Premium vs Premium +

[AcWxRadar]

I received my AZBox Premium + yesterday, just as I was preparing to leave for work. I arrived back home this morning about 4:45 am. I just had to play with this new toy.


The first thing I observed is that my signal quality across the board increased approximately 10% minimum. I checked the quality on several satellites and TPs the other day when it was just a gorgeously clear and calm day using the original Premium model. This morning, it was overcast and spitting light rain with a little breeze and every satellite showed a substantial signal quality improvement.

I did run into a snag with setting up the internet access via the WiFi. The problem was two fold from my own mistakes.

First, I simply set the new Premium + on top of the old Premium box in the entertainment center. When I tried to connect via WiFi, it had a horrible time. Many failures to connect and slow connection speed results. I removed the old box from under the new and that cured that problem.

The second problem was again my error. I couldn't get MaZEdit or Filezilla to connect to the box, even after the box was confirmed to be connected to the net. Silly me, I forgot that I have two routers running and when I rebooted my PC, it connected automatically to the router that I don't have set up for this purpose. Once I switched the router connection, all was fine.

Why two routers you ask? Well, that was a troubleshooting excerise. It's an involved story with my system and Wild Blue. Seems that I am somehow being assigned two IP addresses simultaneously, from time to time and it is screwing with my connection. This ordeal is another story in itself, but that is why I have two routers. Originally, I thought that my first router was failing, so I bought another one, different brand and make to test. The problem is not the router. I suspect something with WildBlue's service, but cannot confirm it as the problem has since gone away. I just happen to have left both routers in service.

Enough of that mumbo jumbo.

Obviously, the very first thing that I wanted to test is the BLIND SCAN capabilities of the Premium Plus. It does work and it seems to function exceptionally well in most cases. When it came to blind scanning 83.0°W for the RTV and TUFF TV TP, it failed as others have claimed. It simply would not find that TP and the channels.

During the scan process, it appeared to hesitate near the TP frequency of 11.735, but it didn't pick it up. I tried all sorts of strategies to make it easier to pick up that TP, but it just wouldn't find it.

I finally gave up trying to BLIND scan this TP and manually entered it. It pulled it in right away then. And with about 83-86% quality. This was also with a much higher quality level than I detected with the original Premium, about 15 or more percent better. I am pleased with this result, but I still cannot explain why it won't pick it up during a BLIND scan.

When it came to BLIND scanning for Approximately 8 to 18 minutesthe FEED channels, it apeared to be excellent and quick. The default search range was between 11.700 and 12.900. I adjusted this to 11.700 - 12.200 and I found all sorts of FEEDS on various satellites.

I will post more of my findings here soon, but I am running short of time for now.

RADAR

 

[nycrich]

Thanks for the review. I am going to get one, but was awaiting the power supply issue. Did you get it at Rick? I'm tempted to take a 15 min drive ( to Miami) and pick one up at the other seller that list on Ebay (just for convience), not to mention that Rick put a hold on selling them because of too many bad power supplies.
However I believe Rick is honest, great customer service, etc and would wait. he is about to sell the Azbox Ultra for $295 that does basically the same thing as the Premium without the Wifi.

 

[B.J.]

I did run into a snag with setting up the internet access via the WiFi. The problem was two fold from my own mistakes.

First, I simply set the new Premium + on top of the old Premium box in the entertainment center. When I tried to connect via WiFi, it had a horrible time. Many failures to connect and slow connection speed results. I removed the old box from under the new and that cured that problem.

Curious... did you still have old unit running?? If not, why did it interfere. If so, does that mean that the Premium and Premium + use different remotes? Ie I was wondering if the remotes from both units would mess up the other. This used to happen between my Fortec Lifetime and Fortec Ultra.

The second problem was again my error. I couldn't get MaZEdit or Filezilla to connect to the box, even after the box was confirmed to be connected to the net. Silly me, I forgot that I have two routers running and when I rebooted my PC, it connected automatically to the router that I don't have set up for this purpose. Once I switched the router connection, all was fine.

Why two routers you ask? Well, that was a troubleshooting excerise. It's an involved story with my system and Wild Blue. Seems that I am somehow being assigned two IP addresses simultaneously, from time to time and it is screwing with my connection. This ordeal is another story in itself, but that is why I have two routers. Originally, I thought that my first router was failing, so I bought another one, different brand and make to test. The problem is not the router. I suspect something with WildBlue's service, but cannot confirm it as the problem has since gone away. I just happen to have left both routers in service.

Enough of that mumbo jumbo.

...

Well as usual, it's the mumbo jumbo that interests me. Having 2 IP addresses at the same time doesn't seem possible unless somehow your dish is picking up 2 different satellites, since it seems like the modem will ask the sat for an IP#, and just use that one number, unless somehow you're seeing two sats, and each sat is sending a different number somehow, but even then, you'd think that your modem would only accept one of them and just use that until it lost signal, but I don't know...... I'm curious WHY you think it has 2 IP#s, because if I go into my router, and ask it what it's IP# is, it can only give me one number, and that number hasn't changed for MONTHS (even though it's supposed to be dynamic and changing periodically).
But what I'm most curious about is how you have 2 routers connected, and why would it interfere with anything, unless you have both routers giving out IP#s (and gateways), or perhaps both of them have been assigned to the same IP#. I have 2 routers connected, and at times I've had 3 connected at the same time, only because I'm using the ones not connected to my WildBlue as switches, and not as routers. Routers work fine as switches, as long as you don't turn on DCHP, and either have everything set up with static IP#s or only have the real gateway router as the one giving out IP#s.
In my case, since WildBlue goes off every time it rains here or in Syracuse, I need to switch back and forth between the router it's on and a software router fed by a dialup modem, so I have everything in static IP mode, and just switch the gateway when I want to go to the other router.

Anyway, just curious about your router/wildblue problems since I have multiple routers on my LAN, and also use WildBlue.

 

[AcWxRadar]

Curious... did you still have old unit running?? If not, why did it interfere. If so, does that mean that the Premium and Premium + use different remotes? Ie I was wondering if the remotes from both units would mess up the other. This used to happen between my Fortec Lifetime and Fortec Ultra.

I didn't have both boxes powered up at the same time, just the new PLUS model. It seemed to me that the WiFi antenna was weaker in the PLUS. I assumed that the metal chassis of the other reeiver might have been interfereing with the WiFi signal or just the slight change in the orientation of the box may have helped, too.

They use they same remote, and either remote will operate either box just fine, but I am certain that both boxes would respond if box boxes were powered up. That would be confusing.

Well as usual, it's the mumbo jumbo that interests me. Having 2 IP addresses at the same time doesn't seem possible unless somehow your dish is picking up 2 different satellites, since it seems like the modem will ask the sat for an IP#, and just use that one number, unless somehow you're seeing two sats, and each sat is sending a different number somehow, but even then, you'd think that your modem would only accept one of them and just use that until it lost signal, but I don't know...... I'm curious WHY you think it has 2 IP#s, because if I go into my router, and ask it what it's IP# is, it can only give me one number, and that number hasn't changed for MONTHS (even though it's supposed to be dynamic and changing periodically).
But what I'm most curious about is how you have 2 routers connected, and why would it interfere with anything, unless you have both routers giving out IP#s (and gateways), or perhaps both of them have been assigned to the same IP#. I have 2 routers connected, and at times I've had 3 connected at the same time, only because I'm using the ones not connected to my WildBlue as switches, and not as routers. Routers work fine as switches, as long as you don't turn on DCHP, and either have everything set up with static IP#s or only have the real gateway router as the one giving out IP#s.
In my case, since WildBlue goes off every time it rains here or in Syracuse, I need to switch back and forth between the router it's on and a software router fed by a dialup modem, so I have everything in static IP mode, and just switch the gateway when I want to go to the other router.

Anyway, just curious about your router/wildblue problems since I have multiple routers on my LAN, and also use WildBlue.

The problem here was the IP address of my modem (as assigned by WildBlue).
I thought that this was odd, too. But this is what WildBlue told me. They looked at my connection and for some reason, the system was attempting to assign two different and unique IP addresses to my modem connection. This, obviously, doesn't work, and that is why I had no connection to the internet at the time. After rebooting my modem, router and PC the problem cleared. However, it recurred on a few more occasions. I had never run into that before or since.

Basically, the only problem I can cite as being related to the AZBox PLUS would be its difficulty to find and lock the WiFi signal from my routers (either one). It seems to be weak or maybe the internal antenna is orientated differently or placed in a different location within the box altogether.

RADAR

P.S. Nycrich, I ordered mine through AZBoxUSA.

 

[B.J.]

The problem here was the IP address of my modem (as assigned by WildBlue).
I thought that this was odd, too. But this is what WildBlue told me. They looked at my connection and for some reason, the system was attempting to assign two different and unique IP addresses to my modem connection. This, obviously, doesn't work, and that is why I had no connection to the internet at the time. After rebooting my modem, router and PC the problem cleared. However, it recurred on a few more occasions. I had never run into that before or since.
....

How did the observe the two IP#s, by being at your house in person, or remotely? I'm curious because very often my wild blue gets VERY unreliable, even though the two top lights on the modem indicate that it has a solid connection. If I do pings, the response time will be very long, like 5 seconds, and I often get time outs. Then, if I reboot the modem, and everything is back to normal, with response times to the pings of about 1.4 seconds. There is clearly something strange happening, however when I get the system going again, it has the same IP# that it had before. This USUALLY happens after we've had an outage due to rain, and even though we get reception back, the performance is often terrible until I reboot. On reading your post, I wonder if somehow, during the rain, that my modem got assigned some 2nd different number somehow, possibly due to transmission errors, or possibly if the uplink went down it connected temporarily to some other sat or something. Anyway, it's strange. Since I have 2 routes to the internet, I think I'm going to connect to one of my computers on dialup via my other computer using Wild Blue and monitor what IP# the access is coming from, to see if it's always going via the same IP#. I guess there are also some "what's my IP#" sites out there that would do the same thing, but I've heard that they sometimes give a bogus result, and in fact I think I've seen what I THOUGHT were bogus results, but perhaps they were actually the result of what you're describing.
Anyway something else to consider.

EDIT: I was just playing with the copperhead what's your IP# thing, and it does give me two different IP#, depending upon whether I'm using a proxy or not, but I think that is normal.

 

[B.J.]

I just did some experiments. I sent some packets via different programs out through Wild blue to the IP# that my other computer is dialed in through, and monitored what IP# it was coming from.

It agreed with what the DirecPC Uncensored I.P. Utility what's my IP# site said. Basically, if I was using a proxy, it used the same number that my router has, and has had for a LONG TIME, but if I use a proxy, it's a different number, and it seems to be different each time I try, which seems to be one good reason to use a proxy, ie people won't be able to keep track of where you're coming from, unless you want them to.
With the various internet programs I use, some allow me to use proxies, and others don't, so I wonder if that confuses my router to any extent? I guess it shouldn't, because I assume that the proxy directs the packets to the proper place, so that the router never sees the IP# being used by the proxy...... I think.

EDIT: Sorry for getting off topic here. I just got interested when the subject of Wild Blue came up. If I find the need to continue this, I'll start a new thread in the shack. Sorry. HOWEVER, one last comment, and this IS on topic, and that is that the Azbox doesn't allow the use of proxies, unless I'm really missing something. So if using a service like WildBlue that just can't get to some IP# without a proxy, the Azbox might not be able to get there. I ran into this once trying to play some video I had on the web on my own GODADDY account. GODADDY rejects access from many WildBlue IP#s, so I generally have to use a proxy if I'm trying to get web access to GODADDY, but with the Azbox, I couldn't use a proxy, so I couldn't get there. 95% of URLs work fine without a proxy, but some only work with a proxy.

 

[AcWxRadar]

How did the observe the two IP#s, by being at your house in person, or remotely? I'm curious because very often my wild blue gets VERY unreliable, even though the two top lights on the modem indicate that it has a solid connection. If I do pings, the response time will be very long, like 5 seconds, and I often get time outs. Then, if I reboot the modem, and everything is back to normal, with response times to the pings of about 1.4 seconds. There is clearly something strange happening, however when I get the system going again, it has the same IP# that it had before. This USUALLY happens after we've had an outage due to rain, and even though we get reception back, the performance is often terrible until I reboot. On reading your post, I wonder if somehow, during the rain, that my modem got assigned some 2nd different number somehow, possibly due to transmission errors, or possibly if the uplink went down it connected temporarily to some other sat or something. Anyway, it's strange. Since I have 2 routes to the internet, I think I'm going to connect to one of my computers on dialup via my other computer using Wild Blue and monitor what IP# the access is coming from, to see if it's always going via the same IP#. I guess there are also some "what's my IP#" sites out there that would do the same thing, but I've heard that they sometimes give a bogus result, and in fact I think I've seen what I THOUGHT were bogus results, but perhaps they were actually the result of what you're describing.
Anyway something else to consider.

When I contacted WB, the tech took a remote look at my connection from their end. He uttered a puzzled “Hmmm” and then told me that there were two active IP’s for my connection. He told me to power everything down and reboot it all. That corrected the problem.

On my modem, the two top LEDs were also indicating a solid and steady connection and “some” websites were accessible, but many were not (displaying “Internet Explorer cannot connect to… blah, blah, blah”).

I am on WB’s beam 25, Anik F1R @111.1°W. However, beam 26 intersects beam 25 right where I am, so I wonder if it sometimes had mistakenly locked onto the wrong beam during oddball weather. Not sure if that is possible, but maybe.

RADAR

 

[AcWxRadar]

Anopther really nice thing that I like about the Premium PLUS is that the installation of the internal HDD is a snap! On the top of the dust cover, there is a small access panel, a little larger than the width and length of a HDD. You remove five screws and there is a recessed cavity and the HDD connector is right there. Plug your HDD in and drop it into the open cavity provided and replace the access panel. Zip zop! You are ready to go!

This is really convenient if you want to swap the HDD or take it out to connect directly to your PC or whatever. You don't have to unhook the whole receiver and take the whole darn thing apart to get the HDD out. You just shut it down and remove power.

RADAR

 

[AcWxRadar]

Thus far, I am pleased with the BLIND SCAN capabilities of the Premium PLUS.

Although I cannot get it to blind scan the RTV TP (11735 MHz H / 4444 SR on AMC 9 @ 83.0°W), and that leaves me with some doubt as to its overall accuracy, it seems to work quite well.

It is required that you have the NETWORK SEARCH set to NORMAL and not NIT (it prompts you if this is the case). I also adjust the upper TP limit from 12900 to 12200 to speed things up.

It appears that the BLIND SCAN time is approximately 15 minutes per satellite, which is dependant upon what you set the step size to. The 15 minutes is with the default 5000 KHz step size (ie 11770 - 11775 - 11780 - 11785). Therefore, it is not a speed demon, but it isn't extremely slow either.

I notice that even though it detects and logs the TPs, it may not always scan in all the channels. For instance on 111.1°W Anik E2R F2, It did not log any channels during the Blind Scan. However, if I went to SATELLITE SCAN or TP SCAN following the BLIND SCAN, it logged in several channels that were not there previously.

One thing that I wish they could have set up is a display - a running list - of the TPs found rather than displaying them across the bottom of the window for a moment as they are detected. Similar to the display when it logs the channels scanned in. This would be really sweet, but not necessary. It does display the total number of TPs found and how many of them were actually NEW.

RADAR

 

[pro96]

Well with that, I got myself one again but this time its the Premium Plus. Got it for a great price too.. $257.60 + $8.00 shipping
Boy now I got too many DVB-S2 toys

 

[B.J.]

Thus far, I am pleased with the BLIND SCAN capabilities of the Premium PLUS.

Although I cannot get it to blind scan the RTV TP (11735 MHz H / 4444 SR on AMC 9 @ 83.0°W), and that leaves me with some doubt as to its overall accuracy, it seems to work quite well.

How did it do on other sats where there are multiple narrow transponders near each other, such as AMC-21 with the 3 4444 SR channels, or on sats with several of those 3978 SR news feeds near each other? Seems like the likely issue with the11735 signal is the combination of step size and the other nearby narrow signals.

It is required that you have the NETWORK SEARCH set to NORMAL and not NIT (it prompts you if this is the case).

This interest me because I'm curious why there should be more than one flavor of a NETWORK search. I thought that a NETWORK search ALWAYS used the NIT to identify other transponders that had channels in the network, but perhaps that's wrong. Only other place I can think of where a receiver could find network info might be from the SDT, which often contains info on channels on other transponders and on other satellites.
I've often been curious just how this type search works, as the content of these NIT and SDT streams seem so variable from one network to another, that it's amazing that a generic receiver would ever get it right, but I've seen it work at times when I accidently hit network search on some receivers.
Anyway, do you have any idea what the difference between normal and NIT is?

I notice that even though it detects and logs the TPs, it may not always scan in all the channels. For instance on 111.1°W Anik E2R F2, It did not log any channels during the Blind Scan. However, if I went to SATELLITE SCAN or TP SCAN following the BLIND SCAN, it logged in several channels that were not there previously.

This is interesting because with most blind scan receivers, it does a satellite scan after doing the search for new transponders. This makes me think that perhaps it only does the scan on the newly found transponders, and perhaps you already had the transponders it missed in the transponder list. I'm guessing that they wanted to speed up blind scan by not wasting time scanning transponders already in memory?

 

[Babadem]

Good Job on the review, Radar.:up

 

[AcWxRadar]

How did it do on other sats where there are multiple narrow transponders near each other, such as AMC-21 with the 3 4444 SR channels, or on sats with several of those 3978 SR news feeds near each other? Seems like the likely issue with the11735 signal is the combination of step size and the other nearby narrow signals.

Out of curiousity with this, I deleted all but one TP (one that wasn't active at the time) from AMC 21 and blind scanned it. It found all the TPs with the 4444 SR just fine, but for some reason, it didn't pick up the 12140 V SR 30000 TP. That is the HDTV PBS TP.

This interest me because I'm curious why there should be more than one flavor of a NETWORK search. I thought that a NETWORK search ALWAYS used the NIT to identify other transponders that had channels in the network, but perhaps that's wrong. Only other place I can think of where a receiver could find network info might be from the SDT, which often contains info on channels on other transponders and on other satellites.
I've often been curious just how this type search works, as the content of these NIT and SDT streams seem so variable from one network to another, that it's amazing that a generic receiver would ever get it right, but I've seen it work at times when I accidently hit network search on some receivers.
Anyway, do you have any idea what the difference between normal and NIT is?

I don't think here that there are different flavors of the NETWORK SEARCH in this case. I think that they used a slightly incorrect terminology here. It should probably be stated as NIT SEARCH.... ON/OFF.

The way I understand NIT search is that there is a table (the Network Information Table or NIT) available on one of the providers TPs and if you scan that one particular TP, the receiver loads that table into memory. The table contains the entire list of all the other sats and TPs and channels available from that one provider.

I have never seen this NIT search actually function with any receiver I have ever owned.

This is interesting because with most blind scan receivers, it does a satellite scan after doing the search for new transponders. This makes me think that perhaps it only does the scan on the newly found transponders, and perhaps you already had the transponders it missed in the transponder list. I'm guessing that they wanted to speed up blind scan by not wasting time scanning transponders already in memory?

The AZBox Premium PLUS appears to do just that, perform a SAT scan for channels after the blind scan is completed. But, there may be a glitch as in the case that I cited with 111.1°W, the sat scan went extremely fast, too fast to seriously have been scanning all the TPs found during the BLIND SCAN and then it was all done and over with.

I knew that it should have found at least one channel, the Shoppers Drug Mart. I went back and selected SAT scan and it found the three LEARN channels on TP 11770, but it didn't find the Shoppers Drug Mart. So I rescanned again selecting scan for all channels (encrypted channels included). It then found the Shoppers Drug Mart. It labeled it as being encrypted, although it is not.

RADAR

 

[B.J.]

...
I don't think here that there are different flavors of the NETWORK SEARCH in this case. I think that they used a slightly incorrect terminology here. It should probably be stated as NIT SEARCH.... ON/OFF.

The way I understand NIT search is that there is a table (the Network Information Table or NIT) available on one of the providers TPs and if you scan that one particular TP, the receiver loads that table into memory. The table contains the entire list of all the other sats and TPs and channels available from that one provider.

I have never seen this NIT search actually function with any receiver I have ever owned.

I *THINK* I've seen it function a couple times. I can't remember which sats, but I think once on the then G25 (G19) sat with those Globecast things (I may be wrong about that), and once on either a DN or Nimiq sat when I was trying to scan in a channel that happened to be FTA. In both cases, I was trying to just scan in one channel on one transponder, but accidently hit network search, ane it started scanning all the transponders in the network. I can't remember if it created new transponders or if I already had the transponders entered into the receiver.

The thing that amazes me about the function is that while the NIT has some standardization, always on PID#16, and there seem to be a few standard entries, it seems like different services have significant differences with respect to what they put into the NIT, and there doesn't seem to be enough standardization to allow a consumer receiver to know what to do with the info. DN, for example, has a list of EVERY DN sat, and every transponder on each of those sats. I wasn't sure how it figured out which sat the receiver is currently tuning, but I just looked at a DN NIT, and it seems to have a "Current Network: TRUE" parameter on all the transponders on the current sat, and not on any transponders listed for other sats. So I guess receivers must look for entries that have this parameter set as true, and then go to scan those transponders. I'm not sure what receivers would do if the transponder isn't already in the list, and/or if the listed freq is different, etc, plus the NIT generally doesn't completely specify the modulation mode, often giving a list of possible modes. I'm also not sure what it would do when it sees a dozen different spot beams with the same freq.
It's not important to me, since I never intentionally use the network search, but I'm just curious about how it works. I may go to one of those DN sats where I've deleted some or all of the transponders, and see what it actually does, ie whether it creates new transponders when they're missing, and what it does if the freq or SR is different from what's in the receiver.
Another interesting oddity. Many receivers pop up the name of the sat you're on, if it happens to be listed in the NIT of the transponder you're tuned to. The interesting thing about the DN sat I just tuned to is that some of the NIT transponder entries list the sat name, others don't. It seems to pick up the sat name, even if the sat name isn't listed under the NIT entry for the transponder you're tuned to, so it must search through all the entries looking for the sat name. The DN NIT has 576 entries, and there are sat name entries on about a only a fraction of the entries, but it's listed for all of the sats. So it must search for sat names in an entry that has the Current Network=true parameter set.
Anyway, it's interesting how it works, particularly because MOST sat transponders don't even have an NIT PID, and most that do, don't have correct info in them. So I'm guessing that network search would only work on a very few networks that keep useful info in the NIT.

 

[jkyates]

Well with that, I got myself one again but this time its the Premium Plus. Got it for a great price too.. $257.60 + $8.00 shipping
Boy now I got too many DVB-S2 toys

:upWhere did you purchase it? I will be replacing my pansat 9000 hd.

 

[AcWxRadar]

:upWhere did you purchase it? I will be replacing my pansat 9000 hd.

Jkyates,

Check Pro96's thread here: http://www.satelliteguys.us/azbox-discussion/214258-well-i-am-back-az-wagon.html

RADAR

 

[nycrich]

You guys convinced me. I purchased an AZBOX Premium Plus HD today from AZBOXUSA, which is a 30 min drive from home to Miami. I was surprised to find 3 dealers on the same block selling AZBOX models.
They are made in Portugal by Opensat, assembled in Korea. They also sell a lot of AZBOX stuff on Ebay
(+16000 positive feedback ). I understand that the original company Opensat from the magazine article set up a office/sales room here in Miami, FL (as per Telesat article) and decided to buy from them, since it would be easier to drive over should I have any issues. Good friendly service.
Will see how the box works out. Priced at $380+taxes

 

[bionic]

address of the AZBOXUSA at Miami

nycrich, could you please inform the address of the AZBOXUSA at Miami? Thanks in advance. Bionic.