Best HD upgrade path for overseas user?

BLUEPLATINUM

BLUEPLATINUM

Specialist Contributor
My Satellite Setup
ITSarria LTE Internet, 2 X SKY HD, Invacom C120 quad LNB, Raven 2.4m offset dish, TDT (Spanish freeview)
My Location
Maspalomas, Gran Canaria
I have two Thomson DSI8215WD which have upgraded power supplies and 1TB hard drives. My location is Gran Canaria. The two boxes are on a multi-room subscription and "call home" reliably over VOIP.

The problem is, the software runs very slow on them and I would like to upgrade.

I would like to buy two second hand boxes and would like some advice what to buy. They will need to satisfy the following:

0/ Must have very sensitive tuners at least as good as the Thomson and hopefully better.
1/ EPG etc must run fast and respond instantly to remote presses.
2/ Modems must call home reliably over VOIP (DrayTel).
3/ To save money would like to buy small disk versions and move the two 1TB drives from the existing boxes (is this relaistic?).
4/ Do NOT need component out.

Any advice gratefully received. Thanks.

(BTW - I have put this in the "fringe" forum as it involves some issues only relevant to overseas Sky subscribers).
 
I use the Amstrad DRX890C with 2TB disk fitted without issues in Southern Italy. It calls home once a month according to Sipgate. I think its been super seeded by the DRX890N. This box seems to meet your requirements, the Disk is easily updated, although a little hard to get in there, its under the mother board. But took me 20 mins. Use Copy+ to copy the old disk contents to the new one, before inserting into the box.
Its pretty sensitive, well it works when others around fail, signal to Noise of 5.5dB before it start to pixalate. Over 6 is good. Less than that and my meter struggles to maintain reliable lock (lock around 4.5dB SNR on a FirstStrike FS1)
 
A good 890 is very good. Had four of them. Three excellent, one terrible (broke up on lots of channels incl Sky News!). C = China, R = Romania (R one was poor, know I had two Cs not sure about the other so can´t be sure it was a failure rate of 100% for the R model).

Wonder what N signifies - Nigeria?
 
No idea. The only difference I see, is the connectors are colour coded. the HDMI socket is pink, also the supplied HDMI cable one end is pink too. Idiot proofing i think.

Performs very very well. Sensitive, and FAST.
 
Thanks to everyone who has replied. I will have a look for two of these DRX890C's. Obviously the disks are already formatted for the Thomsons. WIll I have to reformat them or is the Amstrad formatting identical?
 
Well mine is a DRX890Z, it's fantastic!
 
Oh no not another varient. So we have C, N, R and now Z. Zambia maybe.

Either way these box's are excellent in fringe areas.
 
Not Zimbabwe or Zaire, simply China.
 
Maybe a different factory in China. It IS a big place!
 
OK so here is the plan.

I will buy two of these DRX890C's. I will move the hard drives from the current Thomson boxes into them.

My question is this. If the new boxes are running Darwin then will they automatically detect that the hard drives have the legacy format and automatically reformat them or do I have to intervene in some way?
 
My question is this. If the new boxes are running Darwin then will they automatically detect that the hard drives have the legacy format and automatically reformat them or do I have to intervene in some way?
Click to expand...

Sorry to bump this up, but I now have the first of the two boxes. Does anyone know the answer to the above question? Thanks.
 
The new Darwin software boxes will automatically convert pre Darwin HD format file systems on first boot in the box - but it is not then reversible
 
Thanks Dave. Will the recordings be preserved though?
 
I have now moved the drive from the Thomson to the Amstrad. The programs have been retained as have future recordings :-) Favorite and Other channels have been forgotten. I found the document at the following URL useful (-http://goo.gl/p4Xcc).

I can also confirm that the DRX890 calls home successfully over Draytel.
 
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