Monty
24-04-10, 11:52
Greetings .
After waiting so long for the arrival of my VU+ Duo, it finally arrived right in the middle of me replacing the gearbox in my sons Transit van.
It sat in its brown box for about 6 hours till I had finished and showered, then I grabbed it and ran up here (my den in the loft).
With a big stupid grin on my face I carefully opened the box and there it was my long awaited toy .
Eager to see it live, I quickly hooked it up to my feed and TV and powered it on.
I ran through the setup which was easy and pretty intuitive and within minutes all was working with the settings included in the standard image.
So, within 5 minutes of opening the box I thought “I’ll finally go read about images, settings and plugins on this forum”. I had avoided reading much about the box and it’s workings thinking I would save it all till the hardware was in my hands, so I opened my browser and pointed it to these forums and promptly got a “404” error, arrrrggggg!
I resisted the urge to look elsewhere for the info cos that’s the type of guy I am (loyal) , so I just fiddled about a bit with the original image and settings, and went to bed.
Early next day, well, early for me 8.30, I headed up my stairs, switched pc on and headed for these forums again. Damn, still no forums, “that Sicilian dude is messing with my head”, I thought.
So I decided to go ahead and fit a hard drive to the VU+.
I had originally planned to fit a Samsung 1TB F3 which I had bought in advance, but just days ago, my CCTV hard drive became so noticeably noisy; I ran diagnostics on it and found errors so I replaced it with my Samsung F3.
I still had a WD 250GB 2.5 inch drive lying here so I decided to use that till I could get another new drive.
Carefully I removed the 5 screws securing the cover of the VU+.
I can confirm the hardware version is 2.2 (see pic).
I removed the 4 screws securing the HDD tray inside the VU+, and discovered that it can’t mount a 2.5 HDD.
I came up with a cunning plan and “modified” the HDD tray with some advanced materials (see Pic), and pretty soon the 2.5 HDD was in and initialized.
Tried a few recordings and all was sweet
Time for a new image, (no I didn’t change my hairstyle) I first tried the latest VTI and to cut a longer story short, in no time I got a green screen.
I then flashed the latest VU+ original, 4.5 I think it was, and went through the setup again, and quite quickly had it running sweet again.
Time for another image, the latest PLi nightly build.
Flashed in no time, setup network, FTP’d catseye’s settings (thanks catseye), and off it went happy as Larry
Checked a few channels on different sats and all were looking good.
Downloaded MGCAM and FTP’d key things and within seconds I had my sports (and adult sport) channels on W1 clearing
That’s where I’m at now, not rushing it, just taking it easy.
The VU+ Duo is a big receiver in comparison to any I have owned lately, but it has a solid feel, good build quality, and doesn’t have that “empty box” feel that you get when lifting some receivers.
The picture quality on SD is very good, better than that from my DM600 PVR, and the little HD that I have viewed so far is excellent.
Recording multiple channels is a breeze and streaming channel from VU+ to PC using the web interface was easier and gave better results than I have ever had with any receiver.
It’s still early days and I look forward to may happy hours fiddling
So a big thank you to Antony at Sat_Shop for finally sorting out my needs :)
and a big hug to Sic for giving me somewhere talk rubbish :)
After waiting so long for the arrival of my VU+ Duo, it finally arrived right in the middle of me replacing the gearbox in my sons Transit van.
It sat in its brown box for about 6 hours till I had finished and showered, then I grabbed it and ran up here (my den in the loft).
With a big stupid grin on my face I carefully opened the box and there it was my long awaited toy .
Eager to see it live, I quickly hooked it up to my feed and TV and powered it on.
I ran through the setup which was easy and pretty intuitive and within minutes all was working with the settings included in the standard image.
So, within 5 minutes of opening the box I thought “I’ll finally go read about images, settings and plugins on this forum”. I had avoided reading much about the box and it’s workings thinking I would save it all till the hardware was in my hands, so I opened my browser and pointed it to these forums and promptly got a “404” error, arrrrggggg!
I resisted the urge to look elsewhere for the info cos that’s the type of guy I am (loyal) , so I just fiddled about a bit with the original image and settings, and went to bed.
Early next day, well, early for me 8.30, I headed up my stairs, switched pc on and headed for these forums again. Damn, still no forums, “that Sicilian dude is messing with my head”, I thought.
So I decided to go ahead and fit a hard drive to the VU+.
I had originally planned to fit a Samsung 1TB F3 which I had bought in advance, but just days ago, my CCTV hard drive became so noticeably noisy; I ran diagnostics on it and found errors so I replaced it with my Samsung F3.
I still had a WD 250GB 2.5 inch drive lying here so I decided to use that till I could get another new drive.
Carefully I removed the 5 screws securing the cover of the VU+.
I can confirm the hardware version is 2.2 (see pic).
I removed the 4 screws securing the HDD tray inside the VU+, and discovered that it can’t mount a 2.5 HDD.
I came up with a cunning plan and “modified” the HDD tray with some advanced materials (see Pic), and pretty soon the 2.5 HDD was in and initialized.
Tried a few recordings and all was sweet
Time for a new image, (no I didn’t change my hairstyle) I first tried the latest VTI and to cut a longer story short, in no time I got a green screen.
I then flashed the latest VU+ original, 4.5 I think it was, and went through the setup again, and quite quickly had it running sweet again.
Time for another image, the latest PLi nightly build.
Flashed in no time, setup network, FTP’d catseye’s settings (thanks catseye), and off it went happy as Larry
Checked a few channels on different sats and all were looking good.
Downloaded MGCAM and FTP’d key things and within seconds I had my sports (and adult sport) channels on W1 clearing
That’s where I’m at now, not rushing it, just taking it easy.
The VU+ Duo is a big receiver in comparison to any I have owned lately, but it has a solid feel, good build quality, and doesn’t have that “empty box” feel that you get when lifting some receivers.
The picture quality on SD is very good, better than that from my DM600 PVR, and the little HD that I have viewed so far is excellent.
Recording multiple channels is a breeze and streaming channel from VU+ to PC using the web interface was easier and gave better results than I have ever had with any receiver.
It’s still early days and I look forward to may happy hours fiddling
So a big thank you to Antony at Sat_Shop for finally sorting out my needs :)
and a big hug to Sic for giving me somewhere talk rubbish :)