A "do it all" system - does it exist?

[BGonaSTICK]

Yes, it's a real conundrum at the moment.

To be honest, I think it will be a very long time before 'SD' hardware becomes old-hat and an equally long time before HD hardware becomes the must-have option as opposed to the nice-to-have option.

That observation is based on the amount of HD material currently available in the sky, and the likely rate of decline of SD transmissions.

Therefore I would still suggest thats it's a wise enough move to spend your money on standard definition receivers. There will still be a good second-hand market for them by the time a comprehensive range of HD hardware becomes available. That's still 12 months away at least as far as I can tell.

I certainly don't think that the HD satellite receiver market is mature enough for me to spend the inflated prices the manufacturers are asking. Although the technology is impressive, the choice is extremely limited. I will wait for the Dreambox DM8000, partly because I don't have an HDTV yet anyway.

As for the Dreambox being fiendishly difficult to operate, well, it's not. It's more tricky than a standard receiver, but with the support of a good, patient forum (like this!) then any computer-literate owner can handle it.

You will need to be able to use an FTP client and learn a little about Linux file permissions etc, but that's a fairly basic read. It's just an alien concept to Windows users.

HTH

[fat freddy]

I take your point about SD vs. HD. Final question, what about the EPG on the Dreambox? I heard it was limited to "now" and "next", no 7 day look ahead there... Is that the case?

[BGonaSTICK]

For most providers, yes that's true. Some providers supply a weeks EPG data.

Only proprietary receivers like the Sky digibox provide a full 7-day listing.

There are plugins for the Dreambox that dynamically retrieve more EPG data from the net though, and one or two work very well apparently (I don't use them myself).

This is not so much a function of the box, but of the EPG data stream from the satellite, but I'm not an expert on this.

[Jimdefruit]

I would just like to expand on what Stick has said about the operational difficulties of the Dreambox.

It can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.

You can use it as a straightforward satellite receiver and never do anything to it.
other than you would do with any patchable receiver.

However, it is such a clever animal that you will want to see exactly what you can do with it. You can still do a great deal without knowing anything about linux, programming or even how it works, but pop a hard drive into it and/or connect it to a pc network and you will really see what it does.