First impressions with Premium HD & How To ?

[geezerpl]

Hi folks & Azbox enthusiasts !

Premium HD is finally on sale in Poland so here are my first thoughts...
I waited for this baby almost a year and I'm generally pleased - so the real-life experience is way better then I expected :respect-050:

Anyway this is what I find most annoying at this stage & please give me some advice if you know workaround...

1. Channel Zapping.

Good time when zapping between FTA and SD/HD.
Very slow when zapping between scrambled channels.
My first results on SECA & NAGRA was .. 7-8 seconds !! :18:
After tweaking the newcs/mgcamd settings I managed to go down to 3-4 sec. so I believe the EMU is to blame (but still mg&newcs should be the fastest and most reliable solution ?) - not the firmware itself (at least not only the FW).
I suspect the SETTINGS could also have impact so I skinned down the channels list but can't slim down the satellites list (who needs satellites from all over the world ??).
AzboxEdit doesn't want to work on my Win2000 (I get runtime error)

2. Standby

I have no idea how to make Azbox start with a TV channel instead of the Settings screen. Every time I wake it up it starts with the Settings Menu instead TV Menu ...
Also telnet commands go to Azbox while on standby but get executed only AFTER waking it up. Strange.

3. Menu Font/Skin

Could be slightly larger here and there. Sometimes it's hard to read from TV screen (I sit 4,5m away). Any chance to change it ? Any hopes for a fix or alternatives available to download ?

4. External USB hdd (NTFS) not always recognized first time

Some hdd enclosures do not work properly with Azbox HD :(
I have one external 3,5" hdd with 1,5 Amp power adapter and another 3,5" with 1,8 Amp adapter. Both are formated exactly same way (NTFS 4K clusters, one active, primary partition) ! The first one is recognised but Azbox says "partition unknown" so you don't see any files on it.
The second one works OK and is fully recognised by Azbox "partition NTFS"

My both 2,5" ext. drives w/o extra power supply - no success in both USB slots :(
Not enough power to spin them (same story as with my old crappy KISS DP1600 which goes through my window soon making room for Azbox :)


5. Settings structure

Is there any way to customize it ? Who needs so many categories
(channels per language, per provider, per SD/HD/camd, per genre + favourites, etc.) Perhaps this slows down channel zapping ?

What's inside antenna.dat and what in DVB-S.dat ?

--------------------------
Also I would love to see Download Manager one day capable of downloading data from Rapidshare and similar sites + from YouTube.
This would be way cooler than having Torrent Mgr !

As for internal hdd - I haven't installed it yet but I was wondering what would be the most efficient way to load it with multimedia files when Azbox doesn't have USB Host socket ? Over LAN ? Or by copying files from attached storage (painful !)

P.S.
Movie player

Works like charm for me !
Plays .avi with .txt subtitles with Polish characters + the subs are customizable. EXCELLENT ! You can assign different colors to the subs, align their position on TV & adjust size. Amazing.

[s_kates81]

I also wanna see a download manager on it so I can download files directly to it. Yeah it's a pain in the arse to transfer files from pc to azbox. I am also going through this pain. Don't use an NTFS drive with azbox as it may damage the azbox. It has been warned in the Azbox manual.

Also, take extra care when installing internal hard disk drive. I once burnt my azbox by connecting wrongly. When you are going to install internal hard disk, don't forget to read it's correct procedure which is an sticky thread in the forum

[pr2]

Hello,

I will try to reply to your questions but I don't have all the answers.

1) Zapping time is slow due to the mgcamd, I don't know if we can fine tune it to improve speed. The zapping time will also depend on the response time of your card server.

2) This is a bug in the firmware 0.9.1868 most of us go back to firmware 0.9.1759 which works fine and start on the last TV channel you look at.

3) With the firmware you currentely use you have the opportunity to load another TTF (True Type Font) to change the font.

Or in the older firmware you can manually change the font used by the Azbox by:
1°) mounting the MMP folder in read-write
mount -o remount,rw -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /MMP

2°) Replace the file UniversOTSArabic_v101a.ttf which is in /MMP/hd/System/font, personnaly I rename the ttf to UniversOTSArabic_v101a.ttf

3°) reboot your Azbox

But menu is not (yet) fully customisable, I try several fonts available on windows and some improve the reading but you will see that some information are truncated.

4) It is say that NTFS device are supported in read-only (but I doesn't work for me when I test). It is clearly stated in the user manual not to start the box with a NTFS formatted device connected to it. I don't know what the problem is but we are warmed not to do so!

5) Channel structure has no impact on zapping time, you can simply create the favorite that you want with the channels in it.

I guess that: antenna.dat contains all the TP for all the satellites, DVBS.dat contains your particular setting (LNB settings,...) you also have the all_channel.dat that really contains all the channels for the satellite that you can receive and including the favorites that you create.

---------

Up to you to developp all the extension that you find usefull for the Azbox. :-) It is hard to please every people since each of us use a different upload site...

Azbox support external media if they are formatted in ext3 or in FAT32 but with FAT32 the max file size is 4 GB...
For me the best way to transfer file is to FTP from the Pc to the Azbox.

Be carefull that firmware is still in béta and whatever method you use to transfer file you will be limited to 20 Mbps (via Ethernet (FTP) or via copy over USB).
If you copy from the file manager of the Azbox with this limit it will take a very long time to copy huge files and you cannot do anything else with the box. So I prefer to FTP during the night and being able to fully use my Azbox while files are copying via FTP.

[s_kates81]

PR2. even ftp is so slow. For the time being, I've decided not to upload huge files on the box and wait till the new firmware improves the speed

[pr2]

Hello,

You are right the 20 Mbps limits is set for every transfer whatever the method is.

That's why I launch my FTP transfer during the night :-)

I also hope that we will soon have a real file transfer speed, but for the time being we have to work with it... another solution is to access a Windows Share and play the files directly from it.

Pr2

[geezerpl]

1) Zapping time is slow due to the mgcamd, I don't know if we can fine tune it to improve speed.


How does it look like with other EMU's (mbox, multicas) - any faster for channel zapping ?

Also I've noticed mgcamd cannot function on its own - only in a combo with newcs (even when I don't need it). Strange...

CORRECTION. Managed to delete MultiCAS & Newcs so mgcamd now works on it's own. No improvement in stability/speed though... :(

[pr2]

How does it look like with other EMU's (mbox, multicas) - any faster for channel zapping ?

Also I've noticed mgcamd cannot function on its own - only in a combo with newcs (even when I don't need it). Strange...

Hello,

For me zapping time with mgcamd is correct I don't have the 7 to 8 seconds latency that you are talking about. I just check, I press on the remote control button to zap and it needs 3 seconds between I press the button and the image appears.

For the other emu, I think that the zapping time is similar, may be incubus is a bit faster, but I am not using it often.

Mgcamd can work without newcs, my own setting is mgcamd alone running on my Azbox connected to servers in Gb*x. You miss configure something in your azbox setup.

Here is my mg_cfg content for pure mgcamd connecting to Gbox server.



M: { 01 }
C: { 01 }
A: { 00 }
U: { 01 }
T: { 00 }
G: { 09 }
N: { 07 }
K: { 5 }
Q: { 300 }
P: { 00 }
O: { 00 }
S: { 03 }
L: { 03 } 172.16.1.1 8028 /DATA/hdb1/mgcamd.log
E: { 15 }
H: { 06 }
R: { 04 }
D: { 0 }
B: { 00 }


Here is my peer.cfg content for the gbox connection:



I: { 04 }
X: { 05 }
O: { 4000 3000 }
N: { 00 01 03 1F 4500 6500 }
M: { local.dyndns.org { 12345678 }}
D: { Remote-dyndns.org { local-port remote-port { remote-code { 3 3 }}}}


Pr2