a thing for a card slot, I guess a smart card. I saw no reason to leave in there so we removed it. It came out with two screws and a little cable to unplug.

The other thing was a ethernet board. Since the machine only uses it for pirate stuff, we plucked it out too. Besides, the fan needed as much space as it could get.

Dad cut off the power cord and built a whole new one from an old PC cord. This one has a ground on it, the other one did not and this one is for OUR power outlets.

So much for the warranty, yes? :eek:

Now it runs cool to the touch. Before you could fry eggs on it.

This helps but the clock is still an issue...

It's a shame they couldn't just do this from the git-go....

Oh well. Forward! :)
 

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