Octagon SF-4008(4K) Bugs, Issues, and Problems

Would definitely be interesting to see the results if/would/should Rick request assistance from PLI or SDG regarding the SF4008.

I for one am very grateful to athoik at SDG for the assistance received for solving many glitches that have materialized in the past with enigma2. Problems solved within a few hours and the harder ones within days.
 
I think Rick is more interested in profit than getting proper support. Doubt anything changes in that area.

Octagon did not bother to get support from OpenPLi. I do not know the reason for this. Seems to reason if you have a great box, then you would want a wide range of support? Vu+ and several other manufacturers get support from OE Alliance and OpenPLI. Makes little sense that Octagon would not do the same.

The SF4008 is fast becoming famous for all the wrong reasons. Something good needs to happen soon...
 
I do not think egos or at least egos from OpenATV had anything to do with it. My contacts and dealings with OpenATV have been very positive, and they are a great bunch of people. My guess is Octagon decided OpenPLi support was not needed, so they did nothing to get it.

SatDreamGr is always working on some project. Here is a link to the Software Defined Radio or SDR thread:
https://www.satdreamgr.com/forum/showthread.php?14653-RTL-SDR-with-Enigma2-(SDG-Radio)

SatDreamGr has released improved images for all or most supported models, so it might be a good idea to flash their Experimental 01-15-2018 image. Remember to backup present image first.

Would be nice to see some sort of enigma2 project here. There are plenty of things that can be done in enigma2 if people want to do them.
 
I do recall quite a while back there was a thread closed on one of the forums due to egos. Hopefully, 2018 will be a better and more productive year. Still wondering why some owners haven't tried the SDG images.
 
Hello Guys
I flash SDG 1/15/2018 on the Octagon and still has the no sound on 2160p, I disable the PIP function under video settings and reboot and it gets stuck on booting, I did not had this issue on the previous update, I am telling you I am getting tired of this receiver.
Well hopefully there is new receivers coming out compatible to this one like the VU+ ZERO 4K.
Regards.
Chewie
 
I think the SF4008 is mortally wounded now. This box seems to have more problems now than when I first got it. I suggest to wait a little bit before you try to replace it because there is nothing out there right now that does what we want.

As for the SatDreamGr booting issue:
Yes, I had a similar issue during installation, but none after that. I think some of our image flashing files have been changed or altered by Octagon, and it is causing problems.

All of these booting issues, audio issues, and refresh rate issues are Octagon problems. We are getting very poor coding from Octagon. These issues are not the fault of any enigma2 image group. The enigma2 images are being built with drivers and other items that Octagon provides.

One ray of hope though:
I bet there is a whole stack of SF4008 receivers sitting in a warehouse somewhere. If this is true, then we may get a big feature added soon such as blindscan to help sell that stack of receivers. This is just a guess on my part, but we have seen similar things happen in other receiver brands before.

For us, the SF4008 would be a great receiver if some of these nuisance problems were fixed. It would be nice just to be able to operate the receiver without having to worry about audio or sound, refresh rate, or bootloop. I am beginning to wonder though if even this is too much to ask for...
 
Octagon says new drivers will be ready this week. It might be a good idea to wait a few days after they are released in order to see how they perform before loading them. (It is a good idea to backup the whole image before updating.)

A new, improved Octagon receiver is scheduled to be released sometime in March, 2018. It is only a short time to the release of this new receiver, and we can expect the majority of support from Octagon to be used on this new receiver once it is released to market.
 
I think all fta receivers have bugs. Some just have more than others.

Yes, the SF4008 does have issues, but it also does some things really well too. Hopefully some of the SF4008 issues or bugs will get fixed.
 
I think even China is taking a sabbatical from producing knockoffs and/or cheap receivers until the stb market finds or reinvents itself.
 
From OCTAGON support:
we are waiting for ram issue improvement, there will be 2 driver versions for sf4008 in the future

- driver1: without kodi with more memory
- driver2: with kodi
Click to expand...

Seems the plan now is to split the images into two groups? Probably the best thing they could do, considering most of the image issues started when Kodi was added.
 
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Too bad it took them so long to get a plan of action initiated. Guess they really like Kodi. I was hoping they would be leaking specs for the SF 4018 by now.
 
The SF5008 specs from Octagon should be released between now and the end of March. There will not be a 4018 Octagon model that I know of.
Soon 1/6th of 2018 will be gone. Maybe the SF4008 will blindscan in 2019??? I am not interested in buying the next "Latest and Greatest FTA Receiver" from Octagon.
The SF4008 was supposed to be a FTA receiver complete with a very sensitive tuner that can lock very low symbol rates and blindscan. It does not do either right now, so why should I believe anything Octagon says about a new, improved product?

I would like a good, solid FTA receiver. I do not want a half-baked glorified media box that also happens to receive the FTA satellites.
 
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Some Octagon customers are getting mad and their posts are being deleted in the Octagon forum. This is not good for anyone. Here are a couple of examples that have been translated.

Sorry
I think it will be nothing again
with new drivers. Let's see what
excuses exist again, (vacation in Asia)
had already.
Greeting digidalus
Click to expand...

When I paid 265 € for this box with Tdt, I never thought that I would have the serious problem of the ram and many others. If it's not resolved, I'll seriously file a lawsuit for misleading advertising at the Octagon, and now we're not going to have the right to express ourselves freely, so the octagon continues to sell more of those boxes and cheat more people, the downside is that this goes through the forums and you do not sell the decoder, you have to give it away, because nobody wants it ...

Ujua , Gestern um 17:06 Uhr
Click to expand...

...Not good at all for anyone that owns this box.

Overall, the SF4008 is not as bad as it seems. It does work, but it just does not do everything that it should. I think what has hurt Octagon more than anything is releasing the SF4008 and advertising it to death. They promised things they have not been able to deliver. When Kodi was added, some things quit working, and they have been plagued with driver problems or issues.

For someone that has never had enigma2 receiver, the Octagon probably looks very impressive. But some people that have owned enigma2 boxes for years are not happy at all.

Expect a new Octagon model to be released soon...Wonder how it will be advertised?
 
Well, I am not buying from these guys anymore, I am seriously thinking on getting the VU+ ZERO 4K, there has been a lot of activity at the OpenATV forum with new drivers not many complaints and it has blindscanm already.
Regards.
Chewie
 
Not good when you start pushing the blame on someone else when your name is on the product. I do not see myself buying another Octagon either unless some major changes happen.

Look at this reply:
OCTAGON support , Samstag um 15:55 Uhr
undertaker

we only do what the developers promise us to do
Click to expand...
Sounds like Octagon is tired of Octagon. They seem to have lost interest in support of the SF4008 and the SX88. They are releasing new models, SF5008 I think, and new, improved models of the SX88. I guess they have limited time now for their year old products.

Let us know how the new Vu+ works out if you get it.
 
Where Do We Go From Here?

Currently I would not recommend or suggest the purchase of the SF4009 to anyone in North America. At some point, this receiver may turn into something very usable for the North American Market, but right now the SF4008 is more or less just another enigma2 receiver without blindscan. The U.S seller of the SF4008 has not done anything to really support the SF4008 which is surprising since his profit margin on this receiver is very high (over 2 to one).

OpenPLi is making it easy to build images, and I have requested the SF4008 to be added to the list of receivers. Look in the link for more information on this.
https://forums.openpli.org/topic/57878-howto-build-unofficial-pli-for-your-unsupported-receiver/
OpenPLi is not outright supporting the SF4008, but it should be possible next week to build an image for it yourself.

I will start customizing the images I download for the SF4008 before they are loaded into the receiver, and plan to build the OpenPLi image once it is added to the list in the link above. The image file for the SF4008 is fairly easy to customize anyway because the main file system is in rootfs.tar.bz2 format. This main tar file can be extracted so you can modify or add lamedb, settings, and many other files. The extracted files can be easily returned to rootfs.tar.bz2 format, and then loaded into any SF4008 receiver. So it is very easy to customize the SF4008 image where others can use it.


I also encourage the Octagon Company and their coders to get off their collective asses and fix this receiver. The reputation of Octagon has been damaged. I do not think the current condition of the SF4008 represents the overall support of Octagon as a manufacturer, but many of the SF4008 owners will probably never buy another Octagon product unless something good happens in the coding of the SF4008 very soon.
 
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