Discussion of the Golden Media Spark TripleX

[el bandido]

If you have already purchased an Alien2 then you probably paid too much money for it because the Golden Media Spark TripleX is about the same as the Alien2.
Currently the GM TripleX is selling in the two hundred and thirty dollar range with shipping included.
The TripleX has the same firmware bugs as the Alien2 because both of these receivers run the same operating system called Spark.

Right now the Alien2 and GM TripleX receivers have a pretty lengthy bug list. This is to be expected when a receiver is first released. Look for things to stabilize in the next couple of months. These two receivers will probably never have the same level of tools, addons, and plugins that Optibox does, but the GM TripleX should end up being a good receiver for somebody that wants to upgrade on a limited budget.

Feel free to post questions or comments about the TripleX in this thread EB

[ViP3R]

Thanks EB.

First question for you since I don't have mine yet..and probably the first thing on members minds is....how fast is the Blind Scan?

[el bandido]

The blind scan is very fast. It will probably scan most of our satellites in three to five minutes. But the scan is buggy.
The TripleX blind scan misses some channels that the Raptor finds. I would expect the blind scan feature to be improved but we will have to wait and see.

[el bandido]

I have not had this TripleX receiver very long, but I will list a few bugs that I have found in Spark.

* The blind scan will create double or duplicate channels occasionally.

* Receiver sensitivity is very poor on some channels. This problem appears to be software related and not a hardware issue

* There is not an easy or good way to edit the satellite degrees or the sat file. This problem is being worked on.

* The receiver will display a signal for the lnb on both tuners when only tuner 1 is connected to a lnb.

Overall, the hardware seems to be OK. I think most of what I am seeing can be corrected with firmware updates. The question is how long will it take and what will they fix?
It is common to see a newly released receiver have problems such as these. Hopefully some of these issues will be corrected soon. EB

[el bandido]

I just timed a blind scan for 97 West ku. Listed below are the results.

Receiver = Golden Media TripleX

Firmware = 1.2.51

Dish = 4ft. 1.2 meter Geosat

Total Blind Scan Time = 1 minute 54 seconds

Total Transponders Found = 25

Total TV Found = 283

Total Radio Found = 150

Normally I do not time blind scan times because they are not real important to me. But I know that speed is important for a lot of people so I spent some extra time with a stopwatch to get this information.

I have been trying to get the processor speed of the TripleX from a reliable source. The processor speeds I have seen posted are faster than the Alien 2, but I do not know how reliable that information is.
Anyway, 1 minute and 54 seconds is the fastest blind scan time I have ever recorded. EB

[ViP3R]

No shit! lol...that is blazing fast...

[Jim S.]

Wow, that's definitely faster than an Alien2. Does it do the spectrum analyzer thing when it scans? I have a feeling that if that could be turned off, the A2 would be faster than it is. (Around 3 minutes on 97W Ku.)

Also, you mentioned duplicate channels. The A2 has been duplicating channels sometimes for me too. What it does is get the symbol rate wrong by 100-300 or so. Is that what the TripleX does?

[ViP3R]

Wow, that's definitely faster than an Alien2. Does it do the spectrum analyzer thing when it scans? I have a feeling that if that could be turned off, the A2 would be faster than it is. (Around 3 minutes on 97W Ku.)

Also, you mentioned duplicate channels. The A2 has been duplicating channels sometimes for me too. What it does is get the symbol rate wrong by 100-300 or so. Is that what the TripleX does?

Jim, I won't have mine till early next week, but speaking with EB I can say that it does do the spectrum analyze scan..

There is some conflicting reports that the Triplex may have a faster processor than the A2..I see 540mhz for the Triplex compared to 450mhz on the A2..
I am waiting on an email back to see just what the clock speed is.

EB can maybe answer your other questions.

[el bandido]

Wow, that's definitely faster than an Alien2. Does it do the spectrum analyzer thing when it scans? I have a feeling that if that could be turned off, the A2 would be faster than it is. (Around 3 minutes on 97W Ku.)

Also, you mentioned duplicate channels. The A2 has been duplicating channels sometimes for me too. What it does is get the symbol rate wrong by 100-300 or so. Is that what the TripleX does?

Congratulations on the A2!! I hope you have found a receiver that will fit your needs.

The TripleX has the same guide and menus as the A2. This means that it also has the same spectrum analyzer or whatever the thing is supposed to be. The TripleX gets updates on the Spark Portal just like the A1 and A2.
Personally, I would not mind if the screen went dark during a blind scan as long as I has some way to know if the receiver was hung up or had any other problems. People like eye candy and that is why they put the spectrum thing in there.

I have not looked at why the channels are being duplicated yet, I only noticed that some channels were being duplicated while other channels are not being scanned in.
The TripleX did an outstanding job on 97 West ku, but i cannot get it to find anything on a blind scan of 72 West
I have had this missing channel problem on some c band satellites too.

At first I thought maybe the tuners were bad or possibly some other hardware issue, but now I think it is all in the firmware. if the tuners were bad or there were other hardware issues, then I doubt that 97 West would scan like it did. EB

[Jim S.]

When I first got my A2, I had it sometimes flake out during scans and refuse to log any channels even though it was finding transponders just fine. After a few resets, it started behaving fine without any further tinkering. I have no idea what the problem might have been. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say corruption in the satellite list. But I haven't seen anybody else report the problem.

The only real complaint I have with it is that the media player has choked on a few of my movie files. Hopefully this is something that will be worked out in further software updates. At least they issue software updates for Spark fairly often.