reasonably priced PVR

S

student

Regular Member
My Satellite Setup
DM 7025+ 500GB, 85cm transparent dish on motor, 50Mbit line, Czech Link
My Location
East coast UK
Hi everyone,

I would like to purchase some reasonably priced PVR box, I would prefer it to be just PVR ready so I can add my own HD. Ideally I would like it to have cryptoworks card reader, couple of CI slots and a USB. I have seen the Manhattan 350, 550 and Fortecstar Ultimate but neither has cryptoworks, is it possible to “do” anything to them to use them with CW card without a cam? Also are they any good? Any other receivers I should consider?

Thanks for any advice
 
Take a look at the Dreambox section.
 
I think that the DB may be too much for me as I am a newbie. I would prefer a receiver which is easy to use which I don’t think DB is. Furthermore it cost considerably more. What about the two above mentioned receivers? Are they any good?
 
I can't remember seeing a PVR with embedded Cryptoworks, or any other encryption for that matter. How about this one, all you would need would be a Cryptoworks CAM.
 
Hmmm, looks nice but at 300£ plus 50 for CI I would rather get the DM even thou I would probably loose rest of my hair trying to set it up.

The Manhattan 350 has embedded Irdeto and 2CI @ £169 and the Fortecstar Ultimate has Conax and 2CI @ £149, both have USB. Would they be any good?

I guess the only way to get Cryproworks is a cam?
 
Don't know about those two, have tried neither, but not a lover of Manhattan products.
 
The Fortec doesn't have much support (official or otherwise) the USB connection is apparently USB2 but it takes forever to upload/download even mp3 files, let alone video! And the software I used to accomplish that was actually meant for a Pansat receiver!

I'd imagine the only way to get Cryptoworks is via a CAM.

If you can get it cheap enough then it isn't a bad model IMHO but then it is not great either. It does have picture-in-picture which is good. It also has very flexible ways of hooking up the two tuner feeds (you can have two completely different DiSEqC dish setups going into each tuner and then for each sat you can tell it to look for tuner 1, tuner 2 or 'auto'). And the tuner pulls in weak signals better than my SkyStar1, SkyStar2, Comag PortyII or Lifetime Diamond.

One bad thing to note (and it's the same on my Diamond) the Ultimate manages to corrupt the channel lists if I delete certain channels. Solution seems to be not to delete channels - not a great solution when you end up having hundreds of useless channels! To be fair this could be because my Fortec's are patched, I don't know.
 
Thank you very much for that response.

It would be great to hear something similar about the Manhattan 350/550 from someone.

Thanks
 
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