CaptiveWorks Receivers

[Scott Greczkowski]

Tonight at the SatelliteExpo I saw some very interesting FTA receivers from CaptiveWorks.

It was a FTA DVR which also let you add features to it (such as a DVD player) and in addition let you set user profiles so that you could lock out certain features or channels from others using your receiver. In addition you could use it to browse the web, check email and more.

Its memory was also expandable to 1 GB and it gave you lots of options which I have never seen on a FTA receiver. I talked to the CaptiveWorks folks and hopefully PSB or Iceburg will get one soon for review.

 

[PSB]

What a machine, thanks for the pictures Scott!

 

[global0]

Any word on the price?
"Memory expandable to 1GB" brings up the question, how much is it shipped with from factory?
And browsing the internet implies that it has a 10/100 Ethernet port, right?

 

[Mr Tony]

sweet

Me really like

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Comes with 128MB. Pricing was unavilable.

 

[global0]

Thanks.
What I saw and got me thinking was the cooling fan on the CPU. I hope they have taken that into consideration. I certainly don't like to hear a noisy fan in my living room ;(

ICE, when you test it, stress the heck out of the box to see how noisy the fan can be, please!

 

[Mr Tony]

ICE, when you test it, stress the heck out of the box to see how noisy the fan can be, please!

hopefully I get one...I LOVE putting these boxes to the test.

 

[PSB]

sweet

Me really like

GET A ROOM

Yep you would be the best man for the Job Iceberg

 

[global0]

Great!
So, what's the deal with this CW600-Premium. judging from the picture, it looks like it has component video and S-PDIF optical ports. What is the price on that box?

 

[Othea]

whiny hd and huffy fan

A hard disk and fan -- whiny or not -- make too much noise for me. Too bad.

I would prefer NO fan and a hard disk that you can simply turn off when not in use. It would be simple enough to add an external switch to cut power to the hard drive (assuming that won't confuse the heck out of the operating system), but the fan... I'll have to pass on this one because of the fan.

 

[global0]

A hard disk and fan -- whiny or not -- make too much noise for me. Too bad.

I would prefer NO fan and a hard disk that you can simply turn off when not in use. It would be simple enough to add an external switch to cut power to the hard drive (assuming that won't confuse the heck out of the operating system), but the fan... I'll have to pass on this one because of the fan.

Well, the HD is less of an issue as they have a sleep timer that can be used to turn them off when they are not in use and wake them up when needed. My worry is the CPU fan. If the fan is only used when the system is heavily under load, that is one thing. This means that it would kick on when the user is scanning a bunch of sats, surfing and downloading stuff on internet and maybe playing a .mpg file on the media player. But if if it runs all the time and its late night and I am sitting in the living room and trying to wind down, then it is a problem with the fan whinning in the background.

 

[Change]

Huh. Mini-ITX board, wonder what brand they use...also wonder what tuner card they're using.
Aha! This appears to be the mainboard: http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/78_76/products_id/487

Still curious about the tuner card Scott, think you can do some info digging?
(Also curious if they developed their own software, or are using MythTV or their own variant of MythTV...)

 

[digiblur]

Any 4:2:2 with HD receivers, Scott?

Hard drive and little fan noisy? My dual core AMD64 X2 4200 with 3 hard drives inside a HTPC case isn't real loud. I can't hear it all when the movie is cranking out of the audio system.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

No 4.2.2 / HD receivers, a few have them in the works however it may be two years before we see them.

 

[global0]

So, Scott, what was the general theme of the show? where are these companies heading? Obviously not HD/4.2.2 as you are saying it is a couple of years away. I can see that CW is trying to position their box as the "media/entertianment" box, but what new thing is coming from the other camps?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

We are headed to the next generation units, faster, more memory, more features, PVR and networkable.

I saw a few units (including the captive works) where you were able to watch your FTA system remotely on your PC from anywhere you have an internet connection.

They are aiming to make it easier for folks to use and pack a punch for very little cost.

They do want to make MPEG4 boxes but at the moment the costs are too high. A number of comanies want to make 4.2.2 receivers however the only chipset out that does it is a MPEG4 chipset.

 

[Das Hammer]

Been hearing about this 1000 from CW for a while. Been waiting for it to finally be released. Saw some OSD shots too, looks nice.

 

[global0]

We are headed to the next generation units, faster, more memory, more features, PVR and networkable.

I saw a few units (including the captive works) where you were able to watch your FTA system remotely on your PC from anywhere you have an internet connection.

They are aiming to make it easier for folks to use and pack a punch for very little cost.

They do want to make MPEG4 boxes but at the moment the costs are too high. A number of comanies want to make 4.2.2 receivers however the only chipset out that does it is a MPEG4 chipset.

Great, that sounds promising! Did you get a sense of when this box (CW-1000) would be available in the market?