AB-COM Pulse 4K Enigma2 FTA Receiver

[el bandido]

Finally towards the end of 2021, we start seeing some new fta receivers. The new Pulse 4K will be available at retail soon. It looks like the Pulse 4K will cost somewhere between $250 and $350.00, depending on what options you want and who you purchase it from. The Pulse 4K is supposed to have hardware satellite blindscan, and should be able to support up to 3 internal DVB-S2X tuners.

The build of the Pulse 4K looks promising for North American fta needs, and includes an internal hard drive option. The Pulse 4K may be the perfect receiver for those wishing to replace the Vu+ Duo2. The suggested price of the Pulse 4K is 189 Euro. The suggested price would put the receiver somewhere in the 250-350 U.S. dollar range when shipping charges are included. The cost of a Pulse 4K with 3 internal DVB-S2X tuners could be in the $400 U.S. dollar range, depending on additional tuner costs. We will see...

Here is a link to the Manufacturer: [Only registered and activated users can see links]

Below is a short unboxing video.


[Only registered and activated users can see links]

[eastof111]

Good simple attractive receiver. If the three tuners will be available with blindscan, I will definitely have to try one. It will be interesting to see which images will be supported. I see they posted a plugin for viewing church services but no e2 support images yet.

I wish them luck.... we need some new entries out there.

Too bad Edision has not produced a three or four tuner model.

[Megatron817]

Good simple attractive receiver. If the three tuners will be available with blindscan, I will definitely have to try one. It will be interesting to see which images will be supported. I see they posted a plugin for viewing church services but no e2 support images yet.

I wish them luck.... we need some new entries out there.

Too bad Edision has produced a three or four tuner model.

OpenPli has got an Image for it and Looks like a mini model coming. I think the plugable tuners wont do blind scan. haven't seen any but I don't know.

[el bandido]

The Pulse 4K advertises DVB-S2X blindscan, and the receiver's build features show blindscan. But this does not mean that DVB-S2X blindscan actually works, Or works good enough to be useful in North America. Someone will have to pay the price of the box and test it here in North America before we will know the real answer to blindscan. What someone blindscans in Europe on a pizza pan dish aimed at a provider will mean nothing to us.

Anyone wishing to purchase the Pulse 4K that lives in North America will probably have to buy directly from Europe.

Here are the machine features for the Pulse 4K Mini in OpenPLi build recipes:
MACHINE_FEATURES += " blindscan hisil mali transcoding dvb-c emmc wol"

Here are the machine features for the Pulse 4K in OpenPLi build recipes:
7segment textlcd blindscan hisil mali transcoding dvb-c emmc wol

Chipset for both receivers is the same:
CHIPSET = "Hi3798Mv200"


This has the makings for one helluva fta receiver. But we will need support from the manufacturer for blindscan, ATSC usb devices, and other small items that makes a great receiver here in North America. Considering there are probably less than 300 people that would actually buy this box if it were available in North America, it will be hard to get the manufacturer to show any interest for what we want or need. Not trying to be negative, but it is what it is when it comes to fta in North America.

[eastof111]

EB, why the mmc and emmc file designation in the two files below?
openatv-6.4-pulse4k-20210822_mmc.zip
openpli-develop-pulse4k-20210822_emmc.zip

[el bandido]

I guess OE Alliance wants to use a different storage type??? Other than that, I dunno.

[el bandido]

Per Request, DVB Market is selling this receiver (2 DVB-S2X tuner).

[Only registered and activated users can see links]

We will see soon...

[el bandido]

Review of the Pulse 4k:
[Only registered and activated users can see links]

English translation:
[Only registered and activated users can see links]

[el bandido]

Here is another review:
[Only registered and activated users can see links]

It looks like More or Less, This receiver is pretty much a collection of 4-5 year old parts. The usb ports are 2.0 instead of 3.0. The internal hard drive will sort of make for the somewhat slower 2.0 usb ports. Plus there is the option to run a sd card on the front. The Pulse 4K will be Android in nature, which could give other options in the future. Enigma2 image support from OpenPLi is also a plus.

The DVB-S2X tuners in the Pulse have been around for a while, so nothing new or cutting edge in that area. And it looks like the Hi3798Mv200 chipset was introduced in 2015. So more or less, a collection of old parts in a new package. The positive side to this is the parts have been around long enough for most of the bugs to be worked out of them.

The future of fta receivers does not look good right now. There has been a chip shortage and some difficulty in obtaining other parts that are needed to manufacture fta recxeivers. It will probably be well into 2022 or even sometime in 2023 before we start seeing new fta receivers that are not made out of old parts. Broadcom seems to be losing interest in the fta industry, and this would explain why we get mediocre or poor support from Broadcom. The future fta receivers will probably have Android type chipsets and it is possible that Broadcom leaves the fta market.

For the current moment in time, we have the Pulse 4K as a new fta receiver so efforts will be made to make it useful in North America. In the next week or two, we will find out how well it works.

[eastof111]

I emailed them twice regarding blind scan capabilities and have yet to receive a response. Kind of reminds me of the PrismCube back in 2014 when I emailed them requesting blind scan info and never received a response.

Will try one more time, hopefully they will respond.

[el bandido]

Who are you emailing about blindscan?


I emailed them twice regarding blind scan capabilities and have yet to receive a response. Kind of reminds me of the PrismCube back in 2014 when I emailed them requesting blind scan info and never received a response.

Will try one more time, hopefully they will respond.

[el bandido]

I don't expect the blindscan to be that great, and will probably need some work.
Will the Hauppauge ATSC tuners work? And if they don't work, will the distributor care enough to see that it is fixed?
Should have some answers in 10 days.

DVBMarket.com

1:54 AM (6 hours ago)

to me

You are welcome, your order will be shipped on Monday once we receive PULSe stb.

Have a nice weekend.

Martin

[el bandido]

The Pulse 4K appears to have nothing in the receiver's files to support satellite blindscan. The receiver is advertised to have satellite blindscan, the build recipes list it as a feature, but no files to support satellite blindscan. Will be real interesting to me if the feature actually works setup like this. Most likely, the satellite blindscan feature is not available and will have to be added.

If satellite blindscan is not available then this will be the second receiver I have seen recently that advertises this feature and does not actually have it.

[eastof111]

I used the web form on their site to request blind scan info. Also, emailed info request to:
[Only registered and activated users can see links]

[stephan94]

If satellite blindscan is not available then this will be the second receiver I have seen recently that advertises this feature and does not actually have it.

Can I ask the question?
who was the first receiver that announced the blindscan, but did not have it?

have a good day

[el bandido]

GigaBlue UE. No blindscan for that model.

[el bandido]

Here is the latest Tracking:
Departed Facility in MIAMI GATEWAY - USA
August, 31 2021 21:22 Local time | MIAMI GATEWAY, FL - USA

That is not bad considering the Pulse 4K was Shipped Monday.
From Service Area: BRATISLAVA - SLOVAKIA
To Service Area: SMYRNA, GA - USA


I have had Very Good results with purchases from dvb market.com. The North American sellers should be supported whenever possible, but usually none of the North American Vendors has receivers like this. I doubt that changes...

[eastof111]

Nice..... Hope the blind scan works.

I still haven't received any response to my email questions.

[stephan94]

there is also a relatively complete test of the Pulse4K here
[Only registered and activated users can see links]
What I take away from this article: it doesn't read T2MI
they talk about fastscan but never about blindscan, I hope this is not a bad omen.

[el bandido]

DHL delivered the Pulse 4K today. It has the makings of a decent receiver, but it will need some work.

Blindscan is ku only and uses the DMM file in the blindscan plugin folder. Blindscan does not seem to be available for the second tuner. It will take more time to see what blindscan does and does not do.

Hauppauge 955 atsc tuner seems to work correctly.

The Pulse 4K has a great picture on the few channels that have been tested so far.

Heroes, Decades, and Start TV are not "mixing" tonight on 101w c band.

The 1036 SR transponders on 95w c band play and lock easily.

I have only been using the receiver a couple of hours, with many minutes being spent on figuring out how to dump the Alpha image in the receiver. It was shipped with an ATV image from May that had many issues. The answer as a fix ended up being adding a working internet connection, upgrading to a current ATV image online, then flashing another slot with TNAP as shown.

Overall --with some work-- I think this receiver will work well for the North American satellites and terrestrial tv channels. We will see...
17303

[eastof111]

Glad it arrived ok. Hope you can get the second tuner to blind scan.

What do you mean by "Heroes, Decades, and Start TV are not "mixing" tonight on 101w c band."?

[el bandido]

The second tuner blindscans.
Many receivers cannot keep the Weigel channels such as Heroes and Decades properly separated. These channels will mix with Decades becoming Heroes or Heroes becoming Decades. When this happens, you end up with two channels displaying the same thing. I am surprised you do not know about this.

[Megatron817]

The second tuner blindscans.
Many receivers cannot keep the Weigel channels such as Heroes and Decades properly separated. These channels will mix with Decades becoming Heroes or Heroes becoming Decades. When this happens, you end up with two channels displaying the same thing. I am surprised you do not know about this.
So the plug and play tuner has the same spec as the built in tuner? What is the max SR? Looks to be the same kernel as the Mutant 60 that also has DMM blind scan.

[eastof111]

The second tuner blindscans.
Many receivers cannot keep the Weigel channels such as Heroes and Decades properly separated. These channels will mix with Decades becoming Heroes or Heroes becoming Decades. When this happens, you end up with two channels displaying the same thing. I am surprised you do not know about this.

I thought this problem was rectified a very long time ago.... didn't know this problem still existed or returned to create havoc with some tuners. Good to know though.

[el bandido]

The Wiegel channel problem on 101w c band has never really been rectified, resolved, or fixed. Some receivers have problems with these channels at times, while others do not.

Both DVB-S2X tuners appear to be the same. Shown below are the tuner specs.

17304<----------------->17305

[MikeB]

The second tuner blindscans.

Many receivers cannot keep the Weigel channels such as Heroes and Decades properly separated. These channels will mix with Decades becoming Heroes or Heroes becoming Decades. When this happens, you end up with two channels displaying the same thing. I am surprised you do not know about this.


In my case on my Mio, running TNAP 4.0, (all the older TNAP's had the same issue though) I've had issues where when I try to tune in the Movies channel, Start West comes up instead. Annoying when it's a timer that's set, and you don't find out until you try to watch the recording sometime later. This happened very frequently, and ONLY these two channels "mix".

Anyway, I seem to have finally solved it by changing (moving) Movies from it's normal 3928 to 3927 H DVB-S QPSK 2734-5/6. The receiver now properly brings up Movies channel every time, when I have a timer set for it.

I simply deleted the 3928 entry for Movies, and did a Manual scan with the parameters of: 3927 H DVB-S QPSK 2734-5/6. It locked it there just as well, and apparently even just the 1Mhz difference to the far side away from Start West, was enough to make the difference. So, now it's effectively 5Mhz away from Start West, instead of only 4Mhz.

Yes, that means it's only 3Mhz away from Decades, BUT, that channel never interferes with Movies for whatever reason.

Anyway, I say all this in case it may help some people with this issue, as it worked for me.

[eastof111]

Received a reply to my emails....

Dear sir,

the blind scan needs some improvements for Ku band and needs to be added for C band completelly there in the Open Pli image.
PULSe 4K has two DVB-S2X tuners at the maximum (it doesn´t have three tuners), just to have the clear info.

Thank you so much.
Best Regards/S pozdravom,

Martin Durinsky
Service Technician

[el bandido]

I got similar reply from AB-COM about DVB-S2 blindscan today. Offers to assist with blindscan have been made. Let's give them the opportunity to make the needed corrections.
And I should have clarified the number of tuners. I thought the second tuner had two DVB-S2X but in reality it has One DVB-S2X port and One Loop Out.

[el bandido]

Watch for date changes in their files.
This should be where changes or improvements show up first: [Only registered and activated users can see links]

[eastof111]

I am very glad to hear they are open to assisting with corrections or maybe even some improvements. No third tuner is disappointing though.

[el bandido]

We will have to see if anything is actually done. Talk is easy.

Here is a list of makes/models/brands where we tried to get help with blindscan:

Vu+ No communication. Would not reply to messages or emails. No 22 KHz tone control in blindscan- Vu+ Zero 4K.

Sundtek Unable to fix poor blindscan in DVB-S2 usb tuner.

Zgemma Uninterested in adding blindscan to internal tuner that supports blindscan. Said blindscan is for more expensive box.

GigaBlue Advertises blindscan for the UE in Machine Features. Suggests using autoscan instead of blindscan because blindscan is broken.

So after all of this and several hundred dollars later, I am unimpressed when someone says they will fix blindscan. They have to actually do it.

[el bandido]

Here is an updated list of makes/models/brands where we tried to get help with blindscan:

AB-COM Blames "the producer of the box" when discussing blindscan problems with their Flagship model, PULSe4K. AB-COM should have known for many months that the blindscan is broken in the PULSe4K series of receivers. The blindscan in the PULSe4K barely works. A few transponders will be found during a blindscan if you are lucky. Usually none of the transponders that are found will return any channels. So the feature is useless.

Vu+ No communication. Would not reply to messages or emails. No 22 KHz tone control in blindscan- Vu+ Zero 4K.

Sundtek Unable to fix poor blindscan in DVB-S2 usb tuner.

Zgemma Uninterested in adding blindscan to internal tuner that supports blindscan. Said blindscan is for more expensive box.

GigaBlue Advertises blindscan for the UE in Machine Features. Suggests using autoscan instead of blindscan because blindscan is broken.

[el bandido]

Shown below is what the PULSe4K found for a blindscan of 97w ku band.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

<!--
File created on Wednesday, 27 of October 2021, 23:00:48
using pulse4k receiver running Enigma2 image, version 2021-09-30-develop,
image Tnap hardknott, with the Blind scan plugin

-->

<satellites>
<sat name="97.0W Ku-band Galaxy 19" flags="0" position="2630">
<transponder frequency="11827999" symbol_rate="22002000" polarization="0" fec_inner="0" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="11848380" symbol_rate="22475000" polarization="1" fec_inner="0" system="1" modulation="2"/>
<transponder frequency="11904020" symbol_rate="22001000" polarization="1" fec_inner="0" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="11953828" symbol_rate="22002000" polarization="1" fec_inner="0" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="11996361" symbol_rate="14001000" polarization="0" fec_inner="0" system="1" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="12060389" symbol_rate="22002000" polarization="0" fec_inner="0" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="12091322" symbol_rate="22001000" polarization="1" fec_inner="0" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="12128350" symbol_rate="22002000" polarization="1" fec_inner="0" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="12164198" symbol_rate="22501000" polarization="0" fec_inner="0" system="1" modulation="2"/>
<transponder frequency="12185039" symbol_rate="23001000" polarization="1" fec_inner="0" system="0" modulation="1"/>
</sat>
</satellites>

All FEC's are set to 0, which might be ok if the tuner is set to auto-detect. But the PULSe4K does not seem to be set to auto-detect.
Also note the frequencies and symbol rates. There are errors....

[Only registered and activated users can see links]

[el bandido]

Here are a couple of video links to a video comparing the PULSe 4K to the Octagon SF8008. Very dismal performance by the PULSe receiver.

[Only registered and activated users can see links]


[Only registered and activated users can see links]

[Babadem]

I guess there were no improvements to the blindscan?

[el bandido]

Correct. No satellite blindscan improvements. The PULSe 4K does not have a working satellite blindscan suitable for use in North America. Could it be made to work? Possibly. But no one is interested in working to improve it. My PULSE 4k sat in a room for a while where it was used as a non-scanning fta receiver. Then part of the display quit. It now sits unused. On a scale of 1 to 10 rating with 10 being the best, I would give my PULSe 4K a 2 or 3. Nothing more than a 2015 box reintroduced as "New" 5 years later...

[Babadem]

Thanks for your the update, and analysis. I hope the Octagon SF8008 Supreme will have a better support as it regards blindscan.

[el bandido]

The SF8008 Supreme is an updated or "warmed over" version of the previous SF8008. The only real difference in the two Sf8008 models is satellite tuner or demod, and the ability to have internal hard drive(SSD). The kernel for the sf8008's is a 2016 model. Apparently Octagon or the real maker of the box was too lazy to update the kernel, figuring it would sell the same I guess.

The PULSe 4K has the same blindscan design as the DreamBox One model.
Blindscan works correctly, and is fairly decent in the DreamBox One. The Blindscan Plugin is nothing more than an interface for the blindscan feature in the receiver. It may be possible to improve the PULSe blindscan by improving the blindscan plugin module the PULSe 4K uses. There are two blindscan modules in the blindscan plugin. The blindscan plugin module is different for the SF8008. So you may be able to work on the Pulse 4 K blindscan module and get some sort of performance increase for the PULSe 4K. But No One wants to do it....