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from a site mi deh pan... dis sounds interesting.
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First of all, I would like anybody here to go through every post I have ever written here, or at my old stomping grounds at TK, and you will see that I have never gone overboard on any one receiver. I have had units that I liked, Coolsats, Viewsats, Captiveworks (the 600s Premium, not the previous units), as well as a few others. I have always pointed out the good, the bad, and the ugly, trying to be as objective as possible. Well, that was before today! Today I fell in love!
Today I spent about 4 hours playing with my newest toy, the Extremeview Magnum XV3300. A few weeks before Charlie decided to go full tilt blitz on us, I helped a friend set up his Magnum, and was so impressed that I ordered up a unit. Yes, ordered! Not called up and asked for a freebie! At the time, the only dealer that had them in stock was ExtremeView Direct out of Canada. The box arrived in 4 days (surprised the hell out of me getting through customs that fast!) Too bad for me, I did not even take it out of the box before the games began! Even after they released a carded fix, I put off pulling it out. Silly me! (members take note! AT NO TIME DID YOU HEAR ME SCREAMING AND YELLING “I SHOULD THROW THIS THING AWAY! I GOT RIPPED OFF! WHERE IS MY FIX!”)
Today the time had come to unwrap my new toy and play! First though, a little background:
This unit is the FIRST Free to Air Receiver with a THREE SOLUTION option, That is right! THREE SOLUTIONS! CARDLESS, ROM 102 & ROM 103 SOLUTION. With the new relationship with “TEAM RELIABLE” working with the MAGNUM TEAM, they should be at the top of the game having the support that all FTA owners are looking for. To top all this I am truly amazed with their NO QUESTIONS ASKED - FULL REPLACEMENT WARRANTY. SEND UNIT BACK AND RECEIVE A REPLACEMENT UNIT AT NO EXTRA COST! If it is broken then send it back. You will have another in the mail immediately. Having dealt with, shall we say, less than satisfactory service from some of the biggest names in the business, this is something that I feel stands out and needs to be adopted by ALL of the manufacturers! Does Pansat have that? NO! Does Captiveworks have that? NO! Does Coolsat have that? HELL NO!
One surprise was the 7 function buttons located on the front of the unit. This has been one of the biggest complaints of other units for a long time. If you do happen to lose or break the remote, you have to find a dealer that even HAS a remote to sell you! Misplacing the remote? Not likely, as this one is the best I have seen. It is a full-functional, universal remote. It operates my TV and DVD recorder, as well as my home theater sound system.
To upgrade the unit with the latest bin was snap. One complaint was the amount of time it takes to download the bin. After reviewing the bin I see that these bins are much larger than the other bins out there. The bottle neck is not with the unit itself, but the throughput of the com port. I would ask that in future models they include both a com port and USB port or maybe even an Ethernet connection? Can anybody say wireless bin loading? That would be sweet!
Next thing I did was hook up the Magnum to my Component video out and Dolby Digital. For the sat setup a world map is displayed that all the sats in the Clarke belt programmed into it. Choose your continent, then select the sat from the list. The sats are listed by both name and by location, ( Echostar_3_61.5W ) to help take out the guesswork! Only the sats you can actually get from your area are shown. Great feature! This is where one of the Magnum’s first exclusive features shows up. You then select the sats you are pointed and then you can set up their parameters, or you can set it to auto, and let the receiver figure out your switch settings. Scanning took less than five minutes for each sat, and ALL channels were found. What else struck me as most unusual was that the channels were showing up, during the scan, by SID and call letters!! – not by the typical, of most other STB’s show, by scan order. On this STB, you knew EXACTLY what channel you were getting as soon as they were scanned in! Very Nice!
THE BIG PICTURE!
After the scan was completed and updated I had to wait approximately one minute for the keys to roll. The picture is razor sharp, with very natural looking color and contrast. I would say one of the best pictures I have ever seen that was not HDTV! It is much cleaner than other boxes with none of the color problems such as skin tones and white balance. The default video settings looked great to me, and the brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation is user adjustable. I give it the best Picture on the market award. The SPDIF 5:1 audio sounds great. This was something I was really disappointed with others.
EPG
The EPG began to populate immediately with information on all channels and about 36 hrs, I left the receiver on for a few hours and all channels populated about 3 days. EPG display time is adjustable up to 7 days. I've got seven days by pushing the “find” key on the remote and waiting about 15 to 30 minutes. The extra horsepower and memory of this box really show up in the EPG. Sort of like the old DTV guide. Something you might have noticed with some of the other receivers recent fixes is the shrinking of the EPG. They are stealing memory from that area to keep the box going. Not a problem with this box! Plenty of memory to spare!
Overall I believe this to be a great receiver! You can search through every post I have ever made, and you will see that I do not go crazy for every receiver out there! This one is special! IF (and that is the question with ANY box) the software support is as good as I have been told by a lot of people in the industry, I would say “Look out Viewsat! Company is coming and it is ready to eat you for lunch!”
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[ QUOTE ]
First of all, I would like anybody here to go through every post I have ever written here, or at my old stomping grounds at TK, and you will see that I have never gone overboard on any one receiver. I have had units that I liked, Coolsats, Viewsats, Captiveworks (the 600s Premium, not the previous units), as well as a few others. I have always pointed out the good, the bad, and the ugly, trying to be as objective as possible. Well, that was before today! Today I fell in love!
Today I spent about 4 hours playing with my newest toy, the Extremeview Magnum XV3300. A few weeks before Charlie decided to go full tilt blitz on us, I helped a friend set up his Magnum, and was so impressed that I ordered up a unit. Yes, ordered! Not called up and asked for a freebie! At the time, the only dealer that had them in stock was ExtremeView Direct out of Canada. The box arrived in 4 days (surprised the hell out of me getting through customs that fast!) Too bad for me, I did not even take it out of the box before the games began! Even after they released a carded fix, I put off pulling it out. Silly me! (members take note! AT NO TIME DID YOU HEAR ME SCREAMING AND YELLING “I SHOULD THROW THIS THING AWAY! I GOT RIPPED OFF! WHERE IS MY FIX!”)
Today the time had come to unwrap my new toy and play! First though, a little background:
This unit is the FIRST Free to Air Receiver with a THREE SOLUTION option, That is right! THREE SOLUTIONS! CARDLESS, ROM 102 & ROM 103 SOLUTION. With the new relationship with “TEAM RELIABLE” working with the MAGNUM TEAM, they should be at the top of the game having the support that all FTA owners are looking for. To top all this I am truly amazed with their NO QUESTIONS ASKED - FULL REPLACEMENT WARRANTY. SEND UNIT BACK AND RECEIVE A REPLACEMENT UNIT AT NO EXTRA COST! If it is broken then send it back. You will have another in the mail immediately. Having dealt with, shall we say, less than satisfactory service from some of the biggest names in the business, this is something that I feel stands out and needs to be adopted by ALL of the manufacturers! Does Pansat have that? NO! Does Captiveworks have that? NO! Does Coolsat have that? HELL NO!
One surprise was the 7 function buttons located on the front of the unit. This has been one of the biggest complaints of other units for a long time. If you do happen to lose or break the remote, you have to find a dealer that even HAS a remote to sell you! Misplacing the remote? Not likely, as this one is the best I have seen. It is a full-functional, universal remote. It operates my TV and DVD recorder, as well as my home theater sound system.
To upgrade the unit with the latest bin was snap. One complaint was the amount of time it takes to download the bin. After reviewing the bin I see that these bins are much larger than the other bins out there. The bottle neck is not with the unit itself, but the throughput of the com port. I would ask that in future models they include both a com port and USB port or maybe even an Ethernet connection? Can anybody say wireless bin loading? That would be sweet!
Next thing I did was hook up the Magnum to my Component video out and Dolby Digital. For the sat setup a world map is displayed that all the sats in the Clarke belt programmed into it. Choose your continent, then select the sat from the list. The sats are listed by both name and by location, ( Echostar_3_61.5W ) to help take out the guesswork! Only the sats you can actually get from your area are shown. Great feature! This is where one of the Magnum’s first exclusive features shows up. You then select the sats you are pointed and then you can set up their parameters, or you can set it to auto, and let the receiver figure out your switch settings. Scanning took less than five minutes for each sat, and ALL channels were found. What else struck me as most unusual was that the channels were showing up, during the scan, by SID and call letters!! – not by the typical, of most other STB’s show, by scan order. On this STB, you knew EXACTLY what channel you were getting as soon as they were scanned in! Very Nice!
THE BIG PICTURE!
After the scan was completed and updated I had to wait approximately one minute for the keys to roll. The picture is razor sharp, with very natural looking color and contrast. I would say one of the best pictures I have ever seen that was not HDTV! It is much cleaner than other boxes with none of the color problems such as skin tones and white balance. The default video settings looked great to me, and the brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation is user adjustable. I give it the best Picture on the market award. The SPDIF 5:1 audio sounds great. This was something I was really disappointed with others.
EPG
The EPG began to populate immediately with information on all channels and about 36 hrs, I left the receiver on for a few hours and all channels populated about 3 days. EPG display time is adjustable up to 7 days. I've got seven days by pushing the “find” key on the remote and waiting about 15 to 30 minutes. The extra horsepower and memory of this box really show up in the EPG. Sort of like the old DTV guide. Something you might have noticed with some of the other receivers recent fixes is the shrinking of the EPG. They are stealing memory from that area to keep the box going. Not a problem with this box! Plenty of memory to spare!
Overall I believe this to be a great receiver! You can search through every post I have ever made, and you will see that I do not go crazy for every receiver out there! This one is special! IF (and that is the question with ANY box) the software support is as good as I have been told by a lot of people in the industry, I would say “Look out Viewsat! Company is coming and it is ready to eat you for lunch!”
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