Review of the Optibox Raptor FTA Receiver

[el bandido]

Maybe this has been asked and I have missed it but, do we have a price on the Raptor, or are they available for order, yet?

No set price yet. Not available for order yet.
I expect this to change soon. Your two questions are being asked more & more by different people.

[Guest]

I could not resist connecting the Raptor to the 7.5 foot c band dish for a moment and scanning 99W.
The raptor found 60 TV 30 Radio and 23 transponders.
It did not find the elusive Spanish channels on the 1500SR transponder. I may not be on the satellite good enough to get a signal on this transponder, the Raptor may not be able to scan this tp, or the tp may not be transmitting right now. Anyway, I will look harder for this 1500SR tp at a later time. EB

Ok EB. The azbox ultra came up with 2 low sr tp after a blind scan on Galaxy16 at 99w:

Rps Puebla- 3932 H 1562
Telever- 3936 H 1562

They also scan in manually without any issues.

[el bandido]

I do not have a signal at all on those transponders Costa. Either my dish needs adjusted or it may be too small to see those transponders. I do think the Raptor would log them if my antenna system could see them.

An USB Wireless-N Adapter was shipped with the Raptor. I have been running an access point for internet, but now I am going to open this adapter up and try it.

[el bandido]

The wireless adapter worked without a problem.
Also added today was a Western Digital 1 terabyte internal hard drive. This hard drive was about $150.00 at a Best Buy Store. I could have gotten it for less money on Ebay but I wanted to make sure I got a good one. A WD 320GB HD had been installed earlier. This hard drive had some issues and it was causing the receiver's menus to freeze, and I also suspect it was the cause of at least one hard boot. A hard boot puts the receiver in PAL. Since I did not want to relive these experiences, I bought a new hard drive from Best Buy.
The Hard Drive Speed Test suggests I got what I paid for. EB

[el bandido]

Most of the problems that I have had with the Raptor have been hard drive related.
As I mentioned earlier, I installed a bad internal hard drive and this caused the receiver to hard boot into PAL. I have connected other discs and had problems too. Sometimes the receiver will freeze when I try to get a movie clip played that is not supported. To get out of the freeze, I turn the power off by using the rear rocker switch. Nothing good happens after recovering from a receiver freeze up. Either all of the channel and satellite information is dumped or the receiver does factory default putting it in PAL.

I do not have a lot of different video formats on hand, but I do have some .TS files. The Raptor would not play the .TS files but the Amiko Alien would.
I have several video clips in different video formats. The Raptor would play a couple of them where the Amiko Alien would play a lot of them. The Alien definitely has and advantage over the Raptor in this area.

[el bandido]

Press the blue button while watching a tv channel and you are greeted with a multiple picture screen.
This feature works best on a transponder with lots of channels. Only two pictures move. The center picture and its smaller side picture are the only two that move. The other pictures are snap shots.
You may use the remote's arrow keys and select a channel from this screen. Simply highlight a channel and press the OK button.

I like this feature.

[el bandido]

It is time to start thinking about adding a tuner. Running one tuner in a two tuner system is about like running a V8 engine on four cylinders.

Note to Team Amiko:
I need to know if the terrestrial(OTA) tuner is ATSC for digital and HD television. Our TV stations have been required to switch to this video format, and it is different than some other parts of the world. There is no need to open the terrestrial tuner and install it if it does not work in our part of the world.

Gold!!!....I see gold plating on the tuner connectors. I also have seen some gold plating inside the receiver on the circuit board. Gold is a very expensive metal and I have not seen it used much in fta receivers.None of my Ali receivers have has any visible gold in them. Some of my work is in the recycling business so I automatically look for gold and other precious metals.
Most of the Ali receivers we have been using are made in China where the cheapest parts and production methods are used.
I find the Raptor to have high quality parts inside its case and I expect it to run for several years without any electrical failures.

The terrestrial tuner is Samsung.
The satellite tuner is Sharp.

[el bandido]

I am starting to look at the record capabilities a little bit. The first thing to do was look around and see if there was any freezing on any channels. I have not found any channels freezing or having a jerky picture on any satellite. Some of the Ali receivers had hd picture problems, but the Raptor has no issues in this area that I can find.
I decided to record one channel on the 107W c band satellite. I chose the channels on the 4160 transponder.
The record was started on one channel, then two more channels were added for a total of three HD channels being recorded. The Raptor did this task with ease, and I verified that all three recordings played OK. Some channels are greyed out in the menu once you start recording. The white channels are the ones that are available for viewing or for recording. This cuts down on the confusion of what can be watched or recorded at the same time.

[rrob311]

Can this box easily manually enter pids for say CW on 91 and the itc locals on 118.8? Is it easy to tweak the dish one step at a time in the motor control menu?

[rrob311]

It is time to start thinking about adding a tuner. Running one tuner in a two tuner system is about like running a V8 engine on four cylinders.

Note to Team Amiko:
I need to know if the terrestrial(OTA) tuner is ATSC for digital and HD television. Our TV stations have been required to switch to this video format, and it is different than some other parts of the world. There is no need to open the terrestrial tuner and install it if it does not work in our part of the world.

Gold!!!....I see gold plating on the tuner connectors. I also have seen some gold plating inside the receiver on the circuit board. Gold is a very expensive metal and I have not seen it used much in fta receivers.None of my Ali receivers have has any visible gold in them. Some of my work is in the recycling business so I automatically look for gold and other precious metals.
Most of the Ali receivers we have been using are made in China where the cheapest parts and production methods are used.
I find the Raptor to have high quality parts inside its case and I expect it to run for several years without any electrical failures.

The terrestrial tuner is Samsung.
The satellite tuner is Sharp.

Did those tuners come with the box? Were they plugged in when you ran the box before? I am confused on the purpose of the extra slots. Is it to have another TV with separate remote?