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TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 04-05/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
21. Timer management
22. The AMIKO STHD-8820 CICXE PVR offers 1080p video output
23. Various OSD settings
24. New and useful: The info bar can be moved from the bottom to
the top of the screen
25. PVR settings
26. AMIKO has even implemented a fully-fletched FTP client
27. Weather forecast
28. RSS newsreader
29. Recording function, as seen in the right section of the info bar:
Available storage space is shown
30. All channels that are currently not available (due to active
recording) are shown in grey
31. DVB-T reception
32. List of recordings
33. Image viewer
34. JPEG images can be presented on the TV panel
35. Playback of a TS file
Karmacom’s term for blind
scan and will set the hearts
of satellite DXers and feed
hunters racing.
The channel memory
holds up to 6000 entries and
a Single Scan on HOTBIRD
13°E took six minutes and
delivered 1487 TV channels
and 407 radio stations. The
same search performed as
blind scan was completed
after nine minutes with a
result of 1499 TV channels
and 408 radio stations. With
less than ten minutes for ei-
ther scan type the receiver’s
performance is above aver-
age and does not tax your
patience too much. If the
exact parameters of a re-
ception setup are not know,
Auto DiSEqC is the search
method of choice, as it finds
out the correct parameters
all by itself. We tried out
that feature for a number
of different setups in our
test and can happily confirm
that the results were always
flawless, even for positions
such as BADR 26°E at port 3
of our DiSEqC switch.
Subscribers of pay TV
are schmoozed with the so-
called Fast Scan function,
which only scans transpond-
ers for those signals that
are used by a specific pay
TV provider. This way your
channel list is not filled to
the brim with offerings you
are not interested in and will
never watch anyway. Cur-
rently the Fast Scan list in-
cludes Cyfra+, Cyfra+ HD,
TNK and TNK HD, but in fu-
ture we expect this list to
grow by a number of addi-
tional providers.
We did like the fact that
it is possible with DVB-S/
S2 reception to calculate
the exact antenna alignment
with the help of a very use-
ful OSD menu item. All you
need to provide is your cur-
rent location as well as your
desired satellite position and
the receiver will automati-
cally find out the right azi-
muth and elevation values
for you.
By its very nature, look-
ing for DVB-T channels is a
much quicker affair. Here,
too, you can select manual
or automatic search, the lat-
ter having taken less than
one minute for the entire
frequency spectrum in our
test.
It goes without saying that
all available channels were
found without further ado.
If you only want to look for
or add new channels to your
existing line-up a manual
search lets you do that eas-
ily and quickly. For indoor
antennas without power
supply a 5V current can be
switched on that is provided
to the antenna via the exist-
ing coax cable.
We could hardly wait for
some moving images to ap-
pear on screen, but first it is
advisable to give the main
menu one final look and cus-
tomise the channel list. To
this end the AMIKO STHD-
8820 CICXE PVR offers a
dedicated menu item that
can be accessed to move,
delete or rename channel
entries, to mark individual
channels for skipping, or to