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www.TELE-satellite.com —
06-07-08/2012 —
TELE-satellite International —
全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志
INFO button is pressed the
receiver displays a nicely
laid out info bar that is also
pleasing to the eye.
Apart from the title of the
current and next events it
shows a range of icons in-
dicating the availability of
alternative
soundtracks,
subtitles, EPG, teletext, en-
cryption or HDTV. In addi-
tion two bars keep you in-
formed about the strength
and quality of the incoming
signal.
We know we’ve been
praising the Amiko Alien 2
to the skies so far – but not
without reason, and here’s
one more: The electronic
program guide (EPG) of this
box is simply exemplary. It
offers two different views
showing either nine chan-
nels at a time or a complete
listing covering up to seven
days for a single channel.
For the sake of consist-
ency, the same selectors as
for the channel list (All, Fa-
vourites, Satellite, A-Z, Pro-
vider, CAS, HD and Broad-
caster) are available here
as well and speed up navi-
gation within the EPG.
The Amiko Alien 2 comes
with full PVR functionality
and so it is only logical that
you can create timer entries
right from an EPG listing. In
case your favourite show is
broadcast daily, weekly, on
weekdays or on weekends
only, all corresponding tim-
er options are available at
the touch of a button. Use
this smart feature and you’ll
never miss a sporting event
or your favourite sitcom
again.
As you know we never
treat products we review
with too much respect but
rather try to push them to
their limits. What can we
say, this time the Amiko Al-
ien 2 always got the upper
hand – or in other words, it
performed flawlessly.
Its user interface sports
a well thought-out design
and makes for a very pleas-
ant user experience, even
though it offer all functions
we expect from a state-of-
the-art receiver, such as
changing between various
soundtracks, DVB subtitles
and teletext. In addition,
it is fully HbbTV compat-
ible and will provide all ad-
ditional features offered by
content providers. Short for
‘hybrid broadcast broad-
band TV’, this technology
can offer everything from a
web TV portal and current
news to additional content
information or a multimedia
program guide.
We’ll deal with the vast
range of PVR and network
features this receiver has in
store in a moment, but first
comes our verdict on the
hardware components used
by the manufacturer.
In our test all built-in tun-
ers delivered excellent re-
sults and were happy to
process weak signals as
well. We gave the Alien 2 a
genuinely hard time with a
signal from TURKSAT 42°
East whose symbol rate
never exceeds 3 Ms/s, but
we were astonished the tun-
ers could not care less and
performed smoothly.
The video quality via HDMI
is impeccable with saturat-
ed colours, a top-notch con-
trast level and just the right
dose of sharpness.
The same is true for digi-
tal audio which we sent to
our Dolby Digital receiver
using the optical audio out-
put. We could not fault that
either.
To all couch potatoes out
there we can send the reas-
suring message that chan-
nel switching with the Amiko
Alien 2 could become your
new pastime. It only takes
about two seconds until
crisp video and synced au-
dio are available, no matter
whether you switching be-
tween SD or HD channels.
Speaking of availability,
you should give the receiv-
er some 30 seconds from
standby until all systems
are running, but if you’re
the impatient kind you may
also select the Fake Stand-
by mode in the main menu
which will make sure the re-
ceiver is up and running al-
most instantly at the touch
of button.
Of course this doesn’t
come without a drawback
of its own, which in this
case is much higher en-
ergy consumption than in
deep standby (see energy
diagram). As far as the re-
mote control is concerned
we should mention the fact
that it comes with dedicated
buttons for accessing the
Spark portal (more about
that later in the network/
Internet section of this re-
view), safely removing a
USB storage medium and
changing the video resolu-
tion on the fly.
The Amiko Alien 2 can
easily be turned into a fully-
featured PVR receiver sim-
ply by attaching an exter-
nal USB hard disk, memory
card or USB stick.
Thanks to its three built-
in tuners it is possible to re-
cord two different events at
the same time while watch-
ing a third channel live. The
receiver will automatically
switch between the two sat-
ellite receivers and on the
channel list all those chan-
nels that cannot be watched
live while two other chan-
nels are recorded are shown
with grey background.
It doesn’t make a differ-
ence whether you make one
DVB-T/C and one DVB-S2
recording or two DVB-S2
recordings, the selection is
entirely up to you.
If you manually request a
recording the receiver asks
you if it should shut down
after completion of the re-
cording (with the start and
end times obtained from
the EPG). While this may
sound like a minor feature,
it is further proof of the
Spark software’s attention
to detail and focus on ease-
of-use.
Thanks to the integrated
time shift viewing func-
tion the live program can
be paused at any time and
continued at a later time
without missing single sec-
ond. This means you may
happily answer the phone
or have a chat with your
neighbour and still won’t
miss a thing – provided you
press PAUSE, that is.
It goes without saying for
a high-end product like the
Amiko Alien 2 that you can
add any length of lag time
for your recordings and you
can individually determine
a storage location for each
recording. During playback
of an existing recording it is
possible to fast forward or
rewind with 2, 4, 8, 16, 32