Abcom
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The document provides a detailed review of the ABCom IPBOX 9000 HD Plus satellite receiver. Some key points: - It has two DVB-S2 tuners that can each record a channel simultaneously. The tuners can be swapped out for other types like DVB-T. - It has a large range of connection options, including HDMI, optical audio, USB, and Ethernet. Software updates can be done via the network. - Setup involves running a channel scan to populate the 10,000 channel list. Many options are available to configure satellite, language, and time settings. - The receiver has a 500GB hard drive with extensive PVR functions like an 8-hour
Abcom
- 1. TEST REPORT HDTV Satellite Receiver ABCom IPBOX 9000 HD Plus HDTV via DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-C or DVB-T Recent developments and product launches follow a clear high and the box is pleasing to The great thing is you don’t trend: PVRs are becoming the norm for HDTV reception as well the eye as well. have to be a scientist to be able and while the pioneers of HDTV PVRs equipped their products with to exchange tuner modules and a single tuner at the beginning, these days two integrated tuners Turning around the IPBOX even with no technical back- have become standard so that at least two simultaneous recordings 9000 HD Plus reveals a per- ground at all it should be fea- are now possible. Most manufacturers have such offerings in their fectly equipped back panel. sible. Each tuner always comes range and ABCom is no exception. However, their new IPBOX 9000 What strikes right away is the with a loop-through output so HD Plus has a few astonishing extra goodies in store as well, as you fact that the two tuners are that an additional receiver can will see shortly. not permanently integrated but be connected or the input signal rather only plugged in as mod- can be forwarded from tuner 1 ules. So if you would like to not to tuner 2. ABCom offers their latest alphanumeric VFD display and only receive DVB-S and DVB-S2 box in silver or black, which will – stylishly hidden behind a flap signals, but rather also DVB-T Right next to the slots for the please customers who prefer – eight buttons to control the or DVB-C, all you have to do is two tuners two scart eurocon- electronic gadgets to fit in box whenever the remote is not open the receiver and exchange nectors are available to con- smoothly with the rest of their at hand or out of battery. one tuner (or both) for a differ- nect a CRT TV or a conventional existing equipment. So if your ent one. VCR. flat screen TV and home theatre The same flap also hides two receiver is black, simply go for CI slots for all standard Condi- By the way, the only differ- If you’re lucky enough to own the black IPBOX as well. tional Access modules such as ence between the IPBOX 9000 a beamer there are three RCA Irdeto, Seca, Viaccess, Nagravi- HD and the IPBOX 9000 HD Plus sockets for providing a YUV The receiver’s front panel sion, Conax or Cryptoworks. is that the Plus model comes signal, three more RCA sockets comes with the standard with two DVB-S2 tuners as put out composite video and standby button, an easy to read The level of workmanship is standard. stereo audio. Of course there’s 0.59 36 TELE-satellite & Broadband — 08-09/2008 — www.TELE-satellite.com
- 2. also an optical output for digital preferred on-screen, audio and and foremost all DiSEqC pro- audio and HDMI for lossless dig- subtitle language(s). As it turns tocols (1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3/ ital video and audio transmis- out the IPBOX 9000 HD Plus is a USALS) are implemented in sion to an LCD or plasma TV. genuine globetrotter, with avail- an exemplary way and various able languages including English, other settings make sure the In addition, you’ll find an S- Russian, French, Dutch, Italian, IPBOX 9000 HD Plus will fit per- video connector, a telephone German, Danish, Slovak, Czech, fectly into any existing recep- jack, a USB 2.0 host interface Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, tion equipment, no matter how and USB 1.0 client interface, a Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, out of the ordinary. The LOF can 10/100 Mbit Ethernet port as Greek, Turkish, Korean, Croat, of course also be set manually 08-09/2008 well as an RS-232 serial inter- Bosnian and Serbian. so that all varieties of LNBs are ABCOM IPBOX 9000 HD PLUS face. There’s even a mechanical supported. Control signals such A huge range of connection options power switch to disconnect the Next, the receiver wants to as 22 kHz can be manually acti- make this box a true all-rounder – yet it remains easy to use as a family receiver. receiver from the mains. know the local time difference vated or you can let the receiver to GMT and whether the clock arrange all settings automati- The remote control that should be synced via satellite or cally. comes with the package sits set manually by the user. nicely in your hand, boasts This brilliant overall impres- clearly labelled buttons and The third segment of the sion is further enhanced by – given the enormous range of installation wizard takes care the intelligent way in which features offered by this box – is of configuring the reception signals are distributed to both not filled to the brim with keys system that is used with the tuners. Either both tuners are and buttons. receiver. By default the IPBOX provided with signals or one of 9000 HD Plus comes with a list them becomes master while the If we really have to identify of 161 currently active satellites second becomes slave and is a downside it’s the rather small which – apart from all relevant hooked to the first with a short size of the RC buttons, so you’d European positions – includes connecting cable so that it can better factor in some extra Asian and American birds as receive its signal from the first time and training until you get well. By and large the transpon- tuner. really used to working with the der lists seem to be up to date, remote. even though we detected some Finally, the installation wizard weak spot for a few satellites, prompts the user to initiate a such as NILESAT 7° West, for signal scan. You can choose Initial setup example. whether this should be done for tuner 1 only or for both tuners, When turned on for the first What really thrilled us were and you can select whether all time an installation wizard pops the countless detailed options set satellites should be scanned up on screen and asks for the for satellite configuration. First or whether you’d like to limit the www.TELE-satellite.com — 08-09/2008 — TELE-satellite & Broadband 37
- 3. on the RECORD button. You can also Video automatically add a pre-defined is provided to amount of time before and after the TV either as YUV, S- each timer recording or you can video, CVBS or RGB in analog activate a temperature-sensi- and will format, or digitally via HDMI in tive fan control system. If you easily accom- 520p for PAL and NTSC or 720p encounter problems with your modate all the channels and 1080i at 50 or 60 Hz. Dolby hard disk it can be formatted search that become available. Digital 5.1 audio is available as or checked the next time the to individual PCM or bit stream via a fibre- system starts up. Similar to a positions. Convenient Where there’s so much light, optical cable or can be deacti- PC the receiver then detects and features like network scan or there has to be some shadow as vated in case it is not needed. repairs any problems in the file FTA only are available and in well, as we were not really happy structure so that you can rest case you’re looking for signals about the time it took to scan a Once you open extended set- assured that all your recordings on a particular transponder only 110-transponder satellite. More tings menu you realise what the are stored reliably. the IPBOX 9000 HD Plus even than seven minutes definitely lets you even finish the instal- is too long for a receiver that is receiver has on offer. Its Ether- net port cries out for connecting As the IPBOX 9000 HD Plus lation wizard with a manual supposed to be state of the art. it to a DHCP compatible router is based on the Linux operating search by defining a valid fre- so that the receiver is automati- system it can access all avail- quency with correct polarisa- Once the scan is completed cally assigned an IP address and able and enabled drives and tion and FEC values. you’re all set to actually use all required parameters such as directories in a local network the box for watching and lis- standard gateway address and thanks to its Ethernet port. Either way, the installation tening. Before that, however, DNS server can be obtained To that end mount points for will not finish before one search it’s a good idea to flick through from the router. If you prefer NFS and CIFS are available. mode is selected and completed the main menu and familiarise to set all parameters manually This way individual directories and this is actually a good thing yourself with all the features you’re welcome to do it that or complete hard disks (for because what’s the point of sat- that are available. One of them way as well and the IPBOX 9000 example with MP3 audio files or ellite receiver with no channels is the extremely convenient HD Plus can even automati- image files) can be enabled and on its list? By the way, here’s an transponder editor that allows cally establish a DSL connection accessed with the receiver. important message to all DXers adding new transponders to the out there: Of course the IPBOX satellite list in a breeze. Alter- using either the PPoE or PPP protocols. We particularly liked the 9000 HD Plus allows manual natively, you can also edit or option to make a software input of PID values instead of delete existing entries. In case you’re still waiting for update via the local network. performing a search, so it’s the more out of the ordinary fea- The IPBOX 9000 HD Plus is pre- perfect gadget for feed hunting As we’re talking about a DVB- tures have a look at the hard disk configured to access the cor- as well. S2 receiver here both QPSK and manager for the built-in 500 GB rect FTP server and this way 8PSK modulation is supported hard disk. Rarely before have we can download current software Thanks to the automatic with FEC values of 1/2, 2/3, tested a PVR with so many indi- from the Internet at any time signal scan the channel memory 3/4 , 3/5, 4/5, 5/6, 6/7, 7/8, vidual settings options, which and in next to no time. This cre- fills up quickly. Its capacity 8/9 and 9/10. The same menu include extending the time shift ates an added value for users for 10,000 channels is impres- even includes DVB-T channels buffer to up to eight hours and as they can be certain to always sive and means that the IPBOX for EU countries and Australia, the option to save the complete run the latest software ver- 9000 HD Plus can be the perfect which can also be edited and buffer content with a single click sion without having to rely on companion for rotary antennas extended. TELE-satellite World www.TELE-satellite.com/... 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- 4. updates via satellite which take Digital audio, teletext, subtitles, switching from standard defini- all of which are implemented much longer and are less reli- broadcasting standard etc. In tion to high definition channels with user friendliness in mind. able. In our test the operating addition the bar informs viewers your patience is not put to test. Both the MP player and the pic- system was updated flawlessly which tuner is in use and which Time shift is a feature you will ture viewer can be activated and ABCom even lets the user satellite transmits the currently never again want to do without with dedicated buttons on the know beforehand which bugs watched channel. Two coloured as it allows freezing an event at remote control, so that a single will be fixed and which new meters let you know the level of any given time and then con- touch of a button is all that’s features will be added with the signal strength and quality. tinuing from that very moment, needed. However, we were only updated software. in case the telephone rings or able to play back content that To access the entire program any disturbance happens while was stored on the internal hard Everyday use details provided by the indi- vidual channels all you have you’re watching TV. disk as we did not manage to gain access to a digital camera Once the initial setup is com- to do is press the EPG button. In our test recording and connected to the USB host pleted you can leave the main With another touch of the same playing back SD and HD con- interface, a USB memory stick menu and let the receiver tune button you can call up extended tents took place flawlessly, or an external hard disk. into the first channel on the list. information about the selected and we also liked that playback Pressing the OK button prompts event and with the RECORD always continued from where it No test is complete without the clearly laid out channel list button you can set a timer entry was last stopped. The overall pushing the receiver to the to appear on screen, with a small for recording that event. remarkable ease of use of this edge with weak signals, and preview window in the right sec- receiver is complemented by the IPBOX 9000 HD Plus had to tion of the screen showing the Video and audio are of very useful add-ons such as picture- share the same destiny as any currently selected channel. good quality in everyday use in-picture, integrated teletext other box we evaluate. To that and zapping between channels decoder and automatic detec- end we fed it with very weak It’s quite common that more is reasonably fast. tion of sub-channels. Thanks to signals from ASTRA2D at 28.2° than 2,000 channels are stored Even when two built-in tuners it is possible East, BADR 26° East and the in the channel list after a scan of to simultaneously record two horizontal polarisation of NILE- one or two popular satellites, so events without interference or SAT 7° West. All results were the first job always is to neatly interruption, no matter whether fairly average and we obtained rearrange that list so that it SDTV or HDTV. flawless reception with a C/N becomes user friendly rather value of approximately 5 dB and than overwhelming. Luckily, the One of the few negative higher. IPBOX 9000 HD Plus offers a aspects we noted is that it range of sorting option accord- sometimes seems to take We did notice, however, that ing to CAS/FTA, FTA/CAS, forever until the box reacts the signal quality bar of the alphabet, provider and satel- to commands sent by the IPBOX 9000 HD Plus seems lite. Channels you watch on a remote control, and that to have a mind of its own as regular basis can conveniently in some cases we had to it showed 96% signal quality be moved into one of the favou- reboot the receiver by for a transponder that merely rites lists which are extremely turning the main power reached the threshold level. powerful and versatile, so that switch off and on again SCPC reception of the IPBOX each family member can create to bring it back to life. 9000 HD Plus was OK with their personal list and never has However, we assume glitch-free reception of signals to mess around with the end- that the manufac- from TURKSAZ2A 42° East with less overall list. Thanks to a turer will address 2 Ms/s. dedicated button on the remote these issues with control the favourites lists can one of the next The manufacturer is con- be called up with the touch of software updates. stantly working on improving a button. the Linux-based software of this As mentioned receiver and as a next step they Every time you switch to a above the are planning to implement IPTV. new channel or press the INFO IPBOX 9000 A simple software update via button on the remote control HD Plus comes the local network will add that the receiver inserts a cleverly with a range feature to a box that is right up arranged info bar with icons of multime- there with the best even right indicating features like Dolby dia features, now. www.TELE-satellite.com — 08-09/2008 — TELE-satellite & Broadband 39
- 5. Expert Opinion + The IPBOX 9000 HD Plus is a new-generation HD PVR receiver that is convenient to use every day. The manufacturer constantly improves the operating software so that we can expect new fea- tures for a box that already includes all you could Thomas Haring wish for. TELE-satellite Test Center Main menu - Austria Signal scans should be faster. There were a number of system crashes during our test. TECHNIC DATA Manufacturer ABCom s.r.o., Gogolova 1, 95501 Topolcany, Slovakia Tel +421-38-5362-611 Fax +421-38-5322-027 E-Mail info@abcom.sk Model IPBOX 9000 HD Plus Function Digital HDTV PVR receiver for DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-C and DVB-T reception Channel memory 10000 Channel list Satellites 161 Symbol rate 2~45 Ms/sec. (2 Ms/sec and higher in our test) SCPC yes DiSEqC 1.0 / 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3 USALS yes Scart 2 HDMI yes, 520p for PAL and NTSC via HDMI not supported A/V output 3 x RCA YUV output 3x RCA UHF output no S-Video output yes 0/12 Volt connection no Dig. Audio connection yes Ethernet port yes EPG USB 2.0 Host yes USB Client yes RS232 interface yes EPG yes C/Ku band compatible yes Power supply 110-245 VAC, 50/60 Hz Power consumption 50W max. (according to manufacturer) Dimension 375x60x280mm ENERGY DIAGRAM Apparent Power Firmware update via Internet Active Power Mode Apparent Active Factor StandBy 46 W 26 W 0.56 Reception 54 W 32 W 0.59 with HDD 62 W 38 W 0.61 At 09:16 the box boots, then operates normally with activated hard disk from 09:17. At 09:22 the hard disk is shut down, at 09:27 the receiver is set to standby mode and at 09:34 the receiver is disconnected from the mains. LNB settings 40 TELE-satellite & Broadband — 08-09/2008 — www.TELE-satellite.com