Looking for a satellite receiver with child and idiot proof media functions

[gredawarha]

Hello all

As the title I'm looking for a receiver but perhaps a little background first to explain.

I have been a long term Sky customer but have finally removed the yoke. I know have a BT you view box and to begin with all was fine but after a day or two I realised that our local mast does not broadcast a number of channels which I would rather have. particularly BBC NEWS HD, Channel 4 HD, CBeebies HD and More 4. It seems our local mast (Midhurst) does not broadcast these channels and I cannot find out if and/or when we might be getting them.

So I still have the sky dish and cables, I still have the box so i could plug this in and get the missing channels.

In addition to this I have a number of films ripped to digital files on my computer, many are my sons childrens films but some for grownups. I have been thinking for a while of investing in an android with something like Archos Media Player so that my Son who is 4 and my partner who's not very computer savvy have a nice visual interface to browse and select things they want to watch.

https://lh4.ggpht.com/fdB9P4dkPx-6iDI-9nPj_5r-i3PCXY3gF578evaIKrNLNM6SQMsjFO7DCOAdkerUB0aK=h900

I'm now starting to wonder if anyone is aware of an all in one box that will allow me to connect to the sky dish, and provide a visual interface to play local movie files. Anything else such as the ability to record would be a bonus.

So guys do you have any suggestion?

Appreciate your time and suggestions.

Darren

[Sicilian]

See the receivers below. All will tune the channels mentioned on Freesat. You could playback media via network mounts.

All the below will allow you to watch and record different channels.

ET9500 @ £129, dual core 405MHz, twin satellite tuner.
http://www.world-of-satellite.co.uk/Digital-Satellite-Receivers/Xtrend-Linux-HD-Receivers/Xtrend-ET-9500-2x-DVB-S-S2

ET8000 from £159, dual core 1.3GHz, mix upto 3 tuners.
http://www.world-of-satellite.co.uk/Xtrend-ET8000-2x-DVB-S2?filter_name=ET8000

Mutant HD2400 from £239, dual core 1.3GHz, hardware transcoding and mix upto four tuners.
http://www.world-of-satellite.co.uk/Mutant-HD2400-HD-Quad-Tuner-Digital-Receiver-2x-DVB-S-S2?filter_name=hd2400

[stewartie4]

Hello all

As the title I'm looking for a receiver but perhaps a little background first to explain.

I have been a long term Sky customer but have finally removed the yoke. I know have a BT you view box and to begin with all was fine but after a day or two I realised that our local mast does not broadcast a number of channels which I would rather have. particularly BBC NEWS HD, Channel 4 HD, CBeebies HD and More 4. It seems our local mast (Midhurst) does not broadcast these channels and I cannot find out if and/or when we might be getting them.

So I still have the sky dish and cables, I still have the box so i could plug this in and get the missing channels.

In addition to this I have a number of films ripped to digital files on my computer, many are my sons childrens films but some for grownups. I have been thinking for a while of investing in an android with something like Archos Media Player so that my Son who is 4 and my partner who's not very computer savvy have a nice visual interface to browse and select things they want to watch.

https://lh4.ggpht.com/fdB9P4dkPx-6iDI-9nPj_5r-i3PCXY3gF578evaIKrNLNM6SQMsjFO7DCOAdkerUB0aK=h900

I'm now starting to wonder if anyone is aware of an all in one box that will allow me to connect to the sky dish, and provide a visual interface to play local movie files. Anything else such as the ability to record would be a bonus.

So guys do you have any suggestion?

Appreciate your time and suggestions.

Darren

To be honest if you are looking for a good UI and matching media centre capabilities you are safer going with a branded freesat box for your channels and an android stick that runs XBMC/Kodi for media. The reason being that the boxes on here are nowhere near as user friendly as their branded counterparts and are more for a hobbyist / computer-savy person. You can make it better looking and there are some great skins out there, but in the end the simplest of actions take a lot of getting used to if you aren't computer literate and a lot of maintenance is required compared to branded boxes. If you have your heart set on not getting a branded receiver however, then a box like the vu+ solo2 can run XBMC which is great for media streaming, and can also record one channel while viewing another. Another option would be the prismcube ruby, although if i remember correctly it has issues with EPG http://www.prismcube.com/ .

[gredawarha]

See the receivers below. All will tune the channels mentioned on Freesat. You could playback media via network mounts.

All the below will allow you to watch and record different channels.

ET9500 @ £129, dual core 405MHz, twin satellite tuner.
http://www.world-of-satellite.co.uk/Digital-Satellite-Receivers/Xtrend-Linux-HD-Receivers/Xtrend-ET-9500-2x-DVB-S-S2

ET8000 from £159, dual core 1.3GHz, mix upto 3 tuners.
http://www.world-of-satellite.co.uk/Xtrend-ET8000-2x-DVB-S2?filter_name=ET8000

Mutant HD2400 from £239, dual core 1.3GHz, hardware transcoding and mix upto four tuners.
http://www.world-of-satellite.co.uk/Mutant-HD2400-HD-Quad-Tuner-Digital-Receiver-2x-DVB-S-S2?filter_name=hd2400

Thank you for the reply and suggestions. Do these players have local media playback that can display the movies similar to The Archos Media Player in the sense that they show the movie cover making it simple for my 4 year old to look through and choose?

[gredawarha]

To be honest if you are looking for a good UI and matching media centre capabilities you are safer going with a branded freesat box for your channels and an android stick that runs XBMC/Kodi for media. The reason being that the boxes on here are nowhere near as user friendly as their branded counterparts and are more for a hobbyist / computer-savy person. You can make it better looking and there are some great skins out there, but in the end the simplest of actions take a lot of getting used to if you aren't computer literate and a lot of maintenance is required compared to branded boxes. If you have your heart set on not getting a branded receiver however, then a box like the vu+ solo2 can run XBMC which is great for media streaming, and can also record one channel while viewing another. Another option would be the prismcube ruby, although if i remember correctly it has issues with EPG http://www.prismcube.com/ .

Thanks for the reply. Researching this I have seen lots of critical views of the prismcube so unlikely to go that way. The VU+ boxes look very good just unsure of the local media side of things. I'm pretty good at learnign new things and have built my own PC's with Ubuntu, Arch and other linux distros on them so with the right literature I am sure I could add XBMC. Whilst I know what XBMC is I have little first hand use of it so not sure if that would provide my required local media wish.

I think that you might be right that a two box solution might be simpler, I was just hoping that I could get a one box solution.

[Stanman]

I would not be too hang up.on how difficult to use these boxes are.

My youngest from the age of 5 was able to watch record and watch recordings very quickly after using box.

You want get the sleeve pics with the box but it's fine imho

[gredawarha]

Last night I spent a long time looking at the Wetek Play device. It seems to do pretty much everything I need out of the box although most of the reviews I have seen tend to focus on the media box side of things and I am not sure how the tv part of it works.

[gredawarha]

Bit more research and found two plug inns for enigma2 machines, one called movie browser which looks farsighted and another called project Valerie.

Am I correct that these would work on any box running enigma2?

[judge]

Bit more research and found two plug inns for enigma2 machines, one called movie browser which looks farsighted and another called project Valerie.

Am I correct that these would work on any box running enigma2?

project Valerie is quite outdated and no longer supported by the original authors as fas as I know.
Last time I tried movie browser, it worked well.
If you are buying a newer VU, they have a plugin based on xbmc. This works fine for local media & various cover views.

You currently won't get any sat box that does both perfectly.

[gredawarha]

project Valerie is quite outdated and no longer supported by the original authors as fas as I know.
Last time I tried movie browser, it worked well.
If you are buying a newer VU, they have a plugin based on xbmc. This works fine for local media & various cover views.

You currently won't get any sat box that does both perfectly.

Do you have a link or more details regarding the XBMC Vu plugin?

[judge]

Do you have a link or more details regarding the XBMC Vu plugin?
Not really, it's still considered a beta.
Have a look here: http://www.world-of-satellite.com/showthread.php?43985-VU-XBMC-Plugin-Few-tips&p=342083&viewfull=1#post342083
and here: http://www.world-of-satellite.com/forumdisplay.php?492-KODI-XBMC-on-Enigma-2-Receivers

[Larry-G]

If your buying a enigma2 based receiver specifically to run XBMC / KODI on it then simply don't. It's no where near mature enough and only a hand full of machines can actually run a almost full version of XBMC.

There are currently two methods of viewing XBMC / KODI content on the enigma2 platform, one is a full blown albeit a closed source version of XBMC and the other simply a emulator that works with modified plugins, both are no where near as mature or user friendly as using XBMC/ KODI on a real XBMC / KODI capable machine.

don't get me wrong I am not trying to dissuade you from enigma2, its a very powerful system and i have been using multiple e2 boxes for almost 5 years but it's not XBMC / KODI and won't be for at least another year or three in my opinion. Also media playability on enigma2 is not all it's cracked up to be, it is largely if not all hardware based and therefore you may need to remaster your files to get the best out of them as you can't just add new codecs as you would with say a PC.

Enigma 2 is perfect for watching and recording satellite, terrestrial or cable TV, and has a huge following with amateur developers such as the ViX team but its not the all in one solution you seem to be looking for, there is no such thing unless you want to build your own HPC for that job. a task that would run into the many thousands of pounds.

If if you want to watch and record TV enigma2 is for you, you can easily network enigma2 around the home for viewing your recorded content and while It may seem daunting at first for none techies ViX is very wife, child friendly. But if you want XBMC / KODI enigma2 is not the platform for you.


on another note XBMC / KODI is not a mature as enimga2 when it comes to handling live TV content, and EPG data etc. both have their ups and downs and both work fantastically in their intended markets but neither is the all in one solution you seem to chasing after. I would go the best of both and buy a good e2 box and a good KODI box and network them together. But that's just me.

[abu baniaz]

AMazon firestick is on offer at the moment

[DaMacFunkin]

Don't mention no movie frame rate support to watch your errrmm movies in.
:smash:

[Larry-G]

Don't mention no movie frame rate support to watch your errrmm movies in.
:smash:

If that's in reference to fire OS they added in partial support for 24p, 25p and 30p into the beta of fire OS 5.

[gredawarha]

If your buying a enigma2 based receiver specifically to run XBMC / KODI on it then simply don't. It's no where near mature enough and only a hand full of machines can actually run a almost full version of XBMC.

There are currently two methods of viewing XBMC / KODI content on the enigma2 platform, one is a full blown albeit a closed source version of XBMC and the other simply a emulator that works with modified plugins, both are no where near as mature or user friendly as using XBMC/ KODI on a real XBMC / KODI capable machine.

don't get me wrong I am not trying to dissuade you from enigma2, its a very powerful system and i have been using multiple e2 boxes for almost 5 years but it's not XBMC / KODI and won't be for at least another year or three in my opinion. Also media playability on enigma2 is not all it's cracked up to be, it is largely if not all hardware based and therefore you may need to remaster your files to get the best out of them as you can't just add new codecs as you would with say a PC.

Enigma 2 is perfect for watching and recording satellite, terrestrial or cable TV, and has a huge following with amateur developers such as the ViX team but its not the all in one solution you seem to be looking for, there is no such thing unless you want to build your own HPC for that job. a task that would run into the many thousands of pounds.

If if you want to watch and record TV enigma2 is for you, you can easily network enigma2 around the home for viewing your recorded content and while It may seem daunting at first for none techies ViX is very wife, child friendly. But if you want XBMC / KODI enigma2 is not the platform for you.


on another note XBMC / KODI is not a mature as enimga2 when it comes to handling live TV content, and EPG data etc. both have their ups and downs and both work fantastically in their intended markets but neither is the all in one solution you seem to chasing after. I would go the best of both and buy a good e2 box and a good KODI box and network them together. But that's just me.

Thank you for the detailed response. I appreciate that I might be after "the moon on a stick" but thought it worth investigating.

Just to clarify I don't necessarily want or need Kodi/XBMC, I want a box that will accept a satellite feed and be able to play movies provided by a graphical library to navigate and choose the movies.

You make a critical point regarding the hardware playback, my file formats may not be compatible and whilst I could convert them I doubt that would be much fun.

Still curious about the Wetek Play, anyone have any experience of it?

[Larry-G]

I have the wetek but I'm not a fan and tend to only switch it on once every few weeks for a minute or two, it just feels tacky to me but you may want to hear from other owners before making your mind up as most seem to enjoy using it.

[gredawarha]

Would you mind elaborating?

[Sicilian]

I want a box that will accept a satellite feed and be able to play movies provided by a graphical library to navigate and choose the movies.


A good compromise is setup a Plex Server at home on a PC or NAS, the run Dreamplex plugin on E2 receiver.

[twol]

Sicilian,s comment is good advice, but like Larry-G, if you want a fool proof child supported system, I think you are better off with 2 devices ..1 that supports TV (E2receiver) and 2 a good media player that plays any movie (in any format) and has a child proof movie library, where you have excellent graphics with text descriptions of the movie (Mede8er or Zappiti (hardware plus excellent easy software graphical scraper for media library)). Both the latter (especially Zappiti) are dead simple to setup.... And you can have multiple boxes around the house running child/adult movie options:)