S9 Openbox New Zealand

[GraemeJohnstone]

I bought one. Deal Extreme.com The price fluctuates slightly with the exchange rate of the day. Cost on the CC bill NZ$145 ish.

Paid with PayPal and a credit card on 27 04 2011.
It was delivered yesterday by mail registered sign receipt. 18 05 2011

Setup:
To access adequate menus I found I had to factory reset.
More than a few channels needed to be deleted.
Optus D1 was added and "Blind" scanned. Of course this did not work because I had not set the local oscillator frequency of the LNB.
Try again.
All the stuff was found. I only want the FTA. I have spoken with Sky NZ about hire or purchase of a legitimate CCCAM and from the tone of the nice lady; This is not on. Naughty means is to be the only way if you want. A bit like the gun law in NZ which is headed toward only outlaws carry guns and no amount of scorn, laws, or bullying will ever stop them. I subscribe to Sky Basic and have been shoved into the S9 by the hopelessly inadequate record space on MiSkyHD. S9 will cover some of the deficiencies in Sky. They had previously tested the water with the offer of an upgrade hard drive but of course at a silly price. We were one of the first in the country to buy into MySky and opted to buy the HD for the general upgrade it promised. Sky is damn good. It is just a pity that they rate professional sports so highly when in truth it is such trash.

I had intended to use HDMI and an auto switch to connect the one HDMI TV input with the Sky box and S9 but it has not worked without the issue of the S9 box taking the TV when it turns on for a record session so the S9 is now component and the viewers are required to select a different AV input on the TV to watch the required boxes. I do not mind that nearly all of the S9 turns off for standby and if I forget to turn it off it will take over for a timer event unlike the earlier VCRs.

I do not have to do anything else except print a manual learn a bit and fine tune a few user things. Yes I will backup to usb stick as well as the external hard disk. To this point the S9 is impressive to say the least. EPG TXT Subtitles. Clever pause forward reverse tricks etc.

The Australian channels I wanted are useable. The signal to noise figure is in the red for most of the time. SBS HD is better but all are watchable.
My dish is elliptical 75cm across. It out performs the Sky Dish with their Pace, my S9 and my old 810u. I have no doubt that a bigger dish would be better but that can wait a while.

Please bend my ear with your comments.

Graeme

[brewejas]

Just bought one myself. I have found it to be easy to understand so far. I am trying to get my legit Irdeto card for C1 to run in the card slot provided, but have had no luck as yet, Any suggestions will help.