Edison Mini Vs. Edison Mio

[WilburSmith]

@el bandido,

Thanks so much for the explanation! Covid certainly did a number on everyone around the world in more respects than we can imagine!

I looked one web site that supports, plugins for the STBs and I didn't see much for the Edison. Is this because it is so old now?

I did see things for Octagon and now I don't know which is better although the Octoagon is about half the price of the Edison.

[el bandido]

You will find websites that have this and that plugins, supposedly for a certain enigma2 receiver, but reality is different. The python version for enigma has been updated in the last couple of years which made some of the older plugins obsolete. Some enigma2 plugins were written over 15 years ago.

Pretty much, enigma2 is enigma2. Enigma2 plugins are enigma2 plugins. Most plugins that work on Octagon also work on Edision and other enigma2 receiver brands. There are exceptions of course, but enigma2 and enigma2 plugins are for the most part, Universal. Then there is the thing of usage. Most enigma2 plugins were designed for Europe. There are plugins that work anywhere in the world too, but usually the list of enigma2 plugins that are useful in North America is small.

[cyberham]

Good point about the difference in tuners in the Mio+. I'd still buy Edision over anything else. In fact I did. I electronically blew my original Mio dual tuner up (too high input voltage) so I bought a second Edision. You forget the slightly higher price long before you stop enjoying features of a good product. Don't let $$$ get in the way of buying a good hobby product.

[ArloG]

If I could. The mio4k+ does have 2 satellite capable tuners.
And my question that went largely unanswered was what was the difference in them.
As you can see from the specs:

- 1 x Tuner DVB-S2X
- 1 x Tuner DVB-S2/T2/C

In all its geekery a quick explanation I picked up from another site:

DVB-S2X advantages over DVB-S2:

51% higher satellite link spectral efficiency
Improved filtering, making it possible to use smaller carrier spacing, and
Smaller filter roll-off factors of 5%, 10%, and 15%. Roll-off-factor is a measure of the excess bandwidth of the filter used by the DVB system. The smaller the roll-off factor, the sharper the filtered signal and, the better the filter performance.
More data scrambling options available to mitigate co-channel interference, and
New constellation points for both linear and non-linear channels, resulting in higher data throughput capacity

So the 2nd tuner should be able to receive an additional signal from a separate dish.
What are the disadvantages over the DVB-S2X tuner?
Would that mean it's totally useless in the USA?

Also the 2nd tuner could "supposedly" be used to attach an OTA antenna if you decided to.
Would it tune USA ATSC stations? If so you could use the DVR capability to record programming on a schedule or on demand.
I never tried on my os mio 4k (not the +). I live way out in the boonies

As for the 2nd tuner being used for cable tv . 100% unusable as most if not all cable content is digital. Plus the tuning of USA cable "in the clear" analog frequencies differs from European standards.
A note. For awhile I had 70 some cable channels that could be scanned on my tv. It was kind of an undocumented perk with the broadband service I subbed to.
But my satellite receiver, a Zgemma H7-AC, DVB-C tuner was blind. Even entering a known channel frequency resulted in no reception at all.
So forget about trying to do that.

I was sent a blown-up os mio4k+ to play with. In it the previoous and generous owner sent a Happague USB tuner dongle. It will work for out OTA channels.
And drivers for it turn it up as a new tuner in the Edision tuner menu.


The os mini is available. The os mio4k seems to be done. The mio4k+ is backordered and perhaps may be obsoleted as well. Or not, just yet.

EB's DM One seemed to be a disaster.
It coincided with my search for a newer, more modern receiver.
I was shot down on any VU+. And a bit less on any Gigblue.
It was a quest to find a satellite receiver with 2 identical DVB-S2X tuners. That also had really good blindscan performance.

The Octagon SF8008 has identical DVB-S2X tuners. It looks tasty. Looking for USA reviews and opinions before making a commitment.

As for plugins. If you don't know about all of the ones you can install. Ask yourself. What plugins would you actually need on a satellite receiver?
Kodi? I'll tell ya'. If you want to install and use Kodi. Your experience will be tons better using your Fire device or smart tv.
It's a satellite receiver. You'll be pecking away on the remote navigating around instead of on a Fire, tv, being able to add a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

So. At least for me. And I ain't no-one. My plugins extend to a weather thingy. A few other terminal plugins. I'm perfectly happy not cluttering the os mio4k with a lot of crap.

As a side note. About the fried mio4k+ I was given. Which lost HDMI but still was accessible through the web interface.
It got a power surge on the HDMI port. I have that aced and diagnosed. The Broadcom receiver IC is cooked for video output.
I got a lead on a couple of chips being sent from Asia. They're 30 buck or so. Still not too bad with shipping. So I wait.
I would be interested in being able to get another 4k+ sent to me to play with.
In my shoes, I am the one getting notified that a repair needing a chip will "cost this much" and no guarantee that it will work. But we need to start someplace.

[el bandido]

The second internal tuner B in the MIO+ receiver does not perform as well as the first internal tuner A. The second tuner cannot handle symbol rates over 45000, does not work on DVB-S2X, Does not blindscan well....etc Also, the second tuner is terrestrial, DVB-T/T2, NOT ATSC.. Like I said earlier, a moot point discussing it because the receiver is not available new.

FTA satellite receivers can be broken into 2 distinct groups. One group would be DX'er or FTA satellite receiver. The other group would be subscription services. Most VuPlus and most GigaBlue satellite receivers could be considered subscription boxes because they are either poor at searching for signals or cannot search for signals. Most VuPlus and most GigaBlue receivers will not perform well on weak signals either, but they may have multiple card slots and other subscription features for Europe. Some VuPlus and GigaBlue receivers are copies of each other...

Receivers such as the Edision MIO 4K, Mini 4K, and Octagon SF8008 could be considered DX'er or FTA satellite receiver. These receivers work well or are at least acceptable on a satellite blindscan, can handle relatively small symbol rates, and perform decent on weak signals. These receivers do not have multiple card slots, which are useless anyway in North America.

Satellite FTA receivers for the most part are throw-away, disposable pieces of electronics because they are built dirt cheap to begin with. Yes, you may take your time and tediously repair some part that has failed on the board, but the odds of the receiver that you repaired working correctly again are not in your favor!!! FTA receivers are like Bic cigarette lighters: Throw them away when they quit working unless you have a warranty.

IF and When there will be new FTA receivers on the market is unknown. Up to about 2018, new FTA receivers were introduced at least 2 times a year. Broadcom has left the FTA satellite market and I doubt they return. On a world-wide level, FTA satellite has shrunk, and no one seems interested in putting money in new FTA satellite receivers right now. New satellite receivers that OpenPLi will build images for are listed in red at openpli.org. Currently, there are three new receivers being shown at openpli.org. But two of them are Identical, and are based on old technology. So nothing new.

You might be waiting a while if you are waiting for a new (2023-2024) FTA satellite receiver to be released. The wait may be even longer if you want a FTA receiver that will perform well in North America.


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[cyberham]

All good points raised. To help understand why FTA has a struggle in Canada, I recently took a walk down the pay TV path. Shaw Direct satellite provided me with a brand new Shaw receiver w/PVR recording capability, and a brand new 60e satellite dish with dual LNB. For free! They even gave a $50 credit if I installed the dish myself. All I paid was the monthly subscription fee (without a contracted term) which was discounted for a full year. This is what FTA has to fight against. And guess what? I replaced Shaw Direct with Eastlink cable recently since Eastlink offered even a better (less $$$) deal for 2 years with no contract and I didn't need a satellite dish for Eastlink. I think there are VERY FEW average people who would choose to explore FTA when the pay TV offerings are as generous as they currently are. So FTA is a hobby exclusively here and that small a market is tough to justify development costs.

[ArloG]

In keeping with the OP's subject. I'm guessing that the os mio4k series is/was the rare unicorn of USA FTA receivers. I wonder though is that a fact found from a culmination of purchased or given as samples receivers?
The VU+ and Gigablue are perhaps justly getting a pretty good thumbs down.
It is strange that an owner of a VU+ receiver. Not sure of the model. Who I wrote back and forth in a forum pm. Asking of my opinion of the os mio4k receiver before he purchased one.
Strange Yes because after he got his new mio setup. He swore up and down that the VU+ picture and sound was better than the mio. And in a blindscan comparison, displayed signal strength, and a few other things.
The VU+ blew the mio in the ditch. Things like missed transponders, less channels scanned in, and overall lower signal threshold. Yet as told to me can't be so. So what's the deal?
Who do you believe? And if in fact a Gigablue model is very similar in hardware or a complete copy of a VU+ of the same type.
Has it been blacklisted as unusable for one reason or another w/o actually being tested?
The dude swears of the good of his VU+ over the bummer factor of the supposedly superior os mio4k.

As for disposability. A good piece of electronics that is deemed obsolete. But could be repaired economically. Especially if comparing a couple of identical units shows a common failure point.
That would be a good thing. Case in point for the os mio4k. The wall wart power supply is known for a bad chinesium output filter capacitor that smokes at will. A lesser person would accept it as junk.
A ~ $150.00 piece of junk. For the want of a simple repair or $2 thrift shop power supply. I fix things. The same ole same ole gets boring.
Getting something new to pee with and actually acing it to a failed component. That's fun.
I mean. No way, no how would I crack open a Koquit box that cost 30 samolians. You know. Who knows.

The thing about FTA is it's interesting and fun. And most of us know the user experience can be enhanced. For a time anyway.
My recordings are mine. Not so on sub boxes. You cant take a recorded movie over to your girlfriends and watch it.
Personally. I've been cord free for 10 years. My dad passed on and I moved into our old family farmhouse. He had a dish sub. Once I saw what he had been paying for the football and movie package.
Nah. I let it run out sent the receiver back. That's a lot of money. And I didn't get, after the "blind me with a good deal" introductory deal runs out, what the monthly shocker actually will be after sneaky Pete sends that first bill.

I have a bigassed dish that swings from 131W to 40-something East. C & ku band capable. Cemented in the dirt since '84ish. Broadband a mundo. A VPN.
As long as FTA has something worth watching. Its the best 200 buck I ever spent.
Yeah?

[el bandido]

A FTA satellite receiver can work no better than the antenna system it is connected to. I think most would agree that c band has the best programming, but there is some interesting stuff on ku band. Smaller dishes will work, but the minimum c band dish size today would be 3 meters and the minimum for ku, 1 meter.

I always get a chuckle out of this:

The VU+ blew the mio in the ditch.

VU+ made a total of 2 satellite receivers that could satellite blindscan decent enough to be useful. The Duo2 was released around 2012, and was capable of satellite blindscan on 2 of the 4 internal tuners. The VU+ Zero 4K followed a few years later and had a pretty decent satellite blindscan. I enjoy using both the Duo2 and the Zero 4K, but VU+ did not support the items we need for FTA satellite even though they advertised them,

VU+ did not give a damn about satellite blindscan. If it satellite blindscan returned a transponder, it worked, and if it didn't work, VU+ advertised it as working anyway on models with FBC tuners. 22KHz Tone switching was left out of the Zero 4K blindscan which means only the low side of Universal lnb could be blindscanned. VU+ could not be bothered to fix this, so anyone relying on a Zero 4K to blindscan using universal type lnb was screwed!

The VU+ Ultimo had pluggable tuners and could satellite blindscan as well as the Duo2 if Duo2 tuners were installed in the Ultimo. Later models after the Ultimo used different tuner slots and were not capable enough to have a usable satellite blindscan.

It is common to see where someone claims a fairy tale equivalent when describing FTA receiver performance A VU+ blowing the MIO in the ditch blindscanning FTA satellites is a fairy tale. But don't take my word for it: Buy one and see for yourself. There were not many models of VU+ made with any satellite blindscan capability,

[el bandido]

It depends.
You basically have two types of images for enigma2 which are OpenPLi and OE Alliance. Some plugins can work in either types of image, but others cannot. The enigma2 image will need to have the same python version the plugin has in most instances. Much easier to ask about a specific plugin and image because your general question about plugins and images is very broad. You have two basic types of images that have been built on python 2.7, 3.9, 3.10, and 3.11. Then you have plugins that have been created over a roughly 20 year period.

TNAP is designed for use in North America.

[WilburSmith]

@ el bandido Ok so I understood this entirely incorrectly. Enigma2 is a firmware, not plugin, that one can install into their linux stb. SO once you know the firmware you want to use you then can match it against the requirements of the plugins you want to use.. Then over time if you want to try other flavours you just install the new firmware and match the plugins for that new firmware. Is this correct?