Hi All,
As someone who likes messing about with technology, and hates paying money to Murdoch, I've finally decided to return to the joys of MultiSat in the hope of finding some viable alternative entertainment to S*Y. My last attempt (trusty old analog Nokia receiver and positioner, H2H positioner and good old four core drive cable) sadly failed to survive reinstallation after a house move. Its in the attic, along with sundry redundant d2mac decoders, ancient filmnet decoders, amstrad sky receivers, Season interfaces...
So - having worked professionally with Linux for several years - I decided to have a play with a Dreambox. I've ordered a cheap DM500 clone - and a cheap USALS H2H positioner (Don't worry dream multimedia - If i like it, and get on with it, I'll ditch my Thompson S*Y HD box, and buy a DM800... However, ?400 is way too much for an experimental sandpit...)
Whilst waiting for the kit to arrive, i've started to research stuff, and have a few questions.
1. I've read about the logic bomb hidden in the Gemini 4.3+ image, so intend to avoid. Am i right in assuming that only the Gemini image is affected, and all others are using a clean base?
2. Despite trawling plenty of fora, I've not managed to find a good summary of what one image offers over another. Are the differences mostly window-dressing, or are there real differences in functionality? Are there any images to avoid (badly tested, not maintained) or others to favour (for example 'best for use in feed searching', 'most user friendly' etc)? Who are the 'team to watch' in terms of new releases?
3. I know that the DM600 (and clones) offered a recording capability with disk options, but does the DM500 have a similar capability via ethernet and SMB/CIFS mount?
4. I've got one-eye on card sharing, either locally between two boxes in different rooms, or remotely over a VPN - and am thinking about cam/emu daemons. How much latency can a typical cccam or newcs link handle before decryption problems occur (sub-second, seconds, or tens-of-seconds)? Can multiple cam emulators be installed in parallel, or do they need deinstalling/swapping?
5. I've seen discussions about the satellite.xml, listing orbital position and transponder frequency for all satellites in the arc. Due to my dish position, I can only see +/- 30 degrees from south. Can I take it that because of the dependency on the above file, the Dreambox can't do a true 'blind scan' like sundry other Disecq/usals receivers can, and it only does a frequency search at each position/transponder in the xml file?
Apologies if these questions seem a bit too newbie, or if I didn't google well enough... The one thing that i've learned in the last few days is that the Googling about Dreamboxes doesn't immediately lead you to an obvious answer. I can already see why some people love it, and some people hate it :-)
Regards,
RN
As someone who likes messing about with technology, and hates paying money to Murdoch, I've finally decided to return to the joys of MultiSat in the hope of finding some viable alternative entertainment to S*Y. My last attempt (trusty old analog Nokia receiver and positioner, H2H positioner and good old four core drive cable) sadly failed to survive reinstallation after a house move. Its in the attic, along with sundry redundant d2mac decoders, ancient filmnet decoders, amstrad sky receivers, Season interfaces...
So - having worked professionally with Linux for several years - I decided to have a play with a Dreambox. I've ordered a cheap DM500 clone - and a cheap USALS H2H positioner (Don't worry dream multimedia - If i like it, and get on with it, I'll ditch my Thompson S*Y HD box, and buy a DM800... However, ?400 is way too much for an experimental sandpit...)
Whilst waiting for the kit to arrive, i've started to research stuff, and have a few questions.
1. I've read about the logic bomb hidden in the Gemini 4.3+ image, so intend to avoid. Am i right in assuming that only the Gemini image is affected, and all others are using a clean base?
2. Despite trawling plenty of fora, I've not managed to find a good summary of what one image offers over another. Are the differences mostly window-dressing, or are there real differences in functionality? Are there any images to avoid (badly tested, not maintained) or others to favour (for example 'best for use in feed searching', 'most user friendly' etc)? Who are the 'team to watch' in terms of new releases?
3. I know that the DM600 (and clones) offered a recording capability with disk options, but does the DM500 have a similar capability via ethernet and SMB/CIFS mount?
4. I've got one-eye on card sharing, either locally between two boxes in different rooms, or remotely over a VPN - and am thinking about cam/emu daemons. How much latency can a typical cccam or newcs link handle before decryption problems occur (sub-second, seconds, or tens-of-seconds)? Can multiple cam emulators be installed in parallel, or do they need deinstalling/swapping?
5. I've seen discussions about the satellite.xml, listing orbital position and transponder frequency for all satellites in the arc. Due to my dish position, I can only see +/- 30 degrees from south. Can I take it that because of the dependency on the above file, the Dreambox can't do a true 'blind scan' like sundry other Disecq/usals receivers can, and it only does a frequency search at each position/transponder in the xml file?
Apologies if these questions seem a bit too newbie, or if I didn't google well enough... The one thing that i've learned in the last few days is that the Googling about Dreamboxes doesn't immediately lead you to an obvious answer. I can already see why some people love it, and some people hate it :-)
Regards,
RN
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