Digenius tvbox® • ci is full of surprises right from the start. After powering the box on the first thing you get is the picture and an immediate stable lock on the channel followed by the Digenius horned logo. I haven't come across many boxes that could match the response time of the tvbox® • ci.

A few punches on the remote buttons and I couldn't help getting the impression that there is more power in this little box than its plain and ordinary exterior would suggest. Browsing through the channels is child's play - the lock on time on unencrypted channels with a strong signal is below 1 second, while channel switching with the button held down can reach up to 9 channels per second.

The picture quality is brilliant - sharp and with well defined contrast. Coming from the Analog Device's ADV 7171 video encoder, the chip you will find in most unlocked DVD players (Wharfdale, Cyberhome, WinTV cards to name but few), the signal is also free of Macrovision by default.

 The OSD banner is very simple, retaining same the grey blob form as all the other menus throughout the box. Since the banner does not resize automatically it might, at times, seem overgrown, or even a waste of screen space at first, especially on channels without any EPG events. However, when you join a channel with Now and Next events broadcast to DVB standards, you will discover the OSD banner in Digenius displays perfectly the full text, up to the maximum number of characters allowed. Just in case the OSD is too ostentatious for you, there are ten levels of OSD transparency to choose from in order to reduce its visual impact.

 The tvbox® • ci has 1Mb of space in memory designated just to store EPG cache. As a result the receiver can store up to a whopping 64 days of program info. That is, of course, if all the providers and broadcasters decided one day to take full advantage of Electronic Program Guide for a change. The Daily EPG retrieval is available only to those channels that have the extended guide included with the signal. Most of the Canal+ programmes, for example, include only short info about "now" and "next" events. The facility is certainly there, and it's well up to the standards, if not over the top.

 Thanks to the almost magic abilities of the tuner-OS combination, the receiver has absolutely no problems picking up all the appropriate features of the current channel from the program map - and that includes the soundtracks. The box will default to the primary audio PID unless you decide differently, on a per channel basis, from an easily accessible audio menu. The default Audio PID can be changed either temporarily, until you switch the channel, or permanently by highlighting required track and pressing 'OK' continuously for approx. 3 seconds.

 Any service values within the channel and/or transponder can be changed, edited and saved in matter of seconds after few button presses. Most of the values can be entered via the numeric keypad on remote control unit, or by scrolling them up and down with the cursor keys. The names of the channels can be easily edited and the satellite positions fine-tuned simply by pressing the 'LIST' command on the Source field. Any values you change are highlighted green, and the operating system allows for editing up to 16 channels before the changes require permanent saving to memory. I know at least half a dozen reasons why all receivers should have such abilities and can't think of any receiver manufactured nowadays besides this one that would have the aforementioned functions.

This is not the end of surprises. In the Extras menu I have discovered three rather disturbing functions, so far reserved only to high class pro equipment or Dr Overflow's DVB2000. I'm talking about detailed info about the data stream, including bitrates and CA info. The CA information isn't just read blindly from Conditional Access Table of the channel, but also neatly post processed and served up with easy to understand, abbreviated encryption tags, and grouped by streams.