Coolsat 8000 HD receiver

[Mr Tony]

So now all that is missing is blind scan?

pretty much

 

[zaxxon2000]

Can you give examples of the HD feeds you saw last week? Sounds very interesting. Thanks.

 

[Mr Tony]

a few news feeds from the SuperBowl that were in HD but mainly it was sports
hockey, basketball, etc

 

[jmorales22]

Well this thing is far from perfect. I can name some annoying problems that in my opinion we never should have had with it:

All these are relating to OTA

1) I'm missing two channels. When you're only watching OTA and you don't have cable, it's not like you can just forget about any channels. I've tried setting the step frequency to 0 and starting at 0mhz for my scan! (No, I'm not stupid and I can confirm the missing channels are there)

2) This is a big one to me, and possibly irrelevant to other people: it doesn't have a zoom/stretch feature. One of the reasons I got this early on was because I need to be able to stretch 4:3 content on my new CRT HDTV (native 16:9). If I watch too much content with black bars, I'll get uneven fading and a very ugly look when I'm watching HD content. Setting the screen format to 16:9 does NOT change anything. It needs a 4:3 zoom mode, or at least the option to make the black bars gray. I'm very dissapointed that this thing can't do it.

3) No EPG. That's not a must-have, but when you buy something you expect it to work as advertised right? Well when I push a button I expect to see what I'm watching appear in a little convenient box. I paid $430 for this thing, so I'm not just going to settle for what I get. It can't seem to get its local time from the broadcasters either, which I'm sure goes hand in hand with the same reason there's no epg.

4) The channel #s are all out of order. In fact, they don't make any sense at all. Since there's no epg, if you don't rememember the call letters of the station you want, good luck figuring out what you're watching. I guess you can manually name the channels, but what a pain. The channel # reassignment also does not work.


Maybe (hopefully) all these problems can and will be solved with future firmware upgrades. But right now the thing is far from perfect.

Also it purportedly can do QAM demodulation, but after testing its scan I didn't pick up anything. It might be I don't have any clear QAM channels available, but I did it with and without the cable filter in there.

 

[Mr Tony]

All these are relating to OTA

1) I'm missing two channels. When you're only watching OTA and you don't have cable, it's not like you can just forget about any channels. I've tried setting the step frequency to 0 and starting at 0mhz for my scan! (No, I'm not stupid and I can confirm the missing channels are there)

in my original post, I mentioned the low and high settings (460000 low, 806000 high, 1000k steps). If you have a Digital channel on VHF you'll need to scan that band. All of my DT channels are UHF so I used the above.

2) This is a big one to me, and possibly irrelevant to other people: it doesn't have a zoom/stretch feature. One of the reasons I got this early on was because I need to be able to stretch 4:3 content on my new CRT HDTV (native 16:9). If I watch too much content with black bars, I'll get uneven fading and a very ugly look when I'm watching HD content. Setting the screen format to 16:9 does NOT change anything. It needs a 4:3 zoom mode, or at least the option to make the black bars gray. I'm very dissapointed that this thing can't do it.

I don't have a HDTV yet but my Dish 811 can stretch out a SD program to a 4x3 option. I wish this one did too. Even if I use 4:3 a few of my OTA channels are either "letterbox" (I think thats the term whwere it looks like a 20" TV screen is on a 32" screen) or I get the black bars on the side (especially FOX).

3) No EPG. That's not a must-have, but when you buy something you expect it to work as advertised right? Well when I push a button I expect to see what I'm watching appear in a little convenient box. I paid $430 for this thing, so I'm not just going to settle for what I get. It can't seem to get its local time from the broadcasters either, which I'm sure goes hand in hand with the same reason there's no epg.

I was able to change the time by going in and changing it either manually or just changing the time zone (I think it defaults to +4:00 GMT. Changed to -6:00 GMT and it worked fine

4) The channel #s are all out of order. In fact, they don't make any sense at all. Since there's no epg, if you don't rememember the call letters of the station you want, good luck figuring out what you're watching. I guess you can manually name the channels, but what a pain. The channel # reassignment also does not work.

weird. When I scanned in the DT chanenls, it did put them in their analog spot (our ABC DT channel is 50 but analog is 5..it remaps to 5) but when I scan satellite stuff and want to sort it (using the "sort by network/satellite" option) then it mixes up the DT channels and I can't figure out what order they put them in.

Maybe (hopefully) all these problems can and will be solved with future firmware upgrades. But right now the thing is far from perfect.

agreed. Hopefully there is an upgrade soon

 

[pb4610]

Just received my CoolSat 8000HD today from gosatellite and it does come with the new software (VER 11.13.4A) preloaded but still no USB port as mentioned on some websites. It did come with a manual also. Hopefully they will be fixing the blind scan feature since right now I am using my Pansat 3500SD as a reference.

 

[Mr Tony]

pb
Thats good news that the newer batches have the right software in there

Have fun with it and if you run into issues, let us know

 

[jmorales22]

Thanks Iceberg for your help. Honestly I've tried step frequencies of 600, 1000, 1200... etc. I even went and found out the frequencies the channels should be on in mhz, and manual scanned through that area. I found that the signal was all over the place, going from 99% to 0 and back again. I never could find a lock on it. That's on the one missing UHF channel... haven't tried to manually lock on the missing VHF one although I have set the start frequency below 100000khz. I feel like you're lucky to have all your channels.

That doesn't really matter to me anyway because I won't use it for antenna viewing if I can't stretch it. I'll have to grudingly go buy a new ota atsc tuner.

As for the time thing... yes I can set it manually, but on my other atsc tuner, it wouldn't get program information unless you set it to get the time from the broadcast antennas. I assume it's the same here. that's the part that isn't working. But I feel I should mention it likes to reset the time once I set it manually anyway. Maybe it's missing a cmos battery, maybe it's low, or maybe they were just stupid enough to have it keep the time setting in volatile memory... I just don't know.

I have given up trying to use my compass to point the darn dish, and figuring out where to mount it. So I'm getting some help. I'm looking forward to sharing my thoughts on the units performance if/when I can get pbs hd channel. I used to get the loop fed from the local pbs station and loved it. But they've since decided to multicast instead.

 

[Mr Tony]

Thanks Iceberg for your help. Honestly I've tried step frequencies of 600, 1000, 1200... etc. I even went and found out the frequencies the channels should be on in mhz, and manual scanned through that area. I found that the signal was all over the place, going from 99% to 0 and back again. I never could find a lock on it. That's on the one missing UHF channel... haven't tried to manually lock on the missing VHF one although I have set the start frequency below 100000khz. I feel like you're lucky to have all your channels.

weird. Just by curiousity, is the missing channel adjacent to another channel? I originally had issues with out PBS because its on channel 34 (digital) and NBC is on 35. It wouldnt get 34 but hit 35. Found out what channel 35 was for frequency (bring up the channel list and hit info. It will show it) and then manually started putting in frequencies until it hit. Whats weird is after I did a master reset the next time I scanned it came in.
As for the VHF one, if I remember, I think it was on VHF 7 which is between 174000-216000

As for the time thing... yes I can set it manually, but on my other atsc tuner, it wouldn't get program information unless you set it to get the time from the broadcast antennas. I assume it's the same here. that's the part that isn't working. But I feel I should mention it likes to reset the time once I set it manually anyway. Maybe it's missing a cmos battery, maybe it's low, or maybe they were just stupid enough to have it keep the time setting in volatile memory... I just don't know.

my CS5000 has done the same thing. I would manually set it and then find a feed and somehow the box would grab that time so the box would say 01:00 on Jan 3,1990 or something wacky.

I have given up trying to use my compass to point the darn dish, and figuring out where to mount it. So I'm getting some help. I'm looking forward to sharing my thoughts on the units performance if/when I can get pbs hd channel. I used to get the loop fed from the local pbs station and loved it. But they've since decided to multicast instead.

are you using a fixed dish for PBS or a motorized?

 

[vfrjim]

Does anyone know if it can output a 480i over HDMI when a standard definition channel is being broadcasted?


4:2:2 would have been nice but I need Blindscan, waiting patently...

 

[jmorales22]

Yeah... I looked up the exact frequency they should be on and I found that on the other channels the frequency it was locked on was a little off what supposedly the channels are on. Since the other channels were a little off I wasn't suprised to find that the exact frequency wasn't right for the ones I was missing.. I know I could probably dive in there some more and find those channels but it's not worth it since it can't stretch or show program information either. Incidentally you are correct... the missing UFH channel is 40... one away from uhf 39 which the unit did in fact pick up (and even assigned the right channel number!).

Fixed locaiton dual lnb dish - 36". Hard to find a flat surface to mount it on that's high enough to point over the top of some trees......

 

[dcbag]

Would like to know the physical size of the 8000! I can't find it in any of the info on this unit.

 

[Mr Tony]

14 1/4" wide
10 1/4" deep (thats to the back of the case...not including room for cables)
2 3/4" high

 

[dcbag]

Thanks for info, was hoping it was 17" wide, but I guess the trend now is to make things as small as possible. At least its black and wider than my 5000.

 

[W_Tracy_Parnell]

dcbag,

That's quite a setup! What is all that?

 

[SatinKzo]

Iceberg, I haven't read the whole thread, but I skimmed it and didn't see anything with motor controls? Did you test them and if so, did it function properly?

 

[Mr Tony]

Iceberg, I haven't read the whole thread, but I skimmed it and didn't see anything with motor controls? Did you test them and if so, did it function properly?

it was in the review

I decided to hook it up to the motor to see if the motor functions are working like they should. Took the 5000 and moved it to my true south of IA6 and reset the motor. Hooked up the 8000 and set up my satellites in order from 72-148. Set up IA6 and set my USALS. Dish didn’t move, which was good as I am at 93.0W. Set up G3 next door and the dish flawlessly moved to the sweet spot with no issues. The signal quality meter seems to be a little better than the 5000. The 5000 needs a 63 for threshold and maxes at 82-85. This one will lock on a signal with a 43 quality (I had a feed that was low quality but locked) and max is 99. When I was on AMC3, the numbers were everything from 99 on the really strong transponders and the PBS stuff was around 85.So the meter seems to be a little more lifelike than the 5000. Went through and set up all satellites with USALS. All of them except for the DBS were bang on. I have the DBS set up as an offset so of course it wouldn’t be right. I did work with Diseqc 1.2 but the weird thing is it doesn’t say East or West when you move. There’s just arrows so I didn’t know which way was which. Now that may sound goofy but the way my setup is, the motor is right outside where I am on the north side of the house facing up the roof. So if I hit right arrow, I would think the dish moves East. But if you have it set up different, right arrow might be west for you (depending on which way you are facing). Rest assured, right arrow means East and left arrow means West. I set up all the free channels on the satellites with no issues. When I set the auto scan, it will scan one satellite then move to the next and scan that but it won't start scanning until the motor stops. The neat feature with the 8000 and a motor is if you go through the channel list, the motor wont move until you hit “OK” (the 5000 starts moving as soon as you get to a channel on a different satellite). The receiver will work with a motor & diseqc but there is a trick. The only options are none, diseqc, motor (Diseqc 1.2) and USALS. You have to set up Diseqc first then go and select motor. I was using a 22k so this really isn’t an issue but I wondered how when I hooked the box back to the fixed dish it knew what diseqc to pick even though it said “motor”. Scrolled through to diseqc and it still said “4" from earlier.

 

[SatinKzo]

OMG laff, sorry bout that, when I did a search on the thread, I typed motor wrong, so I got no hits. Fat fingers cursed me again. Thanks though for pointing it out.

 

[Mr Tony]

no problem. The review was kinda long

 

[plimzol]

Any word on USB support? Mine shipped today. Hope it has the factory update.

plimzol