Reelbox Avantgarde I/II & III

[climy]

Hi group;
I guess I'm the only person in the US to own and successfully use a Reelbox AVG, media center in the States. It was dubbed the DreamBox Killer but sadly, there was not much support on this side of the world. I'd like to share my tips and tricks with yours if possible. I've had mine for three years, the only HD receiver with DVB-S2 Reception quality in MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 at the time or so. It worked great out of the box for Ku and I got the developers to "fix" the C-band receiver module code since they never tested it (or needed to in Germany). And I got all of the functions that the box was capable with in North America satellites and the home networking, streaming it was capable for a Linux receiver. Just wanted create a thread with someone willing and familiar with this box.
Sincerely,
Climy

 

[Titanium]

Got a sample 3 years ago and disposed of it six months later after many hours of frustration and limited response from their team. Definitely had potential, but never worked right.

Glad to learn that they worked with you! Thought I was the only one to bite the hook! Be interesting if others are out there.


Brian Gohl
Titanium Satellite

 

[climy]

Brian,
I like the Reelbox multi-tuner capability and with two DVB-2S tuners and a dual orthogonal feed x 2 lnb(s) connected, one H and one V bring down HD on C-band transponders. For cable, I asked them why not support the US standard, but that was not to be. I went as far as removing the DVB-C tuner from it's circuit card and replaced it with a pin compatible annex b tuner to receive ITC cable [without success]. The original designer thought it should have worked. There is still support out there, in German and some English. I got mine from a UK distributer who helped me set it up.
Climy

 

[Titanium]

I attempted to use as a two tuner system with each tuner connected to a motorized dish. Event timers kept selecting the wrong tuner and motor commands would be sent to wrong inputs. They suggested that my use was not typical and suggested that they wouldn't be able to support two motors.

DVB-C is not compatible with North American QAM cable. QAM reception would have required a different tuner, demod. and firmware.

Brian Gohl
Titanium Satellite

 

[Titanium]

If you have time, members might be interested in some screenshots of the install and operation menus.

How is the file server working for viewing recordings on other media devices? Did they get the control app implemented for remote receiver control?


Brian Gohl
Titanium Satellite

 

[climy]

Posting some pictures for those who might be interested. It's a cool box; streaming video server from the tuners, shared hard drives, a lot of 3rd party tools support. As mentioned, I soldered an ATSC annex b clear QAM tuner, the (North America) version of a cable tuner to a Reel board. But Even though the AVG, aka Reelbox are open source--the integrated Netceiver design and sw is proprietary. If I had a ATSC annex b QAM signal generator I might have figured a way to get my clear cable on it too.
These are screen shots of the network interface, a tool created to talk to the box and tuner slots of the Netceiver.
FYI.