Sonicview 8000HD - 1080/hd picture quality

[calgarymobiles]

i currently have a sonicview8000hd works fine but HD quality both FTA/ATSC OTA is ok.. not like the tuner in the TV or a generic ATSC STB.

is there a better receiver similar to this? It just seems like its a low bitrate

 

[Theseeker]

Don't exactly understand what you are asking ?

 

[calgarymobiles]

sonicview8000hd bitrate seems lower than that off other hd products

 

[Titanium]

Several STBs are available for less than you paid for the Sonicview that provide superb video quality (except in the case of crap in, crap out low bitrate services).

Check out the 4K STBs that operate Engima 2 OS. Not all linux STBs are created equal, so shop carefully. I have owned several E2 STBs and the last one tested (and loved) was the VU+ Zero 4k. A few new STB models are out or soon to be released that are 2nd generation 4K units that should provide improved performance:
1. Edision mio 4k
2. Octagon SF8008

BTW... Avoid older Enigma 2 OS STB models which lack hardware blindscan. They may provide prety pictures, but who whats to manually enter transponders or wait a few hours for a software blind scan for each satellite?

 

[V_H]

BTW... Avoid older Enigma 2 OS STB models which lack hardware blindscan. They may provide prety pictures, but who whats to manually enter transponders or wait a few hours for a software blind scan for each satellite?

As I was reading the thread about the new Edision and got flashback about this. The last time I played with Enigma 2 was on a DGStation (about 10 years ago) and it took for ever to scan for channels. I would start the scan, eat dinner, come back and it was still scanning. After it is done, I would have to repeat for the second tuner (you can copy the settings but not the channels list.) I was testing the DGStation because it got an internal hard drive and was meant to replace a Satcruiser/Tivo 1 combination. That Satcruiser have no blind scan or even satellite scan. You have to scan each TP's individually rather than all at once. Back then VTV4 only got 8 hours of programing repeat 3 times a day so the Tivo 1 is set to record 8 hours per day broken into 2 4hrs block to make it easier to fast forward to the good parts.

I was waiting for the Satcruiser to die so I can replace it with a better box but that thing is disgustingly reliable and keep on working. After the transition to digital TV I got a SV8000 to replace the Satcruiser, Tivo and ATSC tuner was very impress with the quality of both the picture and the sensitivity of both the satellite tuners as well as the ATSC tuner. I like the way it handle the combine channels lists where we have a full list of 4 channels on 97W and about 60 OTA channels as well as a favorite list of about 20 OTA channels and 2 Sat channels. Switching between sat and OTA is transparent to the user. Some channels on sat and OTA does have very low bit rate and looks bad but I can't blame the SV8000 for that.

Unfortunately our SV8000 power supply died after a couple of years. Probably capacitors problem and an easy fix but by then much more ethnic channels is available OTA and satellite is less compelling and we replaced it with an UNO IPTV box which has an ATSC tuner as well as streaming ~7 extra channels.