Review of VU+ Solo Enigma 2 Linux receiver

[Sicilian]

For the purpose if this review I'm using the official installed stock image as supplied. I'm not flashing with any other image.

Once again I was impressed with the packaging provided with a VU+ receiver. Upon unpacking I was really pleased to see a black remote! So I've now both white and black remote's.

Box contents as follows: -

VU+ Solo
Instruction Manual (well written)
HDMI Lead
Black Remote inc. batteries

First thing I did was take the attached photos. I then proceeded to remove the lid and take photos of the insides. You'll notice that it's fan-less.

Once the photos where out of the way I proceeded to set up connected to a Triax 1.1m dish with TM-2600 motor.

The Solo boot's up just as fast, if not faster than its big brother the Duo. Once booted I followed through the setup wizard to set tuner and A/V settings. I noticed that advanced Videomode wasn't pre-installed. So once fully booted I went to plugins and installed from the feed, Videomode plugin (so I could select 1080 HDMI in A/V settings), video enhancement and Auto resolution plugins (never enabled auto resolution though).

Next thing I transferred my Enigma 2 Settings/bouquets with Dreamboxedit. Then went straight to FTA channels and was impressed with the picture quality of both SD & HD, again just as good as the Duo. Switched from Astra28 to Hotbird to Astra 19deg with no issues whatsoever. Zap speeds actually feel slightly faster on the Solo compared to the Duo.

Right now time to test out CCcam. I transferred VTI-Feed.conf to /etc/ipkg/ and installed CCcam 2.1.3 from the feed. I can confirm that CCcam works as 100% as client and server.

Now time to test some recording and timeshifting. The only thing I had to hand was a 16GB USB stick, so I successfully mounted it as a HDD via telnet. Once mounted I recording and switching through channels on the same transponder with ease Pausing live TV worked great too.

Now the main things where Tested I thought I'd try and get some extended EPG installed. I tried both the Rytec XMLTV plugin and Andyblac's satmate script and unfortunately neither worked on the official stock image. So we'll have to wait for a third party image in order to have extended EPG.

Overall I'm very impressed with the Solo, it my be the smaller brother of the Duo but it really packs as punch! You would never guess that it has a slightly less powerful processor than it's big brother. Its looks great, build quality is what we expected from VU+ and its great that it's fan-less so runs silent. So far not seen any heat issues. Now the only negative thing I can find to say about it, is that we to wait for a third party image before we can use an extended EPG plugin and very much doubt that the third party images are too far away. Both the VTI and PLi team have confirmed that they will be supporting the Solo.

If anyone has anything that they would like tested on the Solo please post a request here and I will do my best to test for you.