Vu+ Duo or Clarke-Tech ET9000 ?

M

moonbase

Small Dish Man
My Satellite Setup
.
My Location
UK
Hi,

I hope to buy my 1st Linux receiver soon and from the limited research I have done it seems that the best 2 contenders are the Vu+ Duo and the Clarke-Tech ET9000 which both run Enigma2. They both seem to be well specified with only a few differences and wondered if anyone who has used or is using both receivers could give their impressions of these units?

The differences I have noticed just from reading around and looking at pictures seem to be as below:



1. The Clark-Tech ET9000 has 4 LNB connectors but the Vu+ Duo only has 2 LNB connectors, this would seem to indicate better loop through on the Clarke-Tech ET9000?

2. The Clarke-Tech ET9000 supports PIP but the Vu Duo does not

3. The Clarke-Tech ET9000 has a faster boot time and faster channel switching

4. The Clarke-Tech ET9000 has Blind Scan functionality but the Vu+ Duo does not.

5. The Vu+ Duo has well established support from several development groups, more so than for the Clarke-Tech ET9000.



Both machines can be bought for £329 (excluding eBay) so there is no difference in price which possibly then swings it in favour of the Clarke-Tech ET9000? The other factors that could influence a purchase are the build quality, tuner sensitivity and quality of the remote control.



Regards
moonbase
 
saw your post on the other avforum, as I was wondering the same. I think the ET9000 looks the better deal (especially if you consider european wide pricing), but the VU seems to have better support in general as you say. They also have a Clarke-Tech HD 6600 SST that seems to be more advanced still but no one seems to be talking about it on the forums it seems.

VU are also replacing the solo and duo with the Uno and Ultimo I think it is, with prices they DREAMed up it seems as well! So hopefully price will fall before replacement (as it seems they are replacements from what I read on 'tinternet).

Not sure why you would want loop through though, you are stuck at the polarity and high/low setting selected by the tuner, loopthrough limited use better to get more LNB capacity. Blind scan is useful though.
 
OldBen,

I do not particularly need loop through at the moment, however, it can sometimes be useful if the receiver does not decode 4.2.2 and you wish to pass the signal to another receiver for 4.2.2 without using a switch box. With some receivers, putting the receiver in standy that has the direct cable from the LNB, the loop through gives the full range of high/low and polarity to the next receiver in line getting the loop through signal.

It's a bit like a bypass without the need for a switch box and without suffering any signal loss introduced by the switch box. I currently have a quad output C120 LNB and could do with more outputs, the unfortunate thing about the C120 LNB's is that nobody makes a six or 8 output version as far as I am aware?

I think that the only reason to hang back from a purchase and to consider one of the new units would be if any of the "soon to be released" units had the ability to directly decode 4.2.2. or some other funtionality that was worth the expense. Sure, prices may fall a little for a Vu+ Duo or a Clarke-Tech ET9000 but you might have to wait several months only to find the price reduction is minimal.



Regards
moonbase
 
Well, you can sit next to me as it sound we are in the same boat ;-)

You need to get a multiswitch that supports 22Khz tone by the way, then you can keep your C120 Quad but have more than 4 outputs.

ET900 has better CPU I learned today, but also there is some threads about it having a battery that is required to keep the non volatile memory active, and replacement cause the box to brick (but others who say its no issue).

Need to get my new dish out of its box and onto a pole before I worry in depth about some of these things however!
 
OldBen said:
....You need to get a multiswitch that supports 22Khz tone by the way, then you can keep your C120 Quad but have more than 4 outputs......
Click to expand...


Can you please expand a bit on how I would use the multiswitch that you refer to. In the past I have used a mechanical "press button" type of switch to divert the LNB cable signal to different receivers and I do not use Diseqc at all for channel selection or dish movement. With the mechanical switch I find that there is loss of signal strength but if there is another solution without using Diseqc then I am happy to give it a go.




OldBen said:
....ET900 has better CPU I learned today, but also there is some threads about it having a battery that is required to keep the non volatile memory active, and replacement cause the box to brick (but others who say its no issue)....
Click to expand...


I have read about the battery issue but to be honest I am not concerned by it. I have some PC's here that are going on 10 years old with the original motherboard battery in them. Sure, it is a design fault but when was the last time you took a battery out of a receiver board, I have never taken one out? By the time the battery needs replacing boxes like this will have shrunk to the size and shape of a fart and a Chinaman will be walking on Mars.

There are reports of the Clarke-Tech remote control being a bit flimsy but I have not had my hands on one to confirm this. If anyone has a Clarke-Tech ET9000 it would be useful to hear opinions on the quality of the remote control.



Regards
moonbase
 
Ah, I just realised if you have a motor on your dish? It may not be as easy as I made it sound, sorry.
 
OldBen said:
Ah, I just realised if you have a motor on your dish? It may not be as easy as I made it sound, sorry.
Click to expand...


No worries, I have a prime focus dish with a C120 LNB at the focal point rather than multiple LNB's on an LNB extender arm. If there was a C120 LNB available with 6 or 8 outputs it would be ideal for me and would get around mechanical switch boxes.



Regards
moonbase
 
1, Not really important. You could use an SPS or a splitter with a DC blocker if you really want to share one LNB between 2 receivers.

2, Vu+ has PIP but not real time. ET9000 has PIP but it only works on SD channels at the moment.

3, Zapping is fast on the Vu+ even when channel hopping between satellites. Can't see how it could be much faster on the ET9000. Boot time is supposed to be similar, but really that is unimportant unless you are going to run an unstable image that keeps crashing.

4, Looks good; very customisable, but I'd really like to see some comments on that from a true feed hunter.

5, Vu+ has been out a year longer. I would say the ET9000 has much better support today than the Duo did one year ago.
 
moonbase said:
No worries, I have a prime focus dish with a C120 LNB at the focal point rather than multiple LNB's on an LNB extender arm. If there was a C120 LNB available with 6 or 8 outputs it would be ideal for me and would get around mechanical switch boxes.



Regards
moonbase
Click to expand...

Are fibre optic lnb's available for C-band yet? If so you could split them any number of times.
 
Analoguesat said:
Are fibre optic lnb's available for C-band yet? If so you could split them any number of times.
Click to expand...
C120 is for Ku band. Global Invacom make a fibre optic LNB in C120.

Moonbase if you are already running a C120 quad, your cheapest option is probably a quad compatible multi-switch. It's fully automatic, no buttons to press, and depending which model you get will give you 8 or more outputs.
 
Huevos said:
2, Vu+ has PIP but not real time. ET9000 has PIP but it only works on SD channels at the moment.
Click to expand...

Reading around earlier it seems ET9000 (perhaps it depends on the image?) does support HD PIP but again still only (or iFrame as they call it from the mpeg full frame grab).

If you have a quad, and there is no motor moving the dish, then a multiswitch would give you 8, 12, 16 etc outputs from that as long as its one that generates the 22Khz tone so it works with quads not just quattro's, just my 2 cents anyway.
 
OldBen said:
Reading around earlier it seems ET9000 (perhaps it depends on the image?) does support HD PIP but again still only (or iFrame as they call it from the mpeg full frame grab).
Click to expand...
Those are the new drivers. They are out in some images (OpenPLI nightly release) but not in others yet (VIX).
 
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