although ive not used a solo2 or duo2
Xtrend are an ok brand with ok support. Build quality of the boxes is good. £ Value of this machine is pretty good.
Overall, however you can't really say they're in the same league as VU+....especially if you have not experienced a Solo2 or Duo2 which can both be considered pioneer/market leading machines. Both having an abundance of support second to none.
If you care to shop around the Solo SE can be had to £30-40 more than a Zero. That's quite the bargain over the Zero which is by all means a bottom end box.
The Solo SEv2 can be had for around £50 more.
If price is an issue the one box that has been stirring the bottom end of the market all over the UK & EU is the ZGemma-Star2S. Twin tuner, Broadcom BCM7358 based machine.
It's hardly surprising given it's price. As long as you source a genuine one that is.
rubbish ekkostar, if you cannot get one of several images from different platforms working on the Wetek then you can't or won't learn, then buy an off the shelf m8 with kodi already setup with basic progs.
I'm afraid you seem to have confirmed the point. Many users simply cannot get on with it.
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Exactly what happened to me,sold it!! Will wait for the new octa core version coming out later this year..
I would tend to agree, better to wait.
In fairness the Wetek is also not particularly great at the moment. Quite a few users have been either disappointed or quickly frustrated with it.
It's not determined merely on price of product alone. There are other things such as margins, profit and cost of support to add on that ultimately determine what 'you' the end customer pays.
Some manufacturers will go razor thin on margins and minimise the level of support. That does not always necessarily mean the product is intrinsically bad or poor quality.
It's no different to shops 'pushing' certain products. They sell you what they want to sell you. It's a very convoluted market.
Ultimately it begs the question. If they can knock out a ZGemma for £50..... to coin another phrase....it puts the cat out amongst the pigeons.
I can cetainly see your point because unlike the days im talking about when boxes averaged 1k each new boxes are brought out every month or so now and the hobby is changing that quick its very hard to keep up to date
It's not really my point. It is how the market is.
Obviously I also know the market as it was way back then and those sorts of products commanding those prices have long gone e.g.Monterrey, Drake etc etc
I fully endorse buying quality genuine products. However, you cannot condone people that want to buy a £50 box that in their mind does everything they need for a fraction of the cost. The fact that it does becomes increasingly hard to argue against.
Unfortunately the latter quite significantly appeals to a very large proportion of people. Ultimately it's 'peoples monies and peoples choices' and you can never argue against that.
The market and many people are influenced significantly by price. There are a lot of boxes that offer so much nowadays. Take your pick.
A twin tuner zgemma for approx £50? It's hardly surprising it's so popular. You can buy 2 for the price of one of the others.
At those prices the philosophy is if it works it works, got nothing to lose. It's compelling an argument for many. If it works, you're quids in.
People will buy it, stick an 'Open - whatever' image on it, use it for a year or so and then bin it.
Just to add the zgemma s2 has the same chipset as the xpeed lx1/lx2. It is also officially supported by openATV openDROID openHDF Italy sat and Eurosat. I have bought them for as little as £52 depending on exchange rate...
At that price it makes £100 boxes seem very dear.
It's a lot of box for very little money.
Android boxes are pretty much all clunky. The Wetek is no exception and still a work in progress.
E2 runs more fluidly but XBMC crossover boxes are slowly improving. The Prismcube is the most mature, comes from the VU stable and has full Blackhole team support. At current prices it's a pretty good deal.
'CCcam' is a softcam or emulator.
In order to descramble encrypted broadcasts a 'Conditional Access Module' or Cam is required within a receiver. Combined with a suitable legitimate viewing card the use of control word/key enables broadcasters to encrypt transmissions at broadcast and decrypt at reception.
Originally Conditional Access Modules were hardware driven, a bit like PCMCIA cards which you could insert into a receiver and then a viewing card could be inserted into the module itself.
As receivers have evolved over time the hardware side of Cam's has been superceded by software, meaning you can program a soft version of a particular cam into receivers. Hence the term 'softcam'.
There are a variety of softcams/emulators available and CCcam is just one. I believe it stands for Client Card Conditional Access Module.
There is nothing illegal about it. Unfortunately it's various abilities can be exploited for illegal card sharing purposes.
So I take it the solo2 isn't really far apart from the duo2
The short answer is, it is. If you're in the market between a Solo2 or Duo2, it's the Duo2 everytime. At current prices there's even less to think about.
It's better on every front, more flexibility, better hardware, more current etc and the extra £50 is very well spent indeed. You will have no regrets.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and there will be relatively few who will use the full and true potential of 4 Plug & Play Tuners.
Additional tuner support is also available through add on USB tuners if need be. VU+ have covered that. Meaning you can have two twin DVBS2 tuners and one USB C/T/T2. That's 5 independent tuners and not many people will be needing that, enthusiasts included.
Obviously there are other manufacturers that offer the odd additional feature but to be frank they have to as otherwise they cannot compete even for shelf space. The Duo2 also has it's unique features including a wonderful LCD display and I have yet to find remote controls of comparable quality.
Mutant, LX, Giga etc these are all machines that offer an alternative and tend to appeal to those that want to try something a little different. The sad commercial reality is these brands offer perhaps a bit more sales margin and it makes sense for some outlets to push these a little more. If you have to push boxes, then I guess profitability comes into it.
More often than not it all comes to tears when the support is lacking and users then find themselves a bit out on a limb. It becomes frustrating for users in the end.
You simply cannot beat a variety of image teams supporting a product. The choice of images is there and you can change as you wish. A new image can make your machine feel refreshingly brand new and the huge support undoubtedly adds to the longevity of the machine.
Finally, you simply cannot beat the quality of a VU+ machine. They are number 1 for a reason. £279 for a Duo2? Honestly, it's a gift horse. Sat users have never had it so good.
Yes you're right the VU+ is better. It's got massive support, image support from a wide number of teams and has a worldwide user support base. The spec is far too long to list but suffice to say in a nutshell the Duo2 a top of the range receiver and bar the new Dreambox is the best machine out there.
Can't for the life of me think why you would go for a Mutant over a Duo2? £279 for a Duo2 is a no brainer.
Dreambox and VU+ are by far and away the best brands and support is what it's all about. All other brands tend to be fly by nights and come and go. Both of these however have been around for years and will be to come.
If you want peace of mind and support VU+ is top of the tree.
Sounds like dodgy cable or connector. If you unplug and plug it into the VU the same cable works fine ok?
In that case try bending the protruding core of the cable at the F-connector slightly towards one side of the connector. Then re-insert into your Grundig box. This should help the core to make better contact inside the female F-connector on the box.
Some cables have a thin diameter core which never quite makes decent internal contact on some receivers, so you have to improvise.
Dmm might have started Enigma, but only after they had cloned the NOKIA D-box / d-box2
Dream didn't really clone the D-Box. Kirch media went bankrupt and D-boxes (Nokia, Philips, Sagem) simply flooded the market and all 'interesting' things started happening when people got access to them. Dream simply picked up the pieces and moved ahead in the aftermath of Kirch.
The origins of Enigma go back earlier than Dream Multimedia although they formally registered the trademark in 2008
Trade mark name : Enigma
Trade mark No : 006611636
Trade mark basis: CTM on which IA is based
Date of receipt : 14/01/2008
Number of results: 1 of 1
Filing date: 14/01/2008
Date of registration: 07/01/2009
Expiry Date: 14/01/2018
Nice Classification: 9 ( Nice classification)
Trade mark: Individual
Type of mark: Word
Acquired distinctiveness: No
Applicant’s reference: 08-0032
Status of trade mark: Registered
Filing language: German
Second language: English
Nice Classification: 9
List of goods and services Operating systems, drivers, set-top boxes, satellite receivers, digital television receivers.
Name: Dream Property GmbH
ID No: 278893
There was then the massive legal case of Dream Multimedia vs Satco in 2011-2012 where Dream attempted to protect Enigma. Satco won the case on technicalities. Satco is Germany's largest distributor of satellite equipment and much of the cause of the battle was they were distributing VU+ receivers and promoting them as Enigma based receivers. There are some other things which unfortunately I will not be able to divulge publicly.
Dreambox OS is now being known as Enigma 2.2 and it apparently has closed source elements and features only restricted to Dream. I believe these were being touted as 'Goliath'. The DM7080HD was the first machine and the next is the DM820.
Dependent on exchange rates and variables at launch the DM7080HD can be had for around £550 and the DM820 for around £370.
Since the launch of the DM7080HD, VU have had to start to slash prices of the Duo2
Just a heads up if the DM7080HD is a little out of budget then the DM820 is now available. Both are as you would expect high quality and excellent machines looking to lead their respective class categories.
Based on the same chassis as the hugely successful DM800HDse it has 4Gb Flash and 2Gb ram, the blisteringly fast new processor as well as HDMI in/outs. It's a more affordable option if you are ok with the available pluggable tuner options. The form factor of DM800se was proven as excellent. The DM820 however lacks the USB 3.0 support that its big brother the 7080 offers.
Both machines will run Dreambox OS which is also known as Enigma 2.2.
ET 10000 is a high quality box. Very well built.
I believe it does transcoding via hardware.
The Medialink also has a VFD.
I still think DMM have and always will price themselves out of most of the European and North American market, theres nothing that special about them as to why they are so expensive. Their appeal is mostly now only to die hard DMM fanatics, although if thats what they like who am i to argue.
I think the DM7080 is a brilliant bit of kit but I would still buy the Duo 2 over the DM7080 as i don't think the slightly higher specification of the DM7080 justifies the extra £300 over the price of the Duo2. That is what makes the Duo 2 a better box for me over the DM7080.
It is understandable that price does play a part for some prospective buyers. However, you cannot say the Duo2 is defacto a better box than the 7080HD. As you say you are considering the price, so, you're viewpoint is an opinion considered on the price.
Many people also consider that VU machines are too expensive.
It's a relative point as to why Dreamboxes seem expensive. To make the best they have to sink in a lot of R&D costs.
A clone manufacturer can simply copy the hardware and knock it off at a fraction of the cost. That's simply because they never bore the development costs to begin with. The same can to some extent be said of all machines/manufacturers that adopted Enigma which originally comes from Dream Multimedia.
VU is just one of the manufacturers further along that curve. They have in the past generally tried to concentrate on producing performance machines. That was their niche but they also now realise it is not possible to produce top end machines 'cheap'. Pioneering developments cost serious money.
