My Thoughts on the Openbox S9

[TimLones111]

I know I am very late to the party here regarding the Openbox S9, but as I said on another thread, Because of the kindness of a longtime Satellite Guys member, I recently acquired a slightly used Openbox S9. It came last Saturday afternoon.

Considering I really had no instructions (The manuals here are kind of hard to decipher..Nobody's fault, really)..It didnt take me long to set up and get a picture..Using HDMI for the audio/video. The picture on the HD channels looks great..I did delete the channel list that came with the receiver (dumb move) so I have to manually enter each satellite..Between that and a continuing problem of keeping my dish on the arc..Its been a time consuming process getting everything up and running.

Today I parked my Dish at 87W and took my old Foretec Receiver and a small TV out to the dish to get a signal...Love having the extra receiver to do this with..Nailed the signal in a few minutes..Found I had to reset the motor As it had stopped moving..

I did a blind scan on 87, 103 and 125, where the extra PBS and HD's are..Finally got them all in I believe..The Blind scan is kind of slow..I do notice nothing shows up till after 50% of the scan has gone by. Like that the extra "Radio" channels with numbers like 25000/40000 dont show up in the channel list..

As of now I have about 305 channels..I've not tried to deal with setting the clock or using the PVR features, which require an extra USB drive, I guess..For what I've seen so far, the Openbox is a definite improvement over the Fortec Dynamic..Love having the extra HD and ac3audio on some channels..If you can find one the Openbox is definitely worth it..

 

[Lak7]

so I have to manually enter each satellite..

There is a North American Sat list floating around here somewhere

Between that and a continuing problem of keeping my dish on the arc..

Once set, the Dish should stay aligned, barring extreme winds or bad motor.

 

[Lone Cloud]

I had bought an S10 new and had all sorts of problems with it. The most problematic were the freezing-crashing-rebooting boogie that some have referred to.

I returned it and went with a Manhattan instead. Even though the receiver looks like it must have been manufactured by the same people, I have had no problems, no freezing, no crashing nor rebooting.

If you are going to buy an Openbox, probably wise to get it from a fellow member. They will be able to tell you if the unit has those propblems.

 

[rrob311]

I bought an S9 a year ago or so and have had minimal problems with it. I have beat on the box pretty hard and it still works fine. I changed the firmware a few times but its good still. It has a very sensitive tuner and works well on the blind scan. I think I paid about 130 or so. They can be had for much less now. I currently am using the latest firmware that allows you to record 2 shows while watching a 3rd on the same transponder. Overall as far as cost and function it is the best receiver I own.

 

[chaskuchar]

i really like my s9 now. fyi, i had problems with capacitors after i had it about a year or so but after i fixed it, it is really working well. now i have that firmware that has two record functions, ps and ts. which one should i use for viewing on my laptop? and how? thanks, charlie

 

[Lone Gunman]

I have two AZBoxes, one Elite and one Ultra that I bought new. Decided to buy a slightly used S9 from a member here and after using it for about 4 or 5 months I liked it so much I bought another used one from Amazon for my other system.

So after spending around $550 on the AZs, I've now got to S9s and paid less than $200 for both shipped to my door. Granted, the AZs will do lots of stuff that the S9s won't but the S9s do most everything I need done. I'll bet that I don't use either AZBox once in a months time any more.

PVR functions on the S9 work fine with drives formatted in NTFS and also FAT. The only problems I've seen with the record function is that it cuts off recording after 2 hours but to be honest, I really haven't tried to fix that. Movies that I put on that drive will only play back in MPEG format whereas the AZs will play pretty much anything you throw at them. AZs will recognize an NTFS drive and play movies from it but will not record to it. I like to use Windows partitions so my computer will recognise it and I can copy movies to and from the drive on a Windows box.

Ennywho, the S9s are great units for the price.

 

[FaT Air]

PS records as an Mpeg movie. TS records Transport stream. VLC will play either type of recording on your laptop. I don't see any quality difference. Shift+"s" takes a screen grap and saves as a jpeg in VLC. Use Format Factory, if you need to save HD space or email, to compress or change format.

 

[Babadem]

I can play back .mkv, .mpg, and .vob files on my S10. I'm still testing other video files.

 

[highskies]

I can play back .mkv, .mpg, and .vob files on my S10. I'm still testing other video files.

I only have an S9. so wondering if the S10 can also record to those formats..,vob and .mkv?

 

[highskies]

I bought an S9 a year ago or so and have had minimal problems with it. I have beat on the box pretty hard.

Almost sounds like a contradiction, lol.

 

[Babadem]

I only have an S9. so wondering if the S10 can also record to those formats..,vob and .mkv?

No, it only plays back converted files from those formats.

 

[Tron]

The only problems I've seen with the record function is that it cuts off recording after 2 hours but to be honest, I really haven't tried to fix that.

If you hit the record button on the remote a second time after your initial start of the recording, it will bring up a box that shows the record time. You can key in any number of hours/minutes you want the recording to continue.