As title says, I've had my AzBox for 6 months now and thought I would share a few observations I found out but have not seen in other posts or on other forums.
This is my first FTA receiver. I have the two tuner model. The A tuner is hooked to a GeoSat Pro 1.2m Ku dish on a DG-380 H-H motor. The B tuner is hooked to a Sadoun 2.4m C-band dish through a G-Box V3000 positioner and a 24" actuactor.
For editing tools, I am using Filezilla 3.5.3, Maz 3.2.0.0 and ACC 1.1 to download, edit and reload the three criteria all_channel.dat and antenna_list.dat and DVBS.dat files.
===
AzBox Premium + Observations:
1. There is a steep learing curve getting this box up and running and, probably even more so to get it stable. Very, very picky about settings and sequences. Not sure I would recommend this as the first box for someone getting into the hobby. If I had it to do over again, I'd spend time with a cheap and easy-to-use box to get my Ku and C band dishes up and running and then progress to the AzBox. For that matter, I'd never try the "C-band on a Ku dish" experiment at all (that was a waste of my time). Tough troubleshooting set up when you have not had anything working and you are trying to figure out where to start.
2. I did have the AzBox external power supply die on me within a few months. It was a component failure that took out an internal fuse. This appears to be a wider ranged problem that has been addressed in production. Got a warranty replacement; so far so good. If it goes again I plan on building my own using separate +24V and +12V power supplies and just wire them to the AxBox connector. That little power supply gets way to hot. I suspect it was designed in Europe for 240VAC and therefore draws double the current when running on US 120VAC.
3. The USALS works like a champ. I set my south satellite at 83W and was done after one tweak to get a better signal on PBS at 125W. I can get 30W to 125W on Ku. For some reason, I have to set the positoner to DiSEqC 1.2 not USALS for the satellite at 34.5W. The USALS puts the dish too far west. Tweaking it manually brings signal quality from <30% to a solid 80%. This is the only Ku bird I have to mess with at all, ever. Funny thing is USALS works for 30W and 45W on either side of it just fine.
4. There is very little control over audio in this box. For services that transmit AC3 audio on different channels like NBC does, you can make yourself crazy using the "yellow" button to try to find the audio as they switch commericals, show and news vocals. It is all but impossible to watch services that transmit the TV audio on the left channel and some radio station on the right channel like Silverbird TV on 37.5W at 3775 H 2143 for example. Need to be able to selectively turn off/on individual audio channels and have a redirect to a center channel so we can select what we want to listen to.
5. Not sure what is happening but some HD channels cause the box to take more than double the amount of time to change channels and respond to a remote key. For example, if I am on the Fox "Cops" feed on 99W 4060 V 27780 and am watching the SD feed, the box responds normally. If though I am watching the same HD feed, it takes ~10 seconds for the box to respond to a channel change. This happens only on HD channles but not all HD channels.
6. On the subject of HD channels, what is wrong with eScapes HD? Audio sounds great but the update rate is not HD. I can't watch this. Looks like it drops frames. I assume it is an AzBox issue as I cannot believe anyone would transmit that poor of quality and represent it as HD.
7. I find the AzBox to be very sensitive to antenna position for C band S2 signals ... even on the same satellite I may have to move it. I can get some signals at position X then need to tweak the dish a couple of click west to get one and then have to go back east 3 or 4 clicks to get another. Not all S2 signals have this issue but ones that do I have learned to just tweak it and be done. Satellites that I like to watch like 103W, 101W and 87W are among the worse that have this issue for me.
8. Finally, I find h.264 channels will lock up the box if I tune to them and the signal is poor for any reason. For example, on 99W there are some ABC h.264 feeds at 4120 V 30000 and 4140 V 30000. If they are blocky when I tune them in, the box will lock up and not display anything else until a reboot. I can change channels but nothing displays and no audio is played. The only thing I can do is a power reboot. After reboot all is well unless I tune right back to the poor quality h.264 signal where it will lock again.
G-Box V3000
1. The G-Box V3000 works well through DiSEqC 1.2 once it is set up. But... a blind scan causes the software limits to be reset and the dish will go to the full east or west limit and "Error-2" out. I have learned to go to Sathint.com and just look for changes and add them manually. Blind scan is very slow anyway with the AzBox and frankly I have not found much using it.
2. Moving distances either direction virtually guarantees the count will be off. This is another widely discussed issue it seems. I track the C-band arc from 37.5 W to 131W. If I move short distances from satellite to satellite... say 91W to 99W then to 101W I find the count error is small and the dish stops close enough to get a good Q signal. If I move a large distance... say 50W to 103W at one move, but when the dish stops it will not show a signal and will always need to tweak the position using the G-Box remote control. Lots of discussion out there about reed switches but it sure acts like a bug (way too predictable and repeatable and pervasive).
Edit Software Observations:
1. Do as much as possible with the edit tools and not in the AzBox itself. Deleting satellites or more than one channel at a time or renaming a channel can cause unpredictable results if you do it via remote control and AzBox.
2. Use Filezilla *only* to retrieve the three files. Use Maz *only* to edit the files. Use ACC *only* to relaod the files back to the AzBox. Use of any other tool or mixing use of these three can (will) cause unpredictable results.
3. Even in Maz, it is always best to do one thing, save the file and reload it rather than doing several of the same thing in a row. For example, deleting multiple channels off a satellite then saving can cause unpredictable results. It is always better to delete a channel, hit save, then reload before deleting the next.
4. In Maz if you get a memory violation error, stop what you are doing, do not save the file and start over at last save.
5. If you enter frequency and SR in Maz, be sure to always add three zeros to the field. 3710 H 27000 for example must be entered in freq as: 3710000 and in SR as: 27000000
6. Not sure why there is so much discussion and concern about this being a Unix-based box though. You do not need to be a Unix-guru to use this box. Having a real good understanding of how to get a wireless connection set-up will be of more use than knowing any Unix at all.
Hope this helps someone in setting up or making a buying decision.
===
Bill
This is my first FTA receiver. I have the two tuner model. The A tuner is hooked to a GeoSat Pro 1.2m Ku dish on a DG-380 H-H motor. The B tuner is hooked to a Sadoun 2.4m C-band dish through a G-Box V3000 positioner and a 24" actuactor.
For editing tools, I am using Filezilla 3.5.3, Maz 3.2.0.0 and ACC 1.1 to download, edit and reload the three criteria all_channel.dat and antenna_list.dat and DVBS.dat files.
===
AzBox Premium + Observations:
1. There is a steep learing curve getting this box up and running and, probably even more so to get it stable. Very, very picky about settings and sequences. Not sure I would recommend this as the first box for someone getting into the hobby. If I had it to do over again, I'd spend time with a cheap and easy-to-use box to get my Ku and C band dishes up and running and then progress to the AzBox. For that matter, I'd never try the "C-band on a Ku dish" experiment at all (that was a waste of my time). Tough troubleshooting set up when you have not had anything working and you are trying to figure out where to start.
2. I did have the AzBox external power supply die on me within a few months. It was a component failure that took out an internal fuse. This appears to be a wider ranged problem that has been addressed in production. Got a warranty replacement; so far so good. If it goes again I plan on building my own using separate +24V and +12V power supplies and just wire them to the AxBox connector. That little power supply gets way to hot. I suspect it was designed in Europe for 240VAC and therefore draws double the current when running on US 120VAC.
3. The USALS works like a champ. I set my south satellite at 83W and was done after one tweak to get a better signal on PBS at 125W. I can get 30W to 125W on Ku. For some reason, I have to set the positoner to DiSEqC 1.2 not USALS for the satellite at 34.5W. The USALS puts the dish too far west. Tweaking it manually brings signal quality from <30% to a solid 80%. This is the only Ku bird I have to mess with at all, ever. Funny thing is USALS works for 30W and 45W on either side of it just fine.
4. There is very little control over audio in this box. For services that transmit AC3 audio on different channels like NBC does, you can make yourself crazy using the "yellow" button to try to find the audio as they switch commericals, show and news vocals. It is all but impossible to watch services that transmit the TV audio on the left channel and some radio station on the right channel like Silverbird TV on 37.5W at 3775 H 2143 for example. Need to be able to selectively turn off/on individual audio channels and have a redirect to a center channel so we can select what we want to listen to.
5. Not sure what is happening but some HD channels cause the box to take more than double the amount of time to change channels and respond to a remote key. For example, if I am on the Fox "Cops" feed on 99W 4060 V 27780 and am watching the SD feed, the box responds normally. If though I am watching the same HD feed, it takes ~10 seconds for the box to respond to a channel change. This happens only on HD channles but not all HD channels.
6. On the subject of HD channels, what is wrong with eScapes HD? Audio sounds great but the update rate is not HD. I can't watch this. Looks like it drops frames. I assume it is an AzBox issue as I cannot believe anyone would transmit that poor of quality and represent it as HD.
7. I find the AzBox to be very sensitive to antenna position for C band S2 signals ... even on the same satellite I may have to move it. I can get some signals at position X then need to tweak the dish a couple of click west to get one and then have to go back east 3 or 4 clicks to get another. Not all S2 signals have this issue but ones that do I have learned to just tweak it and be done. Satellites that I like to watch like 103W, 101W and 87W are among the worse that have this issue for me.
8. Finally, I find h.264 channels will lock up the box if I tune to them and the signal is poor for any reason. For example, on 99W there are some ABC h.264 feeds at 4120 V 30000 and 4140 V 30000. If they are blocky when I tune them in, the box will lock up and not display anything else until a reboot. I can change channels but nothing displays and no audio is played. The only thing I can do is a power reboot. After reboot all is well unless I tune right back to the poor quality h.264 signal where it will lock again.
G-Box V3000
1. The G-Box V3000 works well through DiSEqC 1.2 once it is set up. But... a blind scan causes the software limits to be reset and the dish will go to the full east or west limit and "Error-2" out. I have learned to go to Sathint.com and just look for changes and add them manually. Blind scan is very slow anyway with the AzBox and frankly I have not found much using it.
2. Moving distances either direction virtually guarantees the count will be off. This is another widely discussed issue it seems. I track the C-band arc from 37.5 W to 131W. If I move short distances from satellite to satellite... say 91W to 99W then to 101W I find the count error is small and the dish stops close enough to get a good Q signal. If I move a large distance... say 50W to 103W at one move, but when the dish stops it will not show a signal and will always need to tweak the position using the G-Box remote control. Lots of discussion out there about reed switches but it sure acts like a bug (way too predictable and repeatable and pervasive).
Edit Software Observations:
1. Do as much as possible with the edit tools and not in the AzBox itself. Deleting satellites or more than one channel at a time or renaming a channel can cause unpredictable results if you do it via remote control and AzBox.
2. Use Filezilla *only* to retrieve the three files. Use Maz *only* to edit the files. Use ACC *only* to relaod the files back to the AzBox. Use of any other tool or mixing use of these three can (will) cause unpredictable results.
3. Even in Maz, it is always best to do one thing, save the file and reload it rather than doing several of the same thing in a row. For example, deleting multiple channels off a satellite then saving can cause unpredictable results. It is always better to delete a channel, hit save, then reload before deleting the next.
4. In Maz if you get a memory violation error, stop what you are doing, do not save the file and start over at last save.
5. If you enter frequency and SR in Maz, be sure to always add three zeros to the field. 3710 H 27000 for example must be entered in freq as: 3710000 and in SR as: 27000000
6. Not sure why there is so much discussion and concern about this being a Unix-based box though. You do not need to be a Unix-guru to use this box. Having a real good understanding of how to get a wireless connection set-up will be of more use than knowing any Unix at all.
Hope this helps someone in setting up or making a buying decision.
===
Bill
.
