Wish list: If you could design the PERFECT low-cost FTA receiver, what would it include?

gigabit ethernet, dual tuner, plus atsc, 4:2:2, quality built for around $100...

When I was big in to mountain biking we used to have a saying,

cheap, light, strong, pick any two. Anyone that claims their selling all three are lying. I think with FTA we could easily replace light with feature packed. cheap, feature packed, and quality, pick any two, your not getting all three. There is always compromises in life.

UDL

Gigabit Ethernet is certainly desirable, but if it adds significantly to the price we could probably live without it for now, especially on a single tuner receiver. Personally I'd say it's worth an extra $10 or $15, maybe a bit more.

Dual tuners are nice but in North America they are really only useful if you have multiple dishes, OR if you happen to want to watch/record two signals off the same dish, but in the latter case you get into the issue of how to connect the same dish and LNB to both tuners simultaneously. I would definitely prefer a dual turner receiver over a single tuner model, but if the price was significantly higher I'd have to think long and hard about it. If it didn't add that much to the price then it would be pretty much a no-brainer, since I do have multiple dishes.

4:2:2 - As I said I am more interested in being able to record this rather than watch it live. Live viewing of 4:2:2 is a feature I expect to see more frequently as processing power comes down in price, though. I remember that in the year 2000 the computer I had back then struggled to play MP3 audio smoothly; today we expect our computers and even our phones to play video without stuttering.

ATSC is a feature that I would not use today because I have a HDHomeRun Dual device to receive OTA signals, but back before my Diamond receiver died I used it all the time to watch ATSC. So I cannot say that no one would want it; I just wonder how many would actually find that a desirable feature, and how many would think that it would be better to use a different piece of equipment for that purpose. If you are using satellite because you can't get decent OTA reception where you live, then an OTA tuner is kind of useless. If you have a HDHomeRun or one of the Ceton units, then an OTA tuner probably won't be of much use either. But some people doubtless would buy a receiver with an ATSC tuner over one that doesn't have one, even at a higher price.

Good things to keep in mind. I guess it's a question of which features add significantly to the value without having an excessive cost for the value received. There are psychological "price points" on any product; $50 is one, $100 is another, and if you go over $200 then for many people that falls into the category of "major purchase", and there will probably always be the guys that import stuff (some would use a different "s" word) from China and sell it for under $100. For me all three of the factors you mentioned would be important, so I'd definitely be balancing the price against the features and quality. A receiver that had the features AND the quality would definitely induce me to pay more than the $100 price point I mentioned, but anything around or above $200 is probably not going to be on my shopping list no matter what it includes.
 
Stream to LAN. For recording and/or watching 4.2.2 live via computer. Internal or outboard (USB) hdd recording still available. May even enable decoding some of that IP stuff ????
Those two alone would cover the 2 to 3%, of what is 'up there', that the box doesn't do now.

ATSC tuner, don't need it, because there's enough hardware to do that already (on premises). Never was in favor of putting all your 'stuff' in one box either. (Those combo AM/FM/Tape/CD/phono(?) boxes. One hickups, you're out of all of 'em till ya get it fixed[or ya do without].)
Radio channel editing/sorting (Ya just can't on the S9)
Channel preview after a scan like my Pansat.
 
I’ll start with the Openbox s9 since it was the original budget box and make changes from there.

1) More sensitive tuner. I have another box that will pull in a lot of marginal channels the
s9 can’t.

2) Faster blindscan. From what I’ve heard the X2 is twice as fast as the s9. That would work for me.

3) Stream to pc. Can’t believe this isn’t standard on all receivers. Doesn’t seem like it should cost much to make this happen.

4) Transfer video recording to and from pc via some type of direct connection (networking or whatever). Same comments as on #3

5) Scan one polarity or both. Some receivers have this, the s9 does not.

6) Delete feeds before new blindscan. S9 saves all channels ever scanned in till manually deleted and other receivers have the option to delete all existing channels during a blindscan. I’d like a hybrid where you can flag certain channels to not delete and have all others wipe out during a scan. This would make it easy to save your regular feeds while getting rid of all the old wildfeeds that are long since gone.

7) Multiple usb 3.0 ports.

8) TV and Radio full channel edit.

9) Detailed stream info. S/S2, fec, snr, etc…

10) Component video output. My s9 has it, but it seems like most new boxes have dropped this. This is my #1 concern when looking at new boxes and is the only reason I don’t have an X2.
 
In my opinion $100 for a good quality satellite receiver is a good deal. $300 for one that does the latest modulations, gigabyte network, and all the high end goodies would certainly be acceptable, but I do understand the market for something in this price range would be very limited. Just like anything else these days it would be out of date within two or three years, no matter how well it would be built. Today electronics = designed obsolescence.
 
These aren't in any particular order, and I will probably think of more later, but here goes:

- Android based - access to apps + more
- 4:2:2 capable
- LAN access to SMB shares and able to share local drive
- remote / keyboard combo
- accurate USALS
- sensitive tuner (dual preferred)
- USB upgradeable at bootup
- front display
- streaming output
- hardware blind scan
- modular design - nice to be able to replace a DVB-s2 tuner with next gen if it comes out

$200-$300 seems realistic to me.
 
One I totally forgot about but that is very important on any unit with a PVR:

No ridiculously small limit on the number of timers. My old Diamond only had 8 timers, that is far too few!

Also, one thing that would assist a few users that have overscan issues with their TVs: Reduced CVT blanking for the video output (a.k.a. "CVT reduced blank"). This will only help with a few specific TV models (Sharp in particular) but depending on the video driver used, it should not be hard to include the option. If you are wondering why this is useful, on a few receivers this will cause a "dot by dot" setting to appear in the picture menu, which disable overscan on the display. If you have a Windows-based computer with nVidia graphics, the nVidia driver includes this option. This is a much better way to get rid of overscan than any software overscan compensation scheme, if the TV supports it.

Some TV's have a way to disable overscan that works all the time, and the feature is called by different names, but you have to specifically look for it when you are buying a TV because many models still just don't have it. It's especially important to have when you are running software that has a toolbar or information bar at the very top or bottom of the screen. On a Linux box there are ways to set this up using an xorg.conf file, if that file is supported in that version of Linux.
 
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A huge honking signal bar , bigger then the micro hd and with a more cut up tone. and available on a tp at any time, not just on an after the scan channel. microhd is not cut up enough at low Q
 

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