The Operating System of the Digenius tvbox® • ci comes in revisions that bring to mind the GPL UNIX releases - "stable" versions and faster, but still under debug, "pro" varieties. While the first kind is usually enough to meet the needs of a typical Sunday TV watcher, the pro revisions, in the long run, prove to be more fun and offer number of features that will make you drop your jaw to the floor behind the tacky remote.

The initial setup is simple and self explanatory - choose one of four languages, set the GMT offset matching your time zone, then decide whether this will be either a Free To Air only box, or if you want to let the search function add scrambled channels as well.

In the signal output section there is the standard control over screen size - either widescreen, or 4:3 in pan and scan, or letterbox, then the SCART signal standard (RGB, Y/C or CVBS) and finally, an option to bypass the volume control while relaying sound to your VCR.

Ever since version 3.2 there have been 2500 channel slots to fill in and 50 possible satellites to scan. The tvbox® • ci comes with a number of predefined Astra and HotBird channels, but these change often enough to require an update once the box is up and running.

The reception settings menu lets you choose an equipment control option to match your lnb setup - either tone switching, whereby you can assign up to four satellites, out of the preset 50, to a DiSEqC 1,0 switch or alternatively wander from horizon to horizon with a DiSEqC 1,2 motor. Choosing the latter option allows you to modify the list of satellite positions, delete unwanted satellites or fine-tune the motor to peak the signal at each satellite position. All the required DiSEqC 1.2 functions including reset, "go to position" and limits setup are in place, making it easy to start an initial channel search...

The automatic search is based on a static list of transponders. I couldn't help getting the impression that this part of TVBox' operating system was under the heavy influence of steroids - an automatic scan through roughly 70 predefined HotBird transponders took a little over... three minutes! That's a health hazard gentlemen! An almost indefinite number of transponders can be added at will from a separate menu.

A second option - the "professional scan" overrides couple of things:
The frequency requested doesn't have to be located on a predefined transponder in order to be saved.

The user can choose between scanning a single transponder, an entire satellite or simply refresh the PID entries of all the channels already stored in the memory. During the manual scan a well designed, and precise, signal to noise ratio indicator is available at all times and, in the case of motorised setup, there is also an option of fine tuning the position by pressing the 'LIST' button whilst a particular satellite entry has been selected.

The Professional Scan itself requires the frequency, polarisation and symbol rate to be entered. The FEC is picked automatically. Admittedly, on some occasions, an option to input static PID values or an auto SR option would be useful to feed hunters, but the tvbox® • ci does very good job at finding FEC values automatically. If you do need the receiver to lock to a specific video, audio or PCR PID, you can change the values in the "Edit Channel " menu.

Despite the fact that the Digenius tvbox® • ci doesn't group channels into bouquets, it is clearly capable of recognising the bouquets, or networks if you prefer, while searching the channels. On the illustration to the left you will notice the network ID found on the transponder, displayed right under signal strength meter.

Although the manual of the TV Box CI says the input symbol rate of the receiver should be greater than 4 Megasymbols per second I had absolutely no problems locking on and saving channels of symbol rate just above 2MSym/s in both the automatic and manual search mode.
The tuner mounted on the small motherboard of the tvbox® • ci appears to be the STV 0299 manufactured by ST Microelectronics. This particular QPSK demodulator is well known for its good response and used, among other products, in PCI satellite TV cards. The STV 0299 itself is certainly capable of demodulating signals as low as 1Msym/s (2Mbps or 2.048Mbps to be precise).

Clearly the manufacturer was playing safe when writing down the specs.

The tuner seems to have very good adjacent channel selectivity - or if you prefer - the capability to pickup channels on transponders extremely close to each other, and especially difficult SCPC signals. There is a perfect spot on Intelsat W1 at 10 °E set up as a challenge for the equipment testers. Readers following our articles know what I'm talking about - the infamous CNBC-E, POP TV, Olay TV trio as described in the professor's "Hitchhikers guide to SCPC reception" article. Barely 5 Mhz from each other, and all on the same horizontal transponder. You can't really lock on to Olay TV from where I am anymore, but the tvbox® • ci will bring out CNBC-E and Pop TV in a matter of seconds, without any difficulty at all.