Upon booting the 9000Via CI welcomes new users with the scary message of "Check for valid OS" displayed on the screen for a few seconds. After that the user can choose the default language for the set-up from the menu assisted by a Samsung logo displayed in the background. And here we found the first surprise - Samsung bundled its box with a total of 13 European languages including Russian, Czech and Turkish with full and proper character sets. Tought by Digiquest P2000 example we spent some time later on with box switched to Swedish attempting to catch a non translated error message, but we couldn't find any (even with a box set to a language none of us speak, let alone understand, so getting error messages wasn't too difficult). A similar exercise was attempted using Russian as the default language with a similar effect. Samsung deserve a respected well done for this.

After choosing the initial language we were thrown into the main menu. Divided into six sections the main menu leads to Installation, Channel Organising, Parental features, system set-up and both CI and embedded Viaccess properties. Menus look surprisingly nice and smooth - fashionable long buttons, semi transparent guides to button functions at the bottom of the screen and with a non-intrusive, yet good-looking background. As for 16 colours the on screen graphics don't look bad at all. Heading for most of the menus the user is prompted to enter PIN (whether parental features are on or not) which after a while may get quite annoying, but it sure keeps your settings protected from unwelcome changes.

The " Installation" menu is again divided into seven sections. For a standard offset dish you can choose single or multiple LNBs with or without 22kHz switch from the "LNB Settings" menu. "DiSEqC Settings" allow you to define the type of your system control - either 1.0 or motorised 1.2, dubbed 'Positioner' in 9000ViaCI. Should you choose the latter all the usual functions of motorized set-up are invoked from separate menu number three. An interesting addition to the whole lot is Solarsat Antenna support. These antennas, not highly popularised in Europe as of yet, help the user to find the exact position of a satellite by the sun's shadow reflected on the face of the dish. Software support built into Samsung receivers make it one of a very few on the market perfectly matching this original and, has to be said, rather good invention.

The singles	All for one, one for all	The Specials

Motorized set-up comes in three flavours - basic, advanced and installation. In all three cases you can correct satellite positions by driving motor East and West either by steps or seconds of rotation, and should your motor support it, also move it up and down. Corrections can be stored back to the predefined positions. We couldn't find a way to define and name new satellites without overwriting any of the three "User" positions. 9000ViaCI was bundled with 16 predefined satellites plus 3 user definable entries, although the last three cannot be used for automatic channel search. Limits of rotation can also be set (in installation mode) making this Samsung box fully up to specs with Eutelsat's DiSEqC 1.2 guidelines.

One thing has to be said - there is no way anybody could get lost in the installation menus even without a manual. In fact we didn't look into manual until we tried to find Motor Limits in menus, just to find that the manual was so dry and laconic you would probably be better off without it. Easy peasy.

Once the dish settings were correct we could start searching for channels.
Automatic search options are identical whether your dish is motorized or not and the responsible menu is kept as simple as everything else. Simply scroll down to the one of 16 most popular European satellites you believe the dish is pointing at and choose either "All" or "Free" mode for a full or Free to Air search respectively.

Channel scan is done using a predefined set of frequencies and symbol rates rather than going through all possibilities transponder by transponder and SR after SR. That makes a search rather quick (13 minutes for Astra+Hot Bird), and thanks to surprisingly updated lists also fairly complete. Considering the 9000ViaCI can store "only" 2000 channels and a settings editor for Samsung boxes is lacking, it may be a better idea to use Auto Scan with one satellite at a time and organize channels a little before going for another position.

Should you feel like the list of channels after automatic search is incomplete you can choose Manual Scan. It is also very intuitive - a user can choose a satellite from the list and then using up to 64 predefined transponders pick the frequency and polarisation or enter all values using "New" in Load TR box. Custom entries will not be stored by receiver. Manual scans can be also done in All and FTA mode plus additionally you can opt for network search and entering pids. Network search as far as we could see only pushes the box to assign newfound channels to proper bouquets. A useful note if you want to promptly store settings for a particular channel of a weak signal is to align your dish properly - you cannot force the receiver to store a channel just by entering correct PIDs if the box fails to find the signal on the transponder. Not much of a letdown as a signal status bar is available during manual search at all times. 9000ViaCI is also not a feed hunter box as you cannot manualy enter non standard FEC values...