Life With A DM8000

B16MCC

Hi guys, here's another review / tutorial from me , this time for the tremendous DM8000.

The first thing you notice is the packaging, its looks like Dream have been taking lessons from Apple, as soon as you undo the shipping packaging to reveal the actual box, you know straight away you've bought something special. It's nice to see Dream have at least made an effort to make you feel your £900 has been well spent.

So, whats in the box ?

1. A huge DM8000.
2. Remote & Batteries.
3. VIP membership card.
4. Recovery USB memory stick.
5. DVD driver power / sata adapter.
6. Power / sata cable.
7. Manual.
8. Mounting screws for DVD & HDD.
9. DVI to HDMI cable (Looks better quality than the DM800 one).

Having unpacked it all, the actual dreambox is very impressive, its pretty sturdy apart from the front folding flap. The hinges come out quite easily, but they also clip back in just as easy. The screws for the top cover are hidden down the sides by sliding plastic covers. You whip the covers off to reveal 2 screws each side and one on the rear.

In my case I had some hardware to install, so first job was to get inside.

I'm installing the following.

1. Sony AD-7670S DVDrw drive. (Thanks To Llew for the model no.)
2. 1Tb Western Digital Caviar Green (Thanks To DeepDiver for the Recommendation)
3. A DVB-S tuner
4. A DVB-C tuner

Picture below shows everything installed.



1. Top left corner is the built in twin DVB-S2 tuner.
2. To the right of that is an old DVB-S tuner I had.
3. To the right of that is a DVB-C I had.
4. Obviously DVD and Hard disk installed too.

You'll notice there's not much room between the DVB-s tuner and the DVD drive, but it does go in quite easily.
The tuners simply plug in, and the hard disk is mounted with the supplied rubbers and screws.
The DVD drive is a little more work. Firstly you need to remove the mounting plate and screw the drive to it. Next you need to attached the supplied power / sata adapter to the back of the drive.



So, its all pretty straight forward, if you get everything out the box and take your time.

With all my hardware in place I'm ready to power up. I went straight in and used the web interface flashing method. I didn't even bother to boot the standard image.

Now, I'm using a SanDisk 2Gb Extreme III SD card and so I'll install Nabilo Pureflash into flash which included barry allen. Then I'll install blackhole 0.9 to the SD card. Here I found my first pitfall. I have a sly sub which at the moment is NDS2 and I want to use the internal reader for this card. It's common knowledge the DM800 needs the march 10th driver update to read NDS cards internally, and so it's pretty sure the DM8000 will need it too. I was right, it does. After installing BH09 to SD, it would not read my NDS card. So, I simply applied the update , but still no joy.

I soon realised that during the installation of barry allen the drivers present in the flash are passed to the barry allen install. Since the flash didn't contain this driver, then neither did my BA install. So, I removed barry allen, rebooted to flash , applied the driver update and reinstalled BA. Then I reinstalled BH09 to SD and bingo, NDS working in the internal reader.

Other than that the setup has been a breeze, even with that issue, it took about 2 hours to get everything sorted and running sweet.

I'm now running CCcam 2.1.0 using internal reader, scanned all sats from 1w to 28e and that 'other' tuner is working great too.

I'll be happy to add and respond to others in this thread and certainly help people get the most from their DM8000.

Attached Thumbnails

   

Llew

Excellent stuff MCC. I had BA on a CF card, but since I installed Nabilo BH 09 I don't really need to have it, as I don't change images very often.

Regarding your 3rd DVB-S tuner, do you find any signal quality differences between that and the Broadcom tuners?

Llew

Celebrating Ten Years Of The Forum As A Founder Member

B16MCC

Not got it wired yet mate, just using the twin so far. It will be connected up soon though, I'll let you know about any differences.

I am having a little trouble with rotor control and scanning sats. Having scaned a sat, if I instantly select another sat to scan the motor doesn't move. I started by setting up a multi sat scan and it failed on the 2nd sat, just stopped scanning.

Also I can't seem to see 1w at all at the moment, no idea why. I've always been quite proud of my motor and mount setup, I did it myself and its been bang on and never moved for over 3 years. I'm looking into that one.
At the moment I'm scanning a sat, then moving to 28e, then moving to the next sat to scan, that seems to be working at the moment and I'm almost done. I only use 1w to 28e. Also, my 2nd stage is 71, so I've got an update to do there yet too.

A little work to do but coming along nicely.

Llew

There was some discussion on DiseqC motor control in DB 8000 E2 images in the VIP board here -

_http://www.dm8000-vip.de/forum/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=407

I don't use a DiseqC motor, sorry I can't help there.

Llew

Celebrating Ten Years Of The Forum As A Founder Member

DeepDiver

Where did you connect the DVD drive ? To the other SATA port, or the USB internal port behind the display ?
Can you pls attach a picture of that too ?

Memento Audere Semper

B16MCC

Llew, thanks for that link, I'll check it out.
Deepdiver, here's some more pictures I took. I did use the USB to eSata converter behind the display.

I'm not gonna insert the pictures, just please use the attachment links.

Attached Thumbnails

         

   

B16MCC

Tested a retail dvd this morning. On inserting the DVD nothing happened, so I simply selected DVD player from the menu. I was prompted with a question to play the disk in the drive ? , I answered yes. I heard it spin up but still a black screen. By this point the basic controls where displayed in a menu bar across the bottom of the screen, I pressed Green to play and I got the DVD menu. The menu operated just fine and the movie played without issue. Lovely !

Llew

Coming on fine then MCC

I love this box. It's my first venture into Dreamboxes, although it helped having experience with the Triple Dragon.

Next step - burning a DVD from a movie installed on the HDD.
This is where I'm having problems. The DVD Burner plugin doesn't seem to be too user-friendly to me, If I try to burn one from the Burner menu, I get the list of movies I have on the HDD, and a choice of possible image types to burn, i.e .iso etc. But nothing happens when I click on a choice.

Any feedback would be welcome if and when you get round to trying it.

Llew

Celebrating Ten Years Of The Forum As A Founder Member

CROSSBONES

What a great thread B16MCC

I want a 8000 even more now!!

B16MCC

As Ferris Bueller once said, 'It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up'.

ttalex

I am a bit concerned about the Broadcom tuners - they are not really sensitive. I could not even get a signal lock on some frequencies that DM800 with Alps could get without any issues! Also I could not find any DVB-S2 tuner options on DM website so I only hope that Alps tuner from DM800 is compatible with the expansion slots!

ttalex

B16MCC

hmm, I've had no such issues as yet mate. I scan 1w to 28e and I've got everything I want. I will do some compares though with the old DVB-s tuner.

ttalex

Please do the compares! 5E Nordic beam will likely be a good test!

I have tried 40E - 10967V and 10995V frequencies that I watch on DM800 without any issues. 10967 does not even lock and 10995 is almost 4dB lower level than on DM800...

angenet

Hi B16MCC

Where did you get your DM8000.. ?
Can you advise a decent retailer

cheers

B16MCC

There is only one mate. _www.satstore.co.uk

I've often spoken about Marks customer service level. He's a genuine retailer and offers full hardware support. He dispatches for next day delivery and you can trust him.

Replay 2

Double post

Replay 2

Hi Llew,
I am in the same boat. using Nabilo image in flash. I am having trouble burning to DVD. I think the place to burn to DVD is in the movie list menu.
There whenever I select "burn to DVD" I get a crash with the green screen.

I think it is a skin issue.

Llew

I was coming to that conclusion Replay, as that was my problem (green screen). Any ideas on which skin to use, or even a different image?

Llew

Celebrating Ten Years Of The Forum As A Founder Member

B16MCC

Interesting guys. I've not tried anything yet. Are you burning something you've recorded, or something you've FTP'd to the hard disk, or does it not matter ?

I'll have a play around and let you know.

Llew

Just a try out. I recorded a movie on the HDD from C4, which was simulcast in HD. This plays (or played) on the HDD, but somehow I've effed it up in the DVD Burn menu, and seems to be unusable now, even ftping it to my PC and trying to run it in VLC.

Other SD films, as mentioned just bring up the Green screen when trying DVD Burn.

Celebrating Ten Years Of The Forum As A Founder Member

Replay 2

Tried other skins on Nabilo with no success.
Some people managed to burn with Gemini² Project 4.1., but I like Nabilo and would try harder..for now.

B16MCC

Right guys, I'm on nabilo but in Barry Allen on SD. I too got the green screen of death, I'm installing GP2 now.

selector

Hi. little pictures of DM8000s

healeydave

Does anyone have a youtube vid of a dm8000 in action.

Rather than a sales pitch vid, I would like to see one concentrating on how good the image firmware has got from a usability point of view, also EPG facilities etc, primarily for UK TV.

Boeing 737

I'd be interested in viewing a youtube video too please.