Great price, niggling faults.
I've been using My Merc II for a couple weeks now. I have been running the latest firmware from Fortec as of last week.
I like the box. For the most part everything works all the time, and most of how it works is pretty logical to me. A few times the box seemed to stop responding to remote commands and had to be reset, but as I understand it, this is not terribly unusual in the FTA world (or cable TV PVRs, for that matter. If I had a dime for every time I had to reset my Comcast PVR by unplugging it...)
But just a few criticisms of the box, where I think a little firmware development would really increase the value to the end user.
Transponder management: could be much better with user-edit capabilities:
1. After a blind "power" scan, often transponders are found that are not in the factory default transponder list. There does not seem to be any mechanism for automatically or manually adding these newly-found transponders to the transponder list. I haven't studied the format of the channel dump (yet), so it may be that this could be easily done externally to the box. But still, it would be nice if you could change it without upgrading firmware or editing it on a PC remotely.
2. This shortcoming severely limits the usefulness of the otherwise excellent "Transponder scan" feature. You are limited to the transponders embedded in the firmware image (apparently). It would be great if either a) the user could enter the transponder frequency and polarization manually and add it to the list or edit the list or b) the user could automatically and/or selectively add any transponders found in the last "power scan" to the transponder list, thus keeping it up to date. For transponders that come and go, this might be a quick way to check to see if it's active on antenna setup or other menus without having dark channels programmed.
Power scanning
1. This feature is IMHO all that I expect it to be. The few times I note inconsistent results on a power scan, it's usually on the weakest transponders when the signal is marginal (e.g. UWTV and Research Channel on G10R, which sometimes show, and sometimes don't, but are on the threshold of being a usable signal.)
2. However, in my box, the lower and upper scan limits are not user-changeable, as far as I can tell. A '0.9' appears in a circle and attempting to edit or change the values does not work. To me, this is not a big deal as long as I don't have to scan the low band on a universal LNB, but it is annoying as I was hoping for a work around for the lack of ability to enter a specific transponder frequency and scan only that.
Channel upload/download
1. It's understandable that a firmware upgrade would start with an STB reset. This is probably a good safety precaution since that means all upgrades begin in a "fresh environment" right after reset, before some program bug can mangle memory or otherwise complicate the operation of the upgrade.
BUT:
2. I don't see the reason to require an STB reset for a channel up/download.
The channel up and download would be REALLY USEFUL if both could be initiated by the host computer. IMHO, the utility of remote channel editing (and perhaps robotic blind scanning) would be greatly enhanced if the box could act as an intelligent peripheral to a PC when not being controlled via the IR remote.
lastly,
I don't know if any IRD/STB supports a protocol for remote control via RS-232 or USB, but I know I'd be in the market for this if it exists. Like many, I *don't* want my STB to be tied to a computer 24/7 just to use it on a day-to-day basis, but I *do* want to have the ability to control it via PC without playing games emitting IR codes and such to "fool" the box into responding to PC control.
That last comment applies to just about any box out there, I guess.
In the ham radio world, basically every manufacturer has the ability to control their higher-end transceiver gear by a PC. But predictably, Kenwood has one protocol, ICOM another, Yaesu another, Ten-Tec yet another, and all different. Wouldn't it be cool if the STB industry could standardize basic features so software could be written to control STBs without it being a constant battle to adapt to new boxes and proprietary changes being made because no common framework exists...
Oh well, pie-in-the-sky I guess. I'll settle for a protocol that emulates the IR remote signals if it would let me automate the dish pointing and blind scanning.
