Reset Voom STB

[derdude]

Has anybody reset there Voom STB since they went black? If so are you still able to use it for OTA?
My STB keeps locking up when I change channels.
Is there a master reset? If so, what menu options do you choose.
Thanks...

 

[bryan27]

There are different ways to reset the receiver. Unplug it for a few minutes or press and hold the power button till the flashing orange dot on the receiver stops. Either of those resets will not disrupt your OTA access.

There is a factory reset in the hidden menus. I will not tell you how to do it because a factory reset will deactivate the receiver and since there is no satellite signal to activate the receiver after a factory reset your receiver will be dead and you will no longer receive OTA.

 

[Ilya]

derdude, if specific OTA channels are causing the lockups, try hiding them.

As Bryan said, DO NOT TRY THE FACTORY RESET! Your box will become useless after that!

 

[Tony N]

Seems to me Moto ought to provide a way of re-initilaizing all the VOOM boxes, simply out of environmental responsibility. Think of the harm of thousands of them being dumped into landfills. Also with so many of them out there, someone will eventually reverse engineer the VOOM box to do it. Seems like Moto would not want that kind of effort going on.

By the way, I am beginning to suspect the members of the Consumer Electronics Assn; may be sandbagging development of OTA receivers, so as to force more sales of Sat/Cable subs, addl. second set STBs, etc. Are they angry that broadcasters are providing a service free that they feel they have a God-given right to charge for?
They have been lobbying congress HEAVILY to get out of the requirement for integrated digital TVs, all the while lobbying just as heavily for a law to end analog broadcasting. To end Analog with so many millions of analog only TVs being sold currently, and few digital capable sets out there, does it not seem my suspicions are valid?

 

[bobhaze]

...
By the way, I am beginning to suspect the members of the Consumer Electronics Assn; may be sandbagging development of OTA receivers, so as to force more sales of Sat/Cable subs, addl. second set STBs, etc. Are they angry that broadcasters are providing a service free that they feel they have a God-given right to charge for?
They have been lobbying congress HEAVILY to get out of the requirement for integrated digital TVs, all the while lobbying just as heavily for a law to end analog broadcasting. To end Analog with so many millions of analog only TVs being sold currently, and few digital capable sets out there, does it not seem my suspicions are valid?

Actually, the CEA is trying to avoid all their member manufacturers having to put expensive digital tuners in TV's that will never be used. The vast majority of US consumers get their signals from cable or sat. So if all TV's have digital tuners, over 80% of them are likely to go unused. For most of the public, a monitor with no tuner makes more sense than even an analog tuner. The CEA does not benefit from subscriptions, and is usually on the opposite side of the RIAA and MPAA on the copy protection and fair-use issues.

Bob H.

 

[Tony N]

Bob, You make some good points, but take look at it this way:

Ok! To the one in 5 that does not sub to cable/sat SCREW YAZ!! No TV for you you cheap sot!! Lets chop off the analog transmissions because there are businesses out there that can get WELL off the vacated spectrum. After all, corporate weath is what we are here for, eh?.

Hey, I am all for capitalism, a flourishing economy, my stocks doing well. Do we really have to do it by running roughshod over a group of consumers just because they are not in the majority.

Of course the CEA is on the opposite side of the RIAA & MPAA. CEA members gain more sales when there is less restriction on copying. As to subscriptions, the CEA members gain on subscriptions by virtue of making more STBs.

That 80% figure is for HOUSEHOLDS with cable/sat. Not SETS. Stats show that 20% of those households with a cable/sat connex. still get their locals OTA. Also a bit over half of those same housholds have one or more analog tv NOT connected, therby depending on OTA.

Part of the reason is not nearly all cable subs are on digital and can get a clearer signal on locals via OTA. Those folks woud get supurb PQ if they only could buy an inexpensive OTA digital receiver.

I certainly agree it is a waste put an ATSC tuner and decoder in a TV that is connected to cable or Sat if the STB also has a digital OTA tuner or the service provides the locals for free. (do most cables do that free? D* does not)

Even more to the point, in most major cities those TVs that have the mandated digital tuners get more HDTV OTA !!FOR FREE!! than they can get by paying a substantial fee for it on cable or sat. Major cities have 5 or 6 stations transmitting most of their prime time in HiDef. I have HD both via free OTA, and via Sat (for an additional $11 per month). I watch both about equally. Not all of it from either source is alwayls true HD but most of it is beautiful!

I can only afford a digital receiver on one set. I dearly wish I could get a digital tuner for my kitchen and bedroom tvs for a reasonable price. Digital standard def is so much better than the same program transmitted via analong. Even when the analog path is free of noise and ghosts, the Standard Def. digital signal has quite better sharpness, richer blacks and colors. What a sad waste that we have had Digital OTA for 7 years, yet so very few viewers have experienced it.

I don't mean that it would be easy to manufacture digital tuners cheaply, but I do feel there has been little push by manufacturers in that direction. The CEA members have a greater incentive to push in other directions.

Lobbying hard for a cut-off of analog transmitters while also lobbying for fewer sets to be capable of receiving digital signals sounds pretty sleezy to me! That is simply just another case of an interest group pressing the federal government to use it's powers to force more money out of consumer's pockets into the pockets of business interests.


Tony N.

 

[whazoo]

Does seem suspicious

Tony N.,

I too was a Broadcast Engineer. Have seen plenty of interesting and political developments on the road to HDTV. I use to be with WVTV in Milwaukee when much of the early US HDTV testing was going on. If you recall, it was supposed to be an analog system using two channels. What a mess.

I even remember Bill Gates lobbying hard for square pixels, because it would otherwise add "hundreds of dollars" to the cost of equipment to receive and display on computers. (Hmmm, seems to me I can buy a card for less then $200. Does this mean it would be free if the pixels were square.)

Perhaps the biggest swindle/pork barrel was the choice of 8VSB vs. COFDM. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing would have allowed for a lower symbol rate on each carrier. Besides making it easier to design, and less stringent on traces etc., it would also be more robust at dealing with multipath distortion and other reception problems.

Yes, we have developed better and faster adaptive filters, but this has added to the cost of the receivers. And, the adaptive filters are designed for stationary use. At this time, they cannot adapt too well to rapidly changing signals. Ie. a moving vehicle in an urban environment.

For a bit of history, this would not be the first time that the FCC has mandated extra features on certain TVs.

Remember:
UHF tuners that tuned each station individually, instead of the turret tuner.
V-Chip
Close Captioning. Now there's one that the majority of the population didn't need, and yet added a significant cost to the receiver.

Now, do we need any of those if we have digital cable and/or satellite? Nope.
No UHF or VHF tuners needed whatsoever.
Parental locks are available on the STB.
Close captioning is decoded by my STB.

Perhaps the FCC could mandate digital tuners for any HDTV that has a tuner. This would exempt all those "monitors" out there.

Lastly, we need another F.R.E.D. but this time doing digital reception, not BTSC audio. Larry Schotz, are you listening?

 

[Tony N]

Well, my real beef is that there still are no reasonable priced digital receivers out there. We have been offering a very much superior signal for 7 years and so few viewers are even aware of it.

There are millions of analog TVs out there that have been sold since then that are not connected to cable or satellite. Few of those that are getting their locals digitaly via cable or satellite are getting the full quality that the broadcast stations are putting out. Most of the sat/cable services allocate to a channel about half or less of the bandwidth that is being broadcast.

If it is out of the realm of reason to expect cheap digital receivers, then this whole broadcast digital transition has occured well before the technology was ready to support it. Very sad situation, and possibly an expensive nail in the coffin for free television. Already there are a lot of stations struggling with the expense of operating two transmission systems without any additional revenue.

Tony

 

[kb7oeb]

A lot of digital tuners now support QAM and more TV's have cable card. I don't think the digital tuners will go to waste in cable households, they will be used with digital cable.

The FCC requires that basic cable not be scrambled. Once the cable companies start mirroring the analog tier in digital maybe they will be unencrypted and won't require a cable card.

Whats sad is there is already a platform that works with everything. Its DVB, in Europe you can buy one box and it works with an antenna (DVB-T), cable(DVB-C) and sat(DVB-S).

As I understand it the cable card decryption hardware is on the card itself and shouldn't go obsolete though I can't imagine what it will be like to support todays cable card tv in 10 or 15 years.

 

[riffjim4069]

DTV-to-NTSC Converter Box

Well, my real beef is that there still are no reasonable priced digital receivers out there. We have been offering a very much superior signal for 7 years and so few viewers are even aware of it.

I agree, but appears that the NAB and MSTV are finally acting to bring consumers an inexpensive solution for a high quality, low cost Terrestrial Digital Conversion Box (TDCB) . We shall see...