Current most powerful/flexible box?

[realdannys]

So long story short my Dad has been taken terminally ill and has his own room for now with a TV - previously our setup is really simple - living room has a Sky box with no sub for FTA channels and we have an old Technomate TM-800HD which is is connected to a motorised dish and supplies the main TV when there is a game on and also my room the rest of the time.

So now there is a third TV in the mix and the original setup isn't all that great i'm looking to expand, money no object i want to get the VERY best box we can put as a central hub in the living room.

Ideally it'd have 4 sat tuners on it, that way 3 would come from the mini dish and one would come from our motorised dish. What I was hoping to do is have everything go into one box and somehow supply three TV's.

Now I realised we only have one feed from the motorised dish - I was hoping you'd be able to pair up bouquets with the motorised dish tuner only and thus clines which match that one tuner - then set the other tuners to only come into action if a FTA channel is selected. Is that possible?

95% of the time FTA channels will be watched in the main room. So in terms of features I know there are no boxes with dual HDMI feeds out, so id probably look for either streaming one of the tuners to the other room, or using the partner plugin ive seen in which you can use a second box to access the tuner on the first box and its HD recordings. The house is wired with ethernet so no problems connecting the boxes there.

So to do a bullet list id like

• Most powerful box on the market right now
• 4 tuner inputs
• Ability to access those tuners individually on 3 TV sets which some kind of solution
• Ability to stream to iPad/Mac again with a different channel to that being shown on the main TV

Would the VU+ Duo2 still be the best for this or are there better more powerful options now?

[abu baniaz]

Sorry to hear about your father.

You can use the partner box plugin or RemoteChanenlStreamConverter plugin to stream the videos from one receiver to other receivers on the network. Even the TM800 will do so too. Your limitation, if any, will be the number of tuners.

Any receiver can stream within the local network. If on WAN, then you definitely need Transcoding. (You must set up your receiver properly to avoid compromising your network. There was lovely guide by Pembo, IIRC on how to do this.) Again, your restriction will be tuners.

You will have to consider how many Transponders will be occupied at any one time. If all your tuners are on different transponders, you wont be able to stream a channel on a differnt TP to another device. You will still be able to stream teh ones on the same TPs. You can add USB tuners for Terrestrial channels, that will give you a fifth/sixth tuner and ensure greater freedom.

Your options are likely to be the Mutant 2400, ET1000, Duo 2.

[tappari]

Sorry to hear about your father.

You can use the partner box plugin or RemoteChanenlStreamConverter plugin to stream the videos from one receiver to other receivers on the network. Even the TM800 will do so too. Your limitation, if any, will be the number of tuners.

Any receiver can stream within the local network. If on WAN, then you definitely need Transcoding. (You must set up your receiver properly to avoid compromising your network. There was lovely guide by Pembo, IIRC on how to do this.) Again, your restriction will be tuners.

You will have to consider how many Transponders will be occupied at any one time. If all your tuners are on different transponders, you wont be able to stream a channel on a differnt TP to another device. You will still be able to stream teh ones on the same TPs. You can add USB tuners for Terrestrial channels, that will give you a fifth/sixth tuner and ensure greater freedom.

Your options are likely to be the Mutant 2400, ET1000, Duo 2.

Not ET10000 since it doesn`t work with 4 C/T2 tuners.

[Sicilian]

Not ET10000 since it doesn`t work with 4 C/T2 tuners.

?? Op hasn't mentioned C/T2, this is about Satellite DVB-S/S2.

[DaMacFunkin]

Would the VU+ Duo2 still be the best for this or are there better more powerful options now?

Ive just been informed that the Solo 4k will be available from the 25th of October, this will be the most powerful box on the market at that time, if I understand how the FBC on that box works correctly then you would only need 2 feeds from the mini dish leaving you just needing a third tuner for the motorised.
Be careful, some retailers are taking orders without warning people that they don't yet have stock, one retailer defiantly insinuated to me they was in stock when they were not, I have now requested a refund.

[world-of-satellite.co.uk]

Ive just been informed that the Solo 4k will be available from the 25th of October, this will be the most powerful box on the market at that time, if I understand how the FBC on that box works correctly then you would only need 2 feeds from the mini dish leaving you just needing a third tuner for the motorised.
Be careful, some retailers are taking orders without warning people that they don't yet have stock, one retailer defiantly insinuated to me they was in stock when they were not, I have now requested a refund.

When official details including confirmed shipping dates are given to us we will start taking pre-orders, until then we won't be adverting them.

[twol]

Ive just been informed that the Solo 4k will be available from the 25th of October, this will be the most powerful box on the market at that time, if I understand how the FBC on that box works correctly then you would only need 2 feeds from the mini dish leaving you just needing a third tuner for the motorised.
Be careful, some retailers are taking orders without warning people that they don't yet have stock, one retailer defiantly insinuated to me they was in stock when they were not, I have now requested a refund.

Over the coming months there will be several "4K" boxes out there ... As ref the above quote, a few Web sites are alread advertising them ... Be they available or not
So I would suggest going with what is currently available or postponing any changes to late 4Q2015 so that we have feedback from early users. .... And know which images are available and what truly works....... Having spent a lifetime in IT, never believe the marketing blurb

[realdannys]

Sorry to hear about your father.

You can use the partner box plugin or RemoteChanenlStreamConverter plugin to stream the videos from one receiver to other receivers on the network. Even the TM800 will do so too. Your limitation, if any, will be the number of tuners.

Any receiver can stream within the local network. If on WAN, then you definitely need Transcoding. (You must set up your receiver properly to avoid compromising your network. There was lovely guide by Pembo, IIRC on how to do this.) Again, your restriction will be tuners.

You will have to consider how many Transponders will be occupied at any one time. If all your tuners are on different transponders, you wont be able to stream a channel on a differnt TP to another device. You will still be able to stream teh ones on the same TPs. You can add USB tuners for Terrestrial channels, that will give you a fifth/sixth tuner and ensure greater freedom.

Your options are likely to be the Mutant 2400, ET1000, Duo 2.

Thanks for that Abu and the other guys for bringing up the possibility of the 4k boxes.

I was wondering, if I were have a Duo2 as a main server and then perhaps a couple of VU+ Zero boxes in secondary rooms, will it intelligently match the available clines to channels selected etc? Is it possible to set bouquets to certain tuners, so for instance obviously the channels not on Astra 2 will only be accessed on the motorised dish and it wont be trying to tune in via the minidish. Is it possible to select a channel on a streaming device and have it move the dish to tune in to it too, as if this were a proper 2nd screen?

I'm mainly interested to see how well the main box would use the tuners/multiple dishes/clines when controlled from the secondary boxes, recording and streaming devices.

Also RE streaming over your internal lan, ive got everything linked up with gigabit ethernet, how does it compare to the HDMI output? I'm just thinking on a third TV if the quality is comparable to the HDMI out anyway, it makes as much sense to stream to one of the TV's as it does to have a slave box control it (at least financially)

[duoduo]

Surprised you missed the but about Clines Abu, not like you hahaha

[abu baniaz]

read it after a long day at work, so missed it

@op, we don't do line talk on the forum.

[realdannys]

Ok sorry about the non-allowed chat, I'll have to ask that elsewhere i guess.

So a couple of questions I had based on above. If i were to get the Duo2 and say two Zero's in other rooms. Is the RemoteChanenlStreamConverter output as good as the local HDMI on the main box if you're on a gigabit wired network? Or will it take some compression and thus loss of quality?

It seems the best idea really is to have a master box with 4 tuners (eg the Duo2) and let it manage all the signal routing for other boxes, rather than supply one box each, then at least you can also access your recordings from one central area too.

[DaMacFunkin]

There is no transcoding happening at all, so the quality of the picture you see on the slave box is the same quality you would have seen on the master box, bear in mind if you have 2 full HD streams going over your network at the same time this may bottleneck some of your time critical operations. Might do, I dont know how good your cables, router, upload speed are.

[realdannys]

Excellent, should be fine RE bandwidth, I imagine Sat feeds are no more than a few MB/s and everything is going over a gigabit network. So thats good news anyway, its effectively just sending the LNB feed around the other boxes.

The next question would be, is the EPG just as fast on the Zero boxes as the Duo2? The one thing I find horrendous on most Enigma2 boxes is the laggy EPG (and the hideous design even with most skins) but speed would be paramount, I just guess they haven't caught up with things like the Apple TV/Firestick/Chromecasts in terms of nav speed.

[realdannys]

Oh and also RE the tuners. If I have the Duo2 and three feeds are from the Sly dish, and the forth is from my motorised dish, will this work ok? Can I set it via one of the images to tell it which tuner has the motorised dish and also set it so certain bouquets will only try to access channels not on Astra 2 via the motorised dish/tuner?

[realdannys]

Can anyone give any feedback on the last two questions before I pull the trigger or might I be better off asking in the VU+ section?