Opinions, Please: Coolsat 7000 or 6000?

[Tron]

I have to go tomorrow morning and align a friend's D* dish, he has NO HD at all...so he called ME instead of D*...

I get this all the time too

"Hey, you know how to set up a satellite dish! Come set mine up, and we'll have some beers!"

(I don't drink, LOL)...

 

[stogie5150]

For all of you that are waiting,here's some pics I snapped yesterday, I have ID'd at least one other niggling issue...audio. Audio only channels are very flaky. Sometimes they won't come in at all. I am on 119, sometimes it will just sit there, no audio, then bam comes right in.

Well, lemme go aim that dish, here's the pics.

 

[gabshere]

do you like the feel of this coolsat or does it give you a feeling of another box (maker altogether). The older coolsats seemed easy to navigate through the menu system.

 

[stogie5150]

do you like the feel of this coolsat or does it give you a feeling of another box (maker altogether). The older coolsats seemed easy to navigate through the menu system.

Totally different. Only thing that is remotely (har har ) similar IS the remote.
Blindscan works different, setup is different, everything is different. And its too new for me to say if it is better or not. That will take some time.

I just got back from aligning my friend's D* dish, so I am settled in here, I only have one sat stored on the motor so off I go to store the rest of the arc. If you don't hear from me, it went smoothly.:up

 

[stogie5150]

Ice, I think I owe you and Coolsat/Visionsat an apology. I think I had my Latitude and Longitude set up wrong...USALS on the 7000 is bang on. I need to go check the Visionsat now...

Other issues with the 7000:

1) Hangs with 4:2:2 AND HD feeds. If you have a sat stored like Anik that only has 4:2:2 feeds better not try it, I had to reboot three times before getting it changed. They need to change this pronto.

2) Seems to be very belated with the disecq switching when moving the dish. Sometimes you have to change the channel three or four times once the dish stops moving before the switch switches and you get signal.

3) Listen to Brother Ice, change the blind scan frequencies and the blind scan works MUCH faster.

I see on the Coolsat site there is a 1.05 firmware posted, my box has 1.01 I think, so there's something that might fix some problems. I am gonna load that up tomorrow.

I haven't gotten around to playing with the buffer much, and I do not have a hard drive to hook to it.

Early verdict: Eye Patch Gang's box.

 

[Anole]

Early verdict: Eye Patch Gang's box.

Well, no real surprise there.

I didn't want to state the obvious earlier, but the whole reason the 6000 existed and continued selling, is the extra ram.
Not much use to an FTAer.
I think they must've used it for EPG.

Will look forward to more comments as you get it tamed.

 

[stogie5150]

<exhales loudly>

1.05 is a MESS!

it changed the interface entirely. Still pretty easy to get around in the menus, though, USALS is still pretty much bang on, blind scan is just okay, it wouldn't BS KUIL or ONN, I had to manual scan those.

BUT, this firmware completely broke the disecq switching. Take the switch out, box works 100 percent. Put it in, it works maybe 10 percent of the time. Maddening. Have to turn it off with the switch on the back to get it to reset. Then it may work, may not. I guess I need to get a couple 22khz switches to run my little dish for 119 music. Because this thing is gonna drive me NUTS!

If anyone wants to see pics of the new interface with 1.05, post back and I'll take some.

 

[Mr Tony]

stogie
My Visonsat does the same thing with ONN & KUIL. Those 2 TP's are a pain for the box to grab for some reason

I dont know why these boxes have issues with Diseqc switches and blind scan??

 

[stogie5150]

I sent Coolsat a nice email asking about the 4:2:2 problem, as that is the larger issue. Let's see if I get a response.
I've used it about a week now, the PVR timeshift thing is pretty danged cool, I'll tell ya that. Its nice to press pause, go get a tasty beverage, come back, press play, bingo goes right on...

The disecq issue seems to be abating somewhat, its been working pretty solidly lately, I had an issue this morning motoring from G17 to G10, once it got to G10 I had no signal, so I kept changing channels until it finally switched. But that was the first problem in a couple days, and I use it a couple times a day. :up

 

[stogie5150]

Oh goodness, check this out....

This is what I sent to Coolsat:

Hello,

I am a new user of your 7000 model receiver. Great piece of equipment, works great with USALS Motor support, however I have a huge problem. Upon doing a blind scan, if a 4:2:2 feed is encountered the box freezes up, necessitiating a hard reset with the switch on the back.

I also have an old Coolsat 5000 ,and it has no problem with such feeds, in that it shows no picture but it does have audio for you to id the broadcast in order to tune it with a PC Tuner card, no lockup, which I found funny because the 5000 is so old and slow comapred to the new 7000.
This is a huge problem for those of us that do a lot of feed hunting, especially on football weekends the satellites are full of 4:2:2 feeds that lockup the receiver.
I would like to request if possible a fix be done for this, it makes a great receiver almost useless for feed hunting. If you need more information, or help testing a fix for this problem, please do not hesitate to let me know.

KD,
Slidell,LA

This is what I got back.

Dear Keith, ​

We appreciate your feedback. At the current time, we are having some trouble with our Blindscan feature. It is not operational. We are aware of this problem on the new models and our software engineers are working on it.

Reminds me of the old Microsoft gag, they gave me a perfectly acceptable answer, just that my question had nothing to do with the answer I received.