I just got one of these boxes recently, and I will give you my
review of the box. I also have a BEC 6600, that is no longer manufactured anymore.
The good points:
-there are a lot of nice features on the remote that show
extensive details of the channel, sat, signal, etc.
-the box came preprogrammed with the current transponders
of the sats. The box also came with a rs232 straight
cable, which would allow updates to the transponder
settings in the future, as long as Fortec Star is still
around, and updates the info.
-the price is reasonable.
-you could also manually input the settings. You
also have the blind search, which I don't see any
use for, as long as the updates are available from
their site.
- this is probably the most popular box; many people
that you talk to would be familiar with it.
- The positions of the buttons on the remote are very
well designed.
The bad points (or what I didn't like):
- Correct me if I'm wrong; I heard this box is
a clone of a different model; i.e. a cheaper
model. It makes you wonder if the quality is as good.
- This box is not as good in getting good signal
strength. In some cases, the box would not display
any picture at all on a channel when it was raining,
while the other box I have, the BEC 6600 displayed
the signal fine. Many times the BEC would display partial
images and sounds on a marginal signal channel,
while nothing would show up at all with the fortec.
I was really hoping that the box would be stronger in
receiving the signals, since it is a much newer model,
and am really disappointed that it is weaker.
I would say relatively speaking the signal strength is
about 4 to 7 points less on the fortec than on the Bec.
(The two use different scales for the signal strength,
and I cannot go by the exact signal numbers.)
-If you like to flip through a lot of channels, with this
box, almost half of the screen is covered with
informational text, as soon as you change to a
different channel. It would be nice to have less
text displayed, so you could see what is on the
channel. It does go away after a couple of
seconds, however if your flipping through a lot
of channels, you miss a lot of content.
- The receiver does not have all the functionality and
features as the remote. If you lose the remote, or
if the remote breaks, your out of luck.
- When aiming the dish, I wish there was noise volume
with the signal strength so you could hear when the
strength is getting stronger or weaker, like in the dish
network boxes. It would make it easier to aim the
dish without keep having to look at the screen.
I do not have a motorized system, so I can not comment
on the motorized setup. However, I hope in the future
there would be new boxes that would point the dish
automatically until it reaches the maximum signal
strength. In other words, the box would keep moving the
dish around, in the elevation, azimuth, and skew until
it reaches the point where there is the maximum signal
strength. Except maybe for the skew, I can't see why
something like this can't be programmed into the
receiver. Just like there is a blind search for the
transponders, there could be a blind search for the
dish position.
Ok, that is my review on the receiver. These are just my
perceptions, and I do not make any guarantees that any
of the above is correct.
malk
