Advice Needed VU Duo Dead: Xtrend ET10000 or Gigablue Quad to replace?

OldBen

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Hi All,

Vu Duo Plus died with the red light of death, I changed the cap and the burnt out regulator but still no-go, I think I damaged a track on the PCB when I did the regulator so I need to find a local repair place at some stage to see if it can be saved.

Given the ~3yr life for £300+ receiver I am reluctant to spend more money with VU Plus, need a replacement before the mother in law comes to visit though!

Looking around the Xtrend seem pretty stable, and the Gigablue seems quite reasonable price, can't see any major complaints with either as a stable platform - any comments or alternate suggestions?

Must have CI slot for skylink card & CAM which I do not believe will work with card slot emulated.

Need two tuners minimum, any advice?
 

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I've been a VU fan for many years and have got a DUO, a Solo2 and a DUO2. However, when my old DUO started becoming unreliable (after caps change), like you, I started to look elsewhere and ended up with an ET8000.

I'm very pleased with it. Build quality seems very good for the price and the remote is better than the VU ones.

I've also heard good reports about Gigablue.

I'm sure you would be happy with either of them. Check exact specifications of each model for your needs and then look at price for best value for money.
 

OldBen

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Thanks for reply, your confirming the conclusion I also reached - they both seem solid and well supported.

The prices seem comparable with more than 2 tuners, the main requirement is it needs to work with a genuine subscription card/CAM but both have CI slots and the Duo worked, although only the GigaBlue mentions "CI+" which the CAM also mentions - am checking with WoS to be sure. They both have gigabit Ethernet as well which was important, as I want to record to NAS not local drive.

Does your ET8000 transcode? I think I may need that for streaming around the house - just reading that Kodi has a VU Plus plugin that allows it to watch live TV which would be ideal to get sat channels into the kitchen with a Pi.
 

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I would check if the ET10000 has that stupid security board with the battery in it before buying one. If i knew about that board i wouldn't have purchased my Xtrend ET9500 as the way i see it, that board gives the box an inherent weakness as if that battery becomes dislodged your box will refuse to boot and is near as dam it bricked. As far as i know if this happens it can only be repaired by sending it back to the manufacturer. It also in my opinion limits the lifespan of the box as i'm guessing Xtrend will only support these boxes for so long.

I wouldn't have gone anywhere near Xtrend if i had known about the security board. Its supposed to be to prevent cloning, although i think its just built in redundancy. My ET9500 was the first and will definitely be the last Xtrend product that i purchase.

With all that in mind my ET9500 hasn't been too bad, although its a lot more problematic than any of my other receivers. No idea if the ET10000 is the same but i would look into it before buying one.
 

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Vu+ Solo 4K, why spend money on anything that is not current.
We all know about the Duo capacitors but you only need to google to see it does not affect other Vu box's
 

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@Manicscrewdriver is that still a thing? I remember that from years back, I didn't even consider that was a problem still! Xtrend is out anyway, I just discovered from more research that the skylink irdeto CAM is CI+ and Xtrend does not list CI+ support and German forums have a lot of complaints about CI+ CAM's in Xtrend boxes.

Also read that CAM may only decrypt one channel at a time, which is worrying as I was thinking 2-3 tuners and use XBMC/Kodi to stream to kitchen TV for when SWMBO is cooking leaving spare for lounge and recording.

@sonic1 Your right, I read now that VU+ are all external 12v bricks these days, just still p*ssed that I spent £330 on what I thought would be a box to last and it died due to cheap design/build. I have PC stuff that has been on and working for 7-8 years and in this day and age not what you expect.

Can't see the point of spending £380 + £30/£55 for additional tuners for 4K support... when I have no 4K TV. Rapidly concluding that VU+ Solo2 probably does all I need for £209 at WoS at the moment and two tuners is enough (can add DVB-T USB as well I read if need to record extra channel - probably record most from freesat anyway).

Its a right minefield anyway... I also checked out the Miraclebox which is cheap as a triple but only 10/100 networking (I am recording to NAS and streaming - its 2016 who has 100mbit!). Now reading about the Mutant boxes as well.
 

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I'd say a Vu+ box is your best bet if you want an Enigma based receiver. If not, then there are others that are pretty good.
 

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I would check if the ET10000 has that stupid security board with the battery in it before buying one.

I seen this when I opened mine to install my HDD I had waiting for it, a lithium cell sandwiched in the middle near the front as I remember. Had no idea about its purpose until afterwards, pity, mines has been solid for months now, no missed EPG data downloads, failed recordings etc unlike some other tosh I have owned/own, a dam shame about this hardware feature.

Sent from my thl 2015A using Tapatalk
 

OldBen

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I think the only thing worrying me is the CI+ support, the CAM I have says CI+ on it, but it worked fine in the Duo which I understood did not have CI+ support. It seems the CI/CI+ support comes from the manufacturer driver level not from E2, so Xtrend does not work or is unstable (plus battery) so that seems to be out.

Support for VU+ is a little more unclear, I see some people in Germany and Netherlands saying it works with Solo2/Duo2 and others that have issues.

The Mutant HD2400 does seem to work with CI+ as they have done something "creative" I would guess in their drivers, and I also read that the GigaBlue can work with CI+.

I kind of want the transcoding option though so I could run XMBC to the kitchen without a lot of work to pull a new Coax, and it seems that only the ET10K, Duo2, Solo2 (some complaints) and HD2400 do transcode.

Its all a bit confusing to say the least. To add confusion I thought our old subscription card was CSLink (now owned by skylink and cards defunct) but its not, its a skylink card and an older one that is known on forums to work with softcam and the card slot it seems. So having just bought a new card (latest standard, needs the CI+ CAM), maybe I should have paid a separate fee to recover the old one!

Getting bit bored now with going round in circles, might order a Technomate 5402 for £95 and live with one tuner and no streaming... or then again maybe that HD2400...
 

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I think your getting confused with the whole Transcoding/Kodi issue. The Transcoding is basically there so you can access the channels from outside of your home network on either an iPhone/Pad/Android etc.. as the transcode feature will limit the bitrate sent over the network to your 3G/4G phone/pad

If your using it around the home then the transcoding feature is not used as your home network will run fine and literally any Decent Enigma2 receiver will let you fire channels over to any Kodi equipped device even those cheap clone Zgemma's can do it so something with a dual core 1300mhz processor equipped will find it a breeze, Just look for a receiver that works with your CI+ requirement and then work from that
 

OldBen

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digi247 - thanks, I do understand the transcode, previously iPad would sometimes struggle on the WiFi with HD channels, and I wanted to use a spare Pi and the old TV in another room which is only 720P so transcoding would help the early model Pi with the streaming which will be over WiFi.

Mut@nt HD2400 ordered from WoS should come today, lets see how it gets on with the CI+ CAM...
 

OldBen

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CI+ CAM works out of the box with factory image so all good.

Loaded openATV now but some channels breaking up tonight which I am going to attribute to the weather not the image. Stuck with German webif so need to find where that language setting is...

Going to check/tweak dish alignment tomorrow... been 5 years since I installed have to see if I can squeeze more signal out some 23.5E transponders...
 
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