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TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 02-03/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
ed to the housing with four
screws; it can hold a 2.5“
as well as 3.5“ hard drive.
We never expected that this
little receiver would also
be able to hold a 3.5“ hard
drive! Another plus point!
Once everything was
screwed back together, the
hard drive was automatically
recognized. It was format-
ted through the Hard Drive
menu. Included were all of
the typical PVR functions
such as Timeshift and timer
recordings.
The AZBox ME remote con-
trol is ideal. Even though it‘s
rather unremarkable and not
all that luxurious, it does sit
nicely in your hands with all
of the buttons easily reach-
able with your thumb.
The arrow buttons are
surrounded by a ring of six
additional buttons. This ar-
rangement might take a little
getting used to in that, for
example, you could acciden-
tally press the EPG button
instead of the down-arrow
button. But it won‘t take long
before you get used to the
setup and are able to keep
the buttons separate from
one another.
The highlight of the remote
control can actually be found
inside the battery compart-
ment: there you‘ll find a but-
ton that activates the learn-
ing function. This makes it
possible to reprogram the
right button in the first row
to, say, turn your TV on and
off. But, of course, you can
reprogram this button to
handle every other possible
function.
The AZBox ME is delivered
with two pre-installed Linux
images; the user is immedi-
ately given a choice between
the two images. Even though
both of them are Linux imag-
es, they both use completely
different user interfaces. We
selected „Boot (0)“ to start
with. An assistant recog-
nized the first-time use and
guided us through the vari-
ous steps. First on the list
was selecting the language.
It‘s interesting to note that
you can also choose „Bavar-
ian“ as one of the languages.
Next come the video set-
tings. Lastly comes the tuner
configuration and the start
of a channel scan. We tested
the firmware with our DiS-
EqC 1.0 antenna system that
consists of four antennas
pointed to ASTRA 28.2E, AS-
TRA 19.2E, HOTBIRD 13.0E
and HISPASAT 30W. The
channel scan revealed the
expected number of chan-
nels and did so in a speedy
fashion.
With a freshly generat-
ed and therefore unsorted
channel list it might not be
much fun channel surfing; it
would probably take quite a
few button pushes to wade
through the thousands of
channels before you‘d find a
channel you like.
This Linux operating sys-
tem functions in a beautifully
different way: the up/down
buttons as expected switch
between one channel at a
time forwards or backwards
while the left/right buttons
switch between providers.
They are automatically ar-
ranged by satellite. Once you
get used to this simple logic,
you can switch amazingly
fast between channels.
Naturally you can use a
variety of settings editors
to modify the settings. We
recommend the excellent
freeware „DreamSet“ (www.
dreamset-editor.com) since
it‘s compatible with the dif-
ferent firmware versions of
the AZBox ME so that you
only need one editor for both
images.
Operating the Boot (0) im-
age is for the most part logi-
cal and self-explanatory. The
Boot (0) firmware left us with
an overall good impression.
It‘s easy to see that we‘re
dealing with a mature oper-
ating system in which every
function has been perfectly