A Satelitte virgin's adventure

[Exceluk1]

Following on from my intoduction post.

Myself and the current "ball and chain" have had a year with Virgin media and a year with Sky. We have come to the conclusion we dont watch anything other than Free to air channels and are wasting our money.

So options so far.
1.A Humax Freesat 320G (while this will provide all the services we need it seems a little limited)

2. Build a htpc from scratch (while not cheap can have what I want and can be used as a NAS which would be great in the house).

3. A VU+ duo (while over the top for what we need, I do now have a stain in my pants after seeing it).

So I'd like some thoughts from the experts on here. Not only on the above ideas but also on the questions below, before I go and tell the Mrs where her money (my end of year bonus) is being spent.

3a. Is it worth the price tag? (what else if anything do I need to add to the price)
3b. CCCam and bouquet, I've looked but can't find an idiots discription to what they provide /do .
3c. As its a linux box does it support a Bittorrent or newsgroup client??

That will do for now, thanks for reading and please leave ANY thoughts or ideas below.

Rob.

[pooface]

In regards to options:

1. Will do what you want for freeview, perfectly adequate
2. I had a htpc which I built, and the missus just hated it. She moaned it was too big (which it was a tad), and it wasn't the best looking thing. Plus, you're prolly gonna spend longer setting it up, dealing with it when it's dead etc...
3. It's a great box, but if you're going to only use 28.2e for freesat, may be a little wasted. If you were gonna use a motor, then I'd defo say that's your answer. Also, have you thought about the vu+ solo? It's a little smaller, doesn't have the vfd, will only use a usb hdd for recording, but it's just as good (albeit only 1 tuner) as the duo, and around £100 cheaper ;)

3a. That's subjective really. I think it's worth it. I only have 1 feed to the duo at the mo, but I upgraded from the dm800. It ended up costing me £50 to upgrade to the vu duo. I originally bought the 800 for £360 when it first came out. Bought the duo for £350, and sold the dm800 for £300. So all in, ended up costing me £410 for the duo almost 2 years before it was released with free use of a dm800 for 2 years before hand :) The duo is much better than the 800 in my opinion, and the 800 and solo is on a par (800 wins slightly because of the led display, and the internal/e-sata option, but for price, the solo wins :p). Anywa, this is going a bit ot, so I would say it depends on your needs. Look at the next answer:
3b. CCcam is used to read your local cards (nb, no talk about other things!!!). If you have a sky card, a tring card, whichever card you want to use (within reason), cccam is what you would use to read it. Alternatives included mgcamd, oscam, scam, etc etc. But, you only need to worry about this if you have a local card to use. Since you won't, you might think this as a bit of an expensive item to use... As for bouquets, these are what you use to view your channels. You can arrange them in the order you want (e.g. b16mmc however it's spelt) creates a set of bouquets to mimic the sky boxes. I have mine for different providers across the different satellites. This is why this box is great, because you can set it up how you like, especially when using motors or multiple dishs/lnbs. Another reason if not having multiple sats, it's a bit overkill
3c. I haven't actually tried it (as I'd rather just use a pc for that type of thing...). But I think that there is a bittorent plugin for the duo... But since it's linux, lots of things can be created (and have been) to allow you to do other things with the box :)

[Exceluk1]

Thanks for the swift responce! The 1 tuner on the Solo would be an issue. The crap the boss watches always seem to clash so really would have to have have 2 tuners. S2 is a must from what I read. The dish is the one used for sky HD curently (twin LNB) all the channels we would need would come from the one sat I guess so no need for a moto type. So from the way i read your comments a htpc would be the way to go.

[pooface]

Thanks for the swift responce! The 1 tuner on the Solo would be an issue. The crap the boss watches always seem to clash so really would have to have have 2 tuners. S2 is a must from what I read. The dish is the one used for sky HD curently (twin LNB) all the channels we would need would come from the one sat I guess so no need for a moto type. So from the way i read your comments a htpc would be the way to go.

It's all down to you. If you decide in the future that you may want to go back to sky, but would prefer to use the vu duo rather than sky box, then the duo would be definitely better than the htpc or humax box (or at least I don't think you can use a sky card in a htpc, can you?!)

[steve1978]

Following on from my intoduction post.

Myself and the current "ball and chain" have had a year with Virgin media and a year with Sky. We have come to the conclusion we dont watch anything other than Free to air channels and are wasting our money.

So options so far.
1.A Humax Freesat 320G (while this will provide all the services we need it seems a little limited)

2. Build a htpc from scratch (while not cheap can have what I want and can be used as a NAS which would be great in the house).

3. A VU+ duo (while over the top for what we need, I do now have a stain in my pants after seeing it).

So I'd like some thoughts from the experts on here. Not only on the above ideas but also on the questions below, before I go and tell the Mrs where her money (my end of year bonus) is being spent.

3a. Is it worth the price tag? (what else if anything do I need to add to the price)
3b. CCCam and bouquet, I've looked but can't find an idiots discription to what they provide /do .
3c. As its a linux box does it support a Bittorrent or newsgroup client??

That will do for now, thanks for reading and please leave ANY thoughts or ideas below.

Rob.

1. i wouldnt touch the Humax personally. they are expensive and other than the fact that they do BBC Iplayer you might aswell get a cheap £20 quid box.
2. I use a HTPC as my primary viewing device. i dont even have a capture card! i just use it for downloaded TV. not good for the majority of women though!
3. i got a similar stain in mine when i got it. you will need to buy a SATA hard drive. most people bang a 1 tb in it.

3a. in relation to the competition it is 100% worth it, in relation to what it can do and how reliable it is then i would say YES!
3b.
http://tinyurl.com/2c6raes that will explain a little more about what CCcam and other Cams can do for you. If you think of it in a similar vain to multi room then that will give you an idea. talk about this isnt really allowed in open forum. a Bouquet is basically a favourites list that someone else has compiled for you. there is one by B16MCC that is EXACTLY the same as Sly UK for example, on the vu if you press 401 you get sports 1
3.it does support things like bit torrent but i can honestly say that i have never used it and more importantly i dont think you could download a film and watch it soly on your box. you can however download an AVI or Divx and upload it to the VU box for playback on your TV. this process is still a WIP but it is getting better with every release.

[Exceluk1]

Thanks for the reply and the link Steve ;)

[Stanman]

One point thats been mentioned but not elaborated on, in comparison to the Humax, you will get more HD channels on the Linus if you can source a cheap SKY Freesat card.
I have a Humax and have not used it since buying the VU and my sole reason for doing so was the fact you cant get 5HD and C4HD.

[Exceluk1]

Well had a chat with the boss and have been denied due to price :( . So please put me out of my misery and advice me which Twin tuner HD PVR to go for. Just after a HD freesat channel lineup. If there is anything out there that I can also tickle with as well would be a bonus.

[pooface]

Well had a chat with the boss and have been denied due to price :( . So please put me out of my misery and advice me which Twin tuner HD PVR to go for. Just after a HD freesat channel lineup. If there is anything out there that I can also tickle with as well would be a bonus.

Speak to your boss, tell her there's been a special deal for the box, and you get it really cheap. Then, go ahead purchase the box at the (still fairly cheap price) normal price, and she'll be happy at the great purchase, and will never know ;)

[Exceluk1]

Great idea but one major flaw, she isnt daft. Not worth the risk of trying to blag her I'm afraid.

[silverfox0786]

Great idea but one major flaw, she isnt daft. Not worth the risk of trying to blag her I'm afraid.

well then if she is paying fo rit dont stress buy her the first one she aproves regardless and let he realise her mistake on that descision on her own

personally i'd buy the DUO and get fired

[silverfox0786]

have a full read of this it will really opened up your eyes to your options

http://www.vuplus-support.co.uk/showthread.php?3967-What-Box-to-get-need-your-advice

[Larry-G]

yes the VU is expensive but you know your getting the best box you can for your money and you are also getting the benefit of all the DEV teams who are currently working on this box plus the various support forums such as this one. if you do decide to go down a different road for a cheaper box then you may end up with more troubles down the line and no real support if things do go belly up.

if you think about it. there not actually that expensive. even your standard sky + box would retail at close to £500 if it were not for sky substantially absorbing most of these costs in order to win / keep their customer base, the same being true for virgin.

[sherry]

I have just bought the vu+ duo and i LOVE it. I dont think you will be disapointed if you got one. If you get it then the options are always there if you would like to take them further. It is great when you have it all setup the way that you want it. :O)

[Stanman]

If you dont go for the VU the Humax Foxsat HDR is a very nice box. It does freesat but will also do the FTA SKY channesl but without PVR function. On the freesat side it does series link etc and good PQ.
New its still in the £200 range but 2nd hand you can pick it up from £130 - £190

[Exceluk1]

Well still going down the rabbit-hole. Slowly reading through different forums and guides. Also still working on the Mrs. Lets see what Mr xmas brings I think. thanks to everyone so far, will kepp you informed.

[silverfox0786]

Get her to read these threads and posts i'm sure she will see the point to getting a Duo