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www.TELE-satellite.com —
12-01/2012 —
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
Can you believe it?
OK, but let’s start from
the beginning. This Ice-
crypt receiver right after
the first power up asks you
to select the OSD language.
The choice is pretty wide:
English, French, German,
Dutch, Greek, Spanish, Ar-
abic. Italian, Portuguese,
Turkish, Russian, Polish,
Czech, Swedish, Suomi,
Danish, Norwegian, Slove-
nian, Slovak, Macedonian,
Romanian, Serbian, Hun-
garian and Thai. The next
installation step is the se-
lection of local time zone
and turning on or off light
saving time.
When you are through
with these basic settings,
S3500HDCCI takes you to
the service search menu.
Before the search, you have
to select the right satellite
and check the configura-
tion of your antenna sys-
tem. The Icecrypt box is
compatible with all DiSEqC
protocols (1.0, 1.1 and 1.2).
We checked during our test
the operation with 1x4 and
1x8 switches as well as a
DiSEqC motor. Everything
worked perfectly. You can
use any type of LNB with
the receiver: single, univer-
sal or unicable. Of course,
all LOFs are supported.
There are no fewer but
five channel search modes:
Automatic, Manual, Ad-
vanced, Fast and Blinds-
can. Automatic scan is a
most common search mode
based on the factory pre-
programmed satellite and
transponder data. There
are 162 satellites available
from all over the world! In
the unlikely event that the
satellite you are looking for
is not on the list, you can
add it manually as there
are four user defined posi-
tions added at the bottom of
the list. The Manual search
mode let you choose a spe-
cific transponder to search.
The Advanced mode is simi-
lar to Manual but you can
define audio, video PIDs and
detect in this way normally
hidden channels. The Fast
mode is a search dedicated
for a particular satellite pro-
vider. Presently S3500H-
DCCI has two possibilities
here: Canal Digitaal and TV
Vlaanderen.
The most exciting mode is
naturally the blindscan. The
receiver scans the frequen-
cy band and tries to detect
transponders without refer-
ring to any preprogrammed
transponders data. In this
way, it can discover also
the brand new transpond-
ers that did not operate
when the manufacturer was
releasing the firmware and
created satellite and tran-
sponder data for S3500H-
DCCI . There is no need
to scan always the entire
band in both polarizations.
The receiver allows you to
specify narrower frequency
range and choose polariza-
tion.
The Automatic search of
ASTRA satellite on 19.2°
East took 3 minutes and
45 seconds with the net-
work option turned off. The
S3500HDCCI found 894
TV services and 221 radio
services. When we turned
the Network option on, the
channel search time in-
creased to 6 minutes and
20 seconds but the box was
able to find 21 additional TV
services. The scan ended up
with 915 TV and 221 radio
channels.
After testing the Auto-
matic search mode, we did
the reset to factory defaults
and started the Blindscan.
We set the receiver to scan
the whole band and both
polarizations. We were pre-
pared for quite a long wait
but to our great surprise,
S3500HDCCI was through
after merely 10 minutes and
15 seconds. It announced it
Download this report in
German
www.TELE-satellite.com/
TELE-satellite-1201/
deu
/icecrypt.pdf
had found 918 TV and 221
radio channels. The results
are impressive. Icecrypt
box did a really good job!
We searched a number
of other satellites using our
DiSEqC motorized dish as
well as DiSEqC switches:
1x4 and 1x8. Everything
worked perfectly. Occasion-
ally, S3500HDCCI halted
during a channel search
and we had to restart the
scan. However, this did not
cause any loss of previously
stored channels.
Channel zapping is fast
and pleasant in S3500H-
DCCI: less than one second
for the FTA channels and a
little longer for the scram-
bled channels what is natu-
ral as descrambling takes
extra time. An information
box that appears right after
a channel change is clearly
designed and apart from
the typical data, it can show
you something extra. If set
so in the Display menu, the
information box shows you
not only the title and start
and end times of the pre-
sent event but also the title
and start and end times of
the following event. It might
at first sound as a negligi-
ble improvement but after a
very short time of using it,
you feel so comfortable with
this feature that you do not
ever want to switch back to
traditional an information
box with only present event
shown. Other satellite re-
ceivers offer you a possibil-
ity to see the future event
after pressing right arrow.
But if you love channel zap-
ping, the Icecrypt solution
saves you time and increas-
es the pleasure of playing
with your receiver.
Another improvement is
the ability to set the au-
dio volume as normal, in-
creased or decreased for
every channel indepen-
dently. Every satellite fan
will appreciate this feature.
Thanks to that you can zap
channels more comfort-
ably without any fear that
suddenly you will wake up
the whole house by enter-
ing a channel with unnatu-
rally high audio level. Once
you pinpoint such channel,
you set its audio to be 30%
down and every next time
you visit the channel its au-
dio is somewhat muted.