This is by far the coolest receiver I have had the oppertunity of reviewing, and I mean that literally, as it was on and running constantly for over 10 hours, and still it bearly rose above the ambient room tempreture, in other words it was cool, realy cool, one would never think it had been running for hours, but more like just a minute or two.

The setting up of the receiver is simple enough, one thing you should beware of is the display settings, in the Menu select -> System Setup -> TV System -> Video Out here you get two options RGB & YUV, if you select RGB then you have only two resolution options 480i & 576i, there is also an Auto option, if you wish to access the full resolution options you must select YUV then you will get access to the full the resolution options currently available [480i - 480p - 576i - 576p - 720p 50 - 720p 60 - 1080i 50 and finally 1080i 60] the 50 and 60 options shown refers to the refresh rate of your television, so if your television’s refresh rate is 50Mhz then you must set the output to 50, for example select [1080i 50] and you will the get a crystal clear picture.
Of course if your television’s refresh rate is 100Mhz or above, then you will not need to change the default resolution settings, as it will run perfectly well on the default setting of 1080i 60, and if for any reason you do wish to change it, then a TV with a refresh rate of 100Mhz or above will also run okay on the 1080i 50 option.

If your picture is not quite as good as you expected, try going into Menu -> System Setup -> Display Settings and change any of the following options, Brightness – Contrast – Saturation, once you have set them and are quite happy with the results, exit and your alterations will then be stored.

Now you will need to set your nework up, so again enter the Menu -> Network Local Setting and set DHCP to ON, if your router is not DHCP compatable you will need to manually configure the settings, once you have done that click Apply and exit.

Now for the fun part, if you already have clines you will need to import them to the receiver, to do this use a USB stick formated in either FAT or NTFS [as both formats are accepted], and place your CCcam.cfg file onto the USB stick, insert the USB stick into the usb socket on the rear of the receiver, then go into Menu -> Network Local Setting CCcam Plug Setting -> Update Files by USB -> select option 1 [cccam.cfg] and click the yellow button to install your CCcam.cfg file, if all goes okay click exit and select Manage Config Files select option 1 [CCcam.cfg] now place a tick next to each line you wish to activate, now you must reboot the receiver.
Once the receiver has started up again, you may check on the status of your clines, if for example you have 4 clines from a payserver, and you have selected to activate all 4 lines, you should then see the status of the cline as [online] this should be next to each line you activated with a tick, now you can exit the menu altogether, and you can now start to add satellites and channels.

CCcam.cfg file:
If you add the CCcam.cfg file after you have done a scan, then you will be required to reboot the receiver you reboot simply for the the file to become activated correctly, but a good rule to follow would be, to reboot the receiver whenever you either add, or update your clines, I have always found that a soft reboot will be sufficiant.
The Openbox S9 can also read multiple clines, but it is limited to only accepting 4 clines at any one time, now increased to 9 clines.
You may of course add many more clines, but you can only activate a maximum of 9 clines.

How to do a Soft reboot:
This is done by using the standby button on the remote, or by using the receivers front pannel standby button.
How to do a Hard reboot:
This is done by turning the receivers power Off by means of the rocker switch located on the rear of the receiver.

Quick Tip for direct satellite access:
To move to a stored and activated satellite directly, just click the Zoom or SatList button, depending upon which remote your using, this will then display a list of all the satellites that you have stored and enabled, and then simply select the satellite you wish to access.

While still in the Installation menu select Satellite List and select each satellite you wish to access, the selection is not a full list but if you wish to add any satellite that is not in the list, you simply cick the green button to add another satellite.
Once you have setup you list of satellites, you will now need to scan them for channels, to do this you goto Menu -> Installation -> Antenna Setup and then using one of the < > arrow keys select the satellite you wish to scan from the list, once selected you will need to set the Lnb Frequency the default is universal so skip that unless you not using a universal Lnb, now set the Transponder it would be wise to set this to an active transponder and one you know you are capable of receiving, then you are setup on the satellite you will see the signal and quality levals.

Now scroll down to Motor type if it is not already set and select your motor type, now click on Motor setting and click Possition Setting the Satellite and Transponder should be as set previously, all you need to do now is set the position number to save the satellite to, for example you could save Astra 19.2east as position 1 -> Eutelsat W2 16east position 2 ->Hotbird 13east position 3 and so on … and if you dish is not pointing at the satellite you wish to scan, simply press either the west or east button to move your dish to the correct co-ordinates, keeping an eye on the signal and quality bar indicators, once you start to see the signal increase, start making small movements untill you get the best possable signal, then click Save.

The OpenBox S9 has quite a realy good sensative tuner installed, which makes locating satellites or channels far easier, in fact I found that the tuner used in the OpenBox S9, to be even more sensative than the tuner installed in the AZBox, which was quite a pleasent suprise.

[For those of you who do not have access to a cline, you can also use the receiver with either a Cam, or a Card, as both are catered for on the receiver, but you can only use the bottom C.I Slot, as the top slot is empty.]

To scan a satellite go into Installation, and select either, Single or Multi Satellite Search, as I use DisEqC1.2 I find it better to do a Single Satellite Search, now click on the option that suites you best, you will see there are only two scan options, Preset Scan & Blind Scan, the blind scan do not appear to be a true blind scan, as there are no options for you to configure, and it also did not find all the channels, but it’s okay, and will locate most.

Once you have scanned a satellite succesfully you will need to exit the menu completely in order to view channels, once you have access to the channels you will proberbly wish to see if you clines are working okay, so select a channel you know your cline will open and if all is okay it should open.

I forgot to say, if your going to scan a multitude of satellites, you may well be a little disapointed, I know I was, as the receiver can only store 5,000 channels, that includes both TV & Radio, so to help get some extra TV channels stored, select only TV when scanning, and you can literally forget doing a full Multi Satellite Search as you will run out of storage space before you have even finished, but it should prove to be okay, if for example you only have a limited number of satellites stored.
I find this rather obserd, to release a multisat receiver with such a low channel storage capacity, which is a shame as the receiver performs admirably, and without this drawback, it would have definatly given those other receivers which cost well over double the price of the S9, a real run for their money. 

How to Add clines:
If your experiancing problem adding clines to your OpenBox S9, click on the following link for a basic tutorial on how to add clines. 
http://sataid.net/forum/showthread.p…066#post127066

Removing Subtitles:
On a number of channels you can also remove the subtitles, simply by clicking the ‘Subtitle‘ button and clicking Off, this will only work on channels that are broadcasting subtitles as an option, and not on channels that are broadcasting subtites by default, so if you get the message ‘No Data’ when clicking the ‘Subtitle’ button, that means the subtitles are being broadcast by default.

DVR to TS Converter:
For those of you who are looking for a DVR -> TS converter, so that your recordings can be played back on a PC, you can download one from here:
http://sataid.net/forum/showthread.p…e-to-a-TS-file

Receiver Fails to Bootup and only displays ON.:
If your receiver’s front panel is only displaying ‘ON’ and you can not get it to bootup, a simple solution to correct this problem is to,
go here http://sataid.net/forum/showthread.p…-Tool-v2.0.0.0
and follow the instructions posted, and that should then fix the problem for you.

Continuous Rebooting Problem:
If you do find yourself selecting a channel that reboots the receiver constantly, simply turn Off the receiver and disconnect the Lnb cable, once the Lnb cable has been disconnected, start the receiver and then click Menu -> TV Channel List and delete the channels, then turn Off the receiver and reconnect the Lnb cable, start the receiver and all will be okay.
For those of you with a motorised setup, simply use the positioner to move the dish to a position where you get no signal, then you can edit the channels without the need for disconnecting the Lnb cable.

Softcam and Biss Keys:
At this time the firmware do not support softcam keys, and as for adding Biss keys to the Constant cw section, well they are added okay, but unfortunatly they do not seem to be read by the receiver, I have tried a number of times using both Hexadecimal, and Decimal values, but still nothing opens, it is pointless at the moment entering any BISS Keys, as they will not open any channels.
I have informed the engineers about the Biss keys not being read, and I am still awaiting a responce from them.
Update:
Adding BISS and or Constant cw keys, once you have input the correct keys, the OpenBox S9 will now open the relevant channels okay.

PVR800 Channel Editor: 
Another point worth mentioning is the channel editor, [or rather the lack of one] the only one I could find at the time of posting was the [PVR800 Editor] and it is a real pain to use, as you can only move one channel up or down one place at a time, so you can imagine how long it would take if you were to move a 100 channels or more … so if I were you I would forget using it, another point here is, if you do decide to use the editor, you can transfer the channels directly from the receiver to the computer via a null modem cable, just remember to turn the receiver Off using the rocker switch on the rear of the receiver, and then click Process on the editor Tab and select upload stb->pc, now turn your receiver back on, and it should then start the process of transfering your channel list, the transfer process do take quite a while to complete, so patients is in this case is a real virtue.
If you do wish to try the channel editor, it has been attached below.

SetEditHD100 Channel Editor:
It now seems as though you can use SetEditHD100, which you may prefer to the PVRr800 editor, which was in all fairness not intended specifically for the OpenBox S9.
You can download an English version of SetEditHD100 from: http://sataid.net/forum/showthread.p…r-SetEditHD100
The main drawback with SetEditHD100 is you must download the channel list by either using the PVR800 editor via the serial option, or by doing a dump, as SetEditHD100 can not upload, or download the channel list directly to, or from the receiver, and this inability to allow a direct transfer of files, plus the fact that you can only move a single channel at a time, in my view is a real drawback.

Blind Scan:
I just moved my dish to Atlantic Bird 1 [12.5w] entered a single transponder and then did a blind scan, and I was expecting it to aimlessly do a scan of the single frequency, but was amazed to find it found 74 channels on various frequencies and symbol rates, so I am pleased to state, that my initial pesimism was proved to be incorrect regarding the blind scan.
But do remember when using the blind scan option, it will NOT find all the channels, in fact doing a Preset Scan found more channels on Eutelsat W6 than using the Blind scan, this will also be true for all satellites that have had their transponder data updated, with the latest frequencies.

The Channel Find Option:
To access the Find channels option, simply press the ‘Find’ button on the remote, it would seem that the only options available for directly locating a channel, are the ones displayed on the Input Pad itself, as there are no special sybols available, but if for any reason, you wish to display a satellite’s ordered list, then simply enter the ’?’ symbol and click the ‘SP’button.

Also you may enter the ‘?’ symbol and any other key, to locate channels that have the key within a channel’s name, for example ‘?x’ will return Fox, Anixe HD etc, another example would be ‘?7′ that will return RTL 7, LA7D etc, this example was done while in ‘All Satellite’ mode.

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New OpenBox Models:
I don’t understand why anyone would wish to buy a New Model, after all the S9 seems to do what’s required.
And OpenBox also failed to take advantage of the opportunity to increase the channel storage in the new models, as it still uses the same chip, which sadly can only store upto a maximum of just 5,000 channels, and that’s for both TV & Radio.

So why would anyone wish to buy a New OpenBox Model instead of the S9, I have no idea, as they all have the same issues especially with certain Sky channels, nothing has changed there regardless of what model you have.

On a final note, if you are thinking of upgrading from an S9, then it may be more beneficial too you if you were to check out the Blade BM 7000, this is also a budget priced HD receiver, but offers the end user far more benefits, and is running even more stable than the OpenBox on all satellites, including 28.2e, you should check it out on the following link.
http://sataid.net/forum/forumdisplay…BM7000s-HD-PVR

And for the more adventures types among us, you should definitely check out the Amiko Alien SHD 8900 HD
http://sataid.net/forum/forumdisplay…en-SHD-8900-HD

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OpenBox S9 Conclusion: 
I’ve read on some sites that the DM800HD and the OpenBox S9 are very simular regarding features, I can find no such similarities myself, so if you do read such reports, you should just dismiss them as nonsence.

The only real downside so far, is the inability to store enough channels, as 5,000 is simply not enough for a mulisat receiver, if they could [in future releases ie, Openbox S10] increase the channel storage number to at least 10,000 but 20,000 would be better, and also release some decent software, such as a dedicated channel editor, then this would indeed be a multi-sat receiver worth having, even so, the receivers built in channel editor will do the job okay, and you may well prefer it to the external editors, as it’s quite straight forward to use, and at this point in time, I actually prefer the receivers editor to the external editors.
You will also require a cline, or equivalent, if you wish to take full advantage of the OpenBox S9.

So if your just looking for an HD receiver with C/S & PVR capabilities, plus an MP3 Player and Image viewer,
then the Openbox S9 will be well worth considering, it’s biggest flaw is it can only store 5,000 channels, which is a great shame, and realy lets the received down, especially if your using it on a motorised setup. 

Okay, so it do not offer you all the bells and whistles of certain other receivers, but who realy needs them, for example how often would you be using the receiver for browsing the web, or watching youtube etc.

What the Openbox S9 will offer you, are decent features, such as recording and playback on an external H/D, flawless audio and video results, even setting up a cline for C/S could not be made any easier, and also at this time it runs relatively stable, but it do have a few issues, as stated above, and especially on Astra 2, where it reboots if you try to access certain channels, such as Sky News for example, but these issues are being addressed, and once all the issues have been corrected, then the Openbox S9 will truly represent outstanding value and performance.

Even so, as it stands now the OpenBox S9 HD Receiver still represents realy good value for money, and do not believe that because of it’s budget price, you will receive inadequate components or performance, as this is definatly not the case, as the video and audio output will be as good, if not better than receivers costing 3 times the price of the OpenBox S9, but the most apparent feature, is the cool running of the receiver, as the running tempreture of the S9 receiver is so cool that it’s almost unbelievable, one would never believe that the receiver is actually running.

Buy your Openbox S9 today. Suggested retail $149.99

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