I have a new Sonicview 8000HD and will be testing it on a 90 Fortec with motor. This will be updated as I am able to test different sats and features.
If anyone has any request or test you want me to try out post away and I will try to post results. It should be noted that I can look from about 55 to 123 before trees and houses cause a problem. I will be testing it against a Coolsat 5000 for all of the SD programming and scanning speed test.
Starting out I can say that the box is very nice design, not too small to look out of place and not too big to take up tou much space.
The back has all of the outputs that a HD or SD box would need and HDMI for digital path. Standard RCA, S video and component, digital audio and RS 232C are also there.
I started the test with component input and will test HDMI later as most of my other sources are componet and that was the one open spot on the TV for right now. Audio is RCA direct to the TV.
Starting up the box it is very easy to get started I hit the menu button and just started to play around as most of us would do.
I set up the input from the dish and most sats have all of the basic information loaded so I went to motor and set USALS put in my location and nothing or I should say they unit never tells you that it is moving to a location so you have no idea what is going on with the dish so it was a inside outside inside outside over and over to try and figure out what was going on. The other thing that is missing is something to let you move to you sat location a big oversite as you need to save your sat position or it will default back to the last sat you were at(I am sure there is a work around for this but I couldn't figure it out in my fit of anger). After 3 hours of getting upset at the unit I tried a new program found on the net to see if anything would work better. Well to my surprise someone added the go to feature so you can make the dish move in USALS. After the new feature saved me from going nuts I was able to load in some sats with known hot channels and it worked. I have a picture!!!!!!!!!!!
Now tonight we are having some big storms in the central USA so testing is limited due to signal loss.
Testing is still slow due to weather but I have been able to scan in some more sats and there is one thing I like is the blind scan has a fast and detail .... fast is fast under 2 minutes and detail is is like a normal blind scan 8, 10, 12 minutes I will test it against the Coolsat5000 but I think the Coolsat will win.
Another thing is the remote has the buttons in some odd places, the sat button which is useful when you have a ton of chans loaded, is bottom right on the remote and in about the hardest place to hit if you are right handed. But when you hit it is bring up the sats that you have loaded and you can pick which one you want to show up in the guide. The receiver does seem slow at times moving in the guide and when using the page up or down it is easy to go past what you want. I am sure this is a software issue but something you can work around.
I will add to my post as testing continues, like I said before if you have any questions fire away.
If anyone has any request or test you want me to try out post away and I will try to post results. It should be noted that I can look from about 55 to 123 before trees and houses cause a problem. I will be testing it against a Coolsat 5000 for all of the SD programming and scanning speed test.
Starting out I can say that the box is very nice design, not too small to look out of place and not too big to take up tou much space.
The back has all of the outputs that a HD or SD box would need and HDMI for digital path. Standard RCA, S video and component, digital audio and RS 232C are also there.
I started the test with component input and will test HDMI later as most of my other sources are componet and that was the one open spot on the TV for right now. Audio is RCA direct to the TV.
Starting up the box it is very easy to get started I hit the menu button and just started to play around as most of us would do.
I set up the input from the dish and most sats have all of the basic information loaded so I went to motor and set USALS put in my location and nothing or I should say they unit never tells you that it is moving to a location so you have no idea what is going on with the dish so it was a inside outside inside outside over and over to try and figure out what was going on. The other thing that is missing is something to let you move to you sat location a big oversite as you need to save your sat position or it will default back to the last sat you were at(I am sure there is a work around for this but I couldn't figure it out in my fit of anger). After 3 hours of getting upset at the unit I tried a new program found on the net to see if anything would work better. Well to my surprise someone added the go to feature so you can make the dish move in USALS. After the new feature saved me from going nuts I was able to load in some sats with known hot channels and it worked. I have a picture!!!!!!!!!!!
Now tonight we are having some big storms in the central USA so testing is limited due to signal loss.
Testing is still slow due to weather but I have been able to scan in some more sats and there is one thing I like is the blind scan has a fast and detail .... fast is fast under 2 minutes and detail is is like a normal blind scan 8, 10, 12 minutes I will test it against the Coolsat5000 but I think the Coolsat will win.
Another thing is the remote has the buttons in some odd places, the sat button which is useful when you have a ton of chans loaded, is bottom right on the remote and in about the hardest place to hit if you are right handed. But when you hit it is bring up the sats that you have loaded and you can pick which one you want to show up in the guide. The receiver does seem slow at times moving in the guide and when using the page up or down it is easy to go past what you want. I am sure this is a software issue but something you can work around.
I will add to my post as testing continues, like I said before if you have any questions fire away.
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