There will be no hardware blind scan on the Azbox!

[stogie5150]

Linuxman kindly provided this link to a profile of Opensat......

http://www.tele-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1001/eng/azbox.pdf

And in that article, Hugo himself states:

"Another AZBOX box highlight would be the DVB-S2 blind scan feature although Hugo concedes that this would be more of a brute-force blind scan method. “A real blind-scan feature for DVB-S2 will probably never exist”, says Hugo who has spoken to many tuner manufacturers on this subject, “the market is simply too small.” A blind scan compatible receiver must not only handle Auto FEC and Auto SR, it must also be able to deal with Auto-Pilot signal and Auto-modulation. The relatively few satellite DXers that are out there make it too expensive to develop this full blind scan feature. TELE-satellite plans to test the new AZBOX receiver with IP-TV, Arabic menu and soft blind scan in the next issue."



So, I guess we can stop pining about whether or not we'll see it, its pretty clear to me we won't see it. So, IMO, if that's what you were waiting on...the Azbox folks saved you some money.

Although someone might wanna send ol Hugo a Vantage and a Pansat 9200 with the card in it and show him there IS a solution....<shrug>

 

[zamar23]

If he's talking about Premium Plus model with 2 DVB-S2 tuners, it probably means one of 2 things:

- the same CX chipset will be used in the new tuners
OR
- new chipset with blindscan support will be used, but he wants to play cheap, paying for ads instead of hiring qualified coders to exploit this functionality.

A simple question for him to ask would be, how Coolsat developers added accurate blindscan to the box despite its old tuner chipset doesn't have integrated blindscan support? Once he'll research the answer, the roadmap becomes more clear. Vantage is another good suggestion.

 

[pro96]

Just as I thought this result was gonna be, Oh well.. My AZBox still the best receiver I own hand down

 

[Lak7]

My AZBox still the best receiver I own hand down

 

[stogie5150]

and to add confusion, I was just on the opensat forum, and admin there says the plus WILL have hardware blindscan?

Somewhere, someone has their wires crossed.

 

[Jim S.]

If there's not going to be a hardware blind scan on the new model either, I can at least wait til it comes out in hopes that it will drive the price down on the old models. Unless he's talking about S2 only, and it's going to blind-scan DVB-S.

 

[B.J.]

Personally, I hope that they come out with the slow-brute-force software blind scan on the current non-plus models, no matter HOW long the search takes. I'd be happy to just put the thing on scan and let it run overnight. I'd even be happy if they would put in a function that did nothing but identify the frequency and SR of signals, but that may not be possible with the current tuners.
I currently find signals by my own brute force method using a Broadlogic 1030 running blscan.exe, written by Hans van Oostrom , and a visual basic display program I wrote. This gives me the frequencies in about 17 minutes.
After that, I use an analog receiver coupled with a SW communications receiver to determine the SR. Then, knowing the freq/sr , you can go through the various FEC/Pilot possibilities fairly quickly manually on the Azbox.
So, if the Azbox could at least find the freq/sr, it wouldn't be too hard to find signals.
However I don't expect them to do anything like this since it isn't a user friendly capability. Hopefully some 3rd party plugin or program might accomplish this, if the Az people would release enough info about how the thing works.

 

[PopcornNMore]

Does anyone know when this new plus model will become available?

 

[Mr Tony]

unknown at this time....but probably "soon"

 

[AcWxRadar]

Does anyone know when this new plus model will become available?

I read a German advertisement (I posted it here in this area somewhere) and in that ad, they claimed that the "plus" model was going to be available December 1st 2009. Hmm? I wonder if they are on the shelves in Europe?

RADAR

 

[zamar23]

They claim many things. Like OpenSat designed this receiver. Or that multiple tuners were available for the receiver, including ATSC tuner, while never made that tuner available for sale, and so on. If you look at this ad article in the magazine, the impression is that just about any Sat fan or dealer having no specialized education, or possibly no education and STB PD experience at all, can design such an advanced device as AZBox. They claim to "reorganize" production, but forget to explain what does it mean. In fact, half of what Hugo claimed continuously turned to be aggressive false advertising and "mythology" adventure. Interesting is, they continue to make capital out of these claims without being suit. I think excellent STB AZBox would do much better in NA, if its genuine developer sell it direct to a large NA distributor, possibly under a different label.

 

[guapoharry]

Thank God for this thread.

There was another thread where in every other post was someone asking if there is going to be blind scan. The speculation and hysteria was too much.

Analogy - suppose you are on a road trip and the kids keep asking: ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET?

It seems like sometimes all people think they have to do is keep asking for something and it will happen.

I bought my Azbox knowing it came without blind scan, and that's OK by me...

 

[Mr Tony]

I bought my Azbox knowing it came without blind scan, and that's OK by me...

agreed

 

[stogie5150]

Thank God for this thread.

There was another thread where in every other post was someone asking if there is going to be blind scan. The speculation and hysteria was too much.

Analogy - suppose you are on a road trip and the kids keep asking: ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET?

It seems like sometimes all people think they have to do is keep asking for something and it will happen.

I bought my Azbox knowing it came without blind scan, and that's OK by me...

And THAT, my Friend, is WHY I made this thread. I,too, am tired of people asking....

With any luck at all we may get Ice to make this A STICKY in the Azbox forum, so everyone will SEE it before they ask.... Whatdya say, T?

 

[zamar23]

I suggest to change the thread title to:
"There will be no hardware blind scan for Azbox Elite and Premium", which sounds more accurate according to currently circulated by OpenSat story.

 

[Jim S.]

So, when is the Premium Plus model supposed to be available, and how much is it supposed to cost?

 

[freezy]

If this is a Linux Box where is the source code? Legitimately somebody could fix it themselves.

 

[kirara386]

AZbox has a plug-in contest where they provide you with the software you need to make a program for the receiver. If you make one and it gets a good rating you get a free AZbox.

Welcome to AZBOX

 

[Jim S.]

If this is a Linux Box where is the source code? Legitimately somebody could fix it themselves.

You can't fix it if the hardware doesn't support it.

A brute-force search is of little use except for people who have no source (i.e. internet) whatsoever for channel data, and even then, the box should come pre-set with the known transponders on all the currently-operational satellites. It's practically useless for feed hunting, because half of the feeds would be gone by the time the search finished!

 

[AcWxRadar]

Regarding blind scan concerns:

I will reserve my own comments as I am not sure if they have changed their decision or what they are actually planning. But, I will offer this site address and a couple of screen shots.

Welcome to AZBox &bull; User Control Panel &bull; Login

RADAR