The Trials and Tribulations of Buying, Owning and Maintaining a Dreambox 8000…. (v1.2!)?

  • Hi, call this junk mail, a blog or even a cry for help! There’s got to be more people like me that don’t understand the ethos of owning a dreambox and go out and buy one because they have read, or been told that it is the best thing since sliced bread.


    So here are my experiences, questions and thoughts.


    First and foremost I’d like to thank the guys in their black Ninja suits who spend hours, days, weeks even years programming, scratching their heads, shouting at computer screens, banging tables, sacrificing social lives and all that, so that people like me can sit back and enjoy the prizes of their trials and tribulations. Cheers guys, you are appreciated!


    I will start at the beginning......


    About 9 months ago I nearly put a hammer through my Humax because it just would not do what I wanted it to do.... I need a new Sat receiver.


    What should it have?


    High Definition
    1.0 TB HDD
    Time Shift
    Twin Tuner
    A Decent Display
    DVD Would be nice
    HDMI
    The ability to operate as a media centre
    Good Looks


    I bought and read a lot of magazines, googled and asked my Bro’ what my options are.


    In the end I was left with a Topfield, Reelbox and dreambox; the choice was quickly whittled down to Dream and Reel. Now things started to get really difficult, even worse than the time I was trying to decide between PS3 and an Xbox 360... (I bought the Xbox). I think I’ve read, and probably written all the ‘was soll ich kaufen’ threads that Google could come up with. If you read the reel threads you would think ‘yeh, I want one!’ and then you would read the DM threads and think hmmmmm.... In the end it came down to looks, plain and simple, so I chose the Reelbox. Let’s face it, when it comes to looks (no offence intended) the dreambox reminds me of my old Nokia? DBox and how old a style is that? The small green/black display on the right hand side, the slash across the front face... hmm, not my taste. The reelbox on the other hand looks great, modern and comes in silver!
    Just before I wanted to put the order through I decided to ring my Bro’ and tell him the good news; instead of congratulating me on my choice he decided to give me reasons why my decision is wrong. He told me all this technical stuff which meant nothing to me (but sounded good) and then started telling me about why the DM looks like it does; hifi standards blah blah blah.... Time for a rethink on my part.
    He talked me into buying the DM8000, how could he be wrong? He is the ‘Sat freak’ and has one himself. So off I went to get the accessories that I needed; 1.0TB Samsung Spinpoint Green and my Bro’ made me a frame into which he fitted this great big fan (it looked like it belonged on top of a helicopter and not in a sat receiver)! Don’t worry, it’s silent he said with a grin, and I had images of my new Dreambox hovering in midair, just above my LCD. The HDD fitted, the fan silently rotating we powered up for the second time and did an authenticity check online (whoot? I thought). Yup, it is a real one he told me while I scratched my head and wondered what he was talking about. He then did a very strange thing while I was looking for my slippers and powered the Box down! What you doing I asked? He told me about some bloke called Barry Allen, a thing called enigma, Gemini, blue panels
    and other stuff; he might as well of been speaking in Chinese, I didn’t understand a thing. He dug out his mini laptop and filled my living room with RJ45 cables; and then he typed, typed, powered up and down and typed even more. I went and made a cup of tea and thought about how complicated ‘watching TV’ had become.
    At 02:00 AM he was finished and I was presented with this ‘all singing and dancing’ mean machine that was going to be the centre of my entertainment world. Great, thanks very much I said and he went.


    I thought that was it....... I was wrong!


    6 hours later armed with my slippers and a cup of tea I decided to confront and ‘play’ with my new toy. The first thing I noticed was that my 8GB USB Kingston stick was sticking out the back of the box. I cautiously rang my Bro’ and told him I was going to remove it;
    ‘No, you can’t do that’ he said
    ‘why’ I asked
    ‘because the data it needs to boot with is on the stick’ he told me.
    ’ Hmm, well I will take it out and copy it onto a smaller stick’ I said.
    ‘No, you can’t do that’,
    ‘why not?’
    ‘well, you haven’t got a Linux based PC, so if you copy and paste it won’t work’.
    ‘?.... Oh OK?’


    I started ‘surfing’ the menus and came across ‘Recording Paths’. Ahhh I remember reading something about using a CF card for permanent time shift, so I dug out my old SanDisk 4GB extreme II and slotted it into the CF hole. Change the recording path to ‘front CF’ and yeh! It should work....
    It didn’t. Can’t write to CF, or something like that the box told me. Hmm, yeh makes sense, needs to be formatted under Linux (I think I’m getting clever now). So I look under ‘gerätemanager’ and found my CF card. I want to format it but can only find options asking me about mounting it? Well to ‘mount’ something in English is slang for having sex, and I didn’t want to have sex with my CF card.
    Initialise! That’s got to be it! So does my CF card have to be mounted or un-mounted to be initialised? So I plugged away, mounting and un-mounting my card and finally got it initialised! I went back to the ‘Recording Paths’ and changed the directory to front CF. I clicked on Accept and it didn’t work.... something about not being able to write; I then changed the recording path back to ‘default’ and gave up. Funny thing is that every time I now go to ‘recording paths’ the little cogs stop moving after about 10 seconds and my screen freezes with ‘please wait’ showing? Erm, how long should I wait? I’ve waited 30mins and nothing happens, so I now have an ‘all singing all dancing’ media centre that shows me every time I press time shift a big red X. I then rang my Bro’ and he told me about a program called DCC_E2 which will solve all my problems, and it works with Windows! I installed it but it couldn’t find my HDD, CF card or USB stick? By this time I had swapped my cup of tea for a bottle of vodka and had missed the first half of Brazil v England.....


    The next morning I woke up on the sofa with a thumping headache, a 3 day hair growth on my face and an empty bottle of Vodka in my hand. After a wash and shave, armed with a hot cup of tea and a slice of toast I resumed the battle with my dreambox. I found some of the ‘gadgets’ and looked at the weather forecast, some bloke driving around LA and some other nifty stuff. This kept me entertained for about 8 minutes. I moved onto the download stuff but couldn’t work out what the programs and or scripts were for so I gave them a miss and moved on to settings. I managed to go the whole day without upsetting my box or getting a ‘green screen’! I only rang my Bro’ 4 times but he keeps speaking Chinese to me.


    Well I’ve had the box for a few days now, and I am slowly (very slowly) getting used to it; and it is hopefully getting used to me. Did I buy the right box? 2 days ago I would have said NO, now I’m not sure, ask me in a month and I will probably say yes. The best thing about it? Funny enough it’s like my iphone, if you want it to do something, then you will probably find an app for it! The picture quality in HD and SD is fantastic, the ‘zapping’ speed is great and the design is really starting to grow on me.


    If I’m honest with myself, I’m probably not even using 20% of its capabilities!


    So if there is anyone out there that can fix my time shift, I will like it even more!



    CHEERS!

  • hi nemi,


    :welcomehere: from newbie to newbie :einschenken:

    DM8000 (GP4.7 im Flash)
    - SG Barracuda LP 1,5TB


    DM800 (GP4.7 im Flash)
    - WD Scorpio Blue 500GB SATA II 2,5"


    Multytenne TWIN

  • Hey Buddy,


    funny story :grinning_squinting_face:


    but you won't use a hammer for dreambox .. or ? :aufsmaul: :aufsmaul: :winking_face:


    No ... I don't think .. WELCOME HERE TO the IHAD Forum



    Yes some things has to be improved, e.g TS :)

  • hi!


    did your bro flash GP 4.4 od 4.5?
    in 4.5 the timeshift thing shoult be solved.
    btw... did you reboot your box after you initialised your CF?

  • chris4789
    Cheers bud, I will do that!


    SiennaRoot
    Thanks mate, I think my dogs dug a hole and hid the hammer in it….. he likes to watch football and was getting worried!


    godmode
    Thanks mate


    ibrahim
    Thanks for the tip; 4.5 and I didn’t reboot the box! But I will tonight when I get home.



    @all
    Thanks for making newbies feel so welcome! The board is great and makes me want to go home and cuddle my DM8000!

  • Hi Ibrahim,
    So if I understood everything correctly Ts will not work on a CF if using BA? And even without BA it doesn’t work very well?


    Thanks for your time anyway, was kinda funny watching you trying to help 3 peeps all at the same time *impressive*!



    :335: