[OT]ish Dreambox recommendations

More or less says it all.

I'm after freesat and streaming media to/from a NAS/PC and thence to
several rooms. I plan to watch recorded media *only* rather than live
events. Not *so* concerned with HD right now, but an upgrade path would be
nice.

ISTR that several regulars here own and use one. Any pitfalls I should
look out for?

Can't think of any, except that I think I've read that there are some
limitations affecting the streaming capabilities of the cheapest one,
the DM500. Whether these also apply to the new DM600, I don't know.
Myself, I'd go for a model with two tuners rather than one, to
eliminate scheduling clashes. And hard drives are so cheap that you
might as well install one. Another new model in prospect is the
DM8000, which does HDTV and DVB-S2 as well as DVB-S.

The thing about the Dreambox is that it's very well supported by
software, including replacement rom images -- in my DM7000, I use the
than the official ones and have more features. But there are now
several other satellite receivers with networking and other such mod
cons.

I use mine with a Wavefrontier dish and an ASAT DiSEqC switch, which
will support up to 10 LNBs with a Dreambox.

Seems a pity not to use the thing for live events, though.

Thanks, as shopping list of stuff that just works is very handy. I just
need to negotiate for the funds now.

I don't have anything against live programming per-se, it's just that we
currently have a TiVo and watch very little live TV / listen to live Radio
as it is.

The plan is to have a dreambox somewhere inconspicuous, set recordings via
a web interface (I believe there *is* one?) and then stream the recordings
to a couple of cheap media players.

Yes, it has a web interface and also built in servers -- I
occasionally use WGET to capture additional channels while the box is
doing something else on the same transponder. If there's a limit to
how many such streams you can capture at once, I haven't found it.

Using the Web interface, you can play streams via WinAmp and VLC
client, etc. But I've lately discovered another PC freeware client
which works rather well for me, DreamStream -

Note that the Dreambox records both radio and TV in MPEG Transport
Stream format. VLC plays this directly, but not all PC media players
do.

The value of recording in TS format is that it preserves all the
soundtracks, subtitles and teletext that were attached to the
transmission, so that you can select them on playback just as if you
were watching live.

Watch out.

I don't know exactly how it works when you do a recording to disk (I
have a DB500 with the well-known ethernet problem) but this does not
apply for when you do a "ngrab" recording.

The "streampes" tool on the dreambox does not "just" stream the TS, it
filters out the PIDs of the TV-channel you want to stream and
reconstructs the TS itself.
In most cases, you'll just get the VPID and the selected APID.

AFAIK, it will not stream out other PIDs (like other audio-PIDs,
teletext-PID, subtitling-PID).

To be honest, I guess HD-recording does use the same underlying tools
but I should check this to be sure.

B.T.W.
Can you record mpeg 4 streams with the normal recording-procedure? I
know that normal ngrab-streaming does not work because the part of the
code that recreates the MPEG TS-frames makes a number of assumption
which only apply for MPEG2 video.

Cheerio! Kr. Bonne.

A common or garden 4-into-1 DiSEqC switch will allow you to receive up
to four satellites, or you could use an all-in-one device such as
Haven't tried that one, myself, but it might be a good solution if
what you want is the 'main' satellites (13.0E, 19.2E, 28.2E), and you
want to use only one receiver, and you don't mind the risk of dropouts
that may sometimes occur with a small dish in very heavy rain.

What I have is one of these things,
...which from my garden can see all the satellites from 15degW to
28.5E -- including such delights as the French channels on Atlantic
Bird 3 and their wide-screen version of Arte. But I wouldn't attempt
to mount one on a chimneystack ;-)

For a switch, I use this:
...which can select up to 10 LNBs, and there are instructions in
English for how to set up a Dreambox to do it. You will need the
little programmer card for setting the switch into the right mode.
Works perfectly for me. The dish comes with four LNB holders, so you
would need to order more if you are planning to do things like this.
The Wavefrontier dish may look daunting, but I found it unexpectedly
easy to set up, with the aid of a spirit level and the charts they
provide.

If you plan to use more than one receiver -- or multi-tuner receivers