I was given this Freeview box a couple of months ago as my first Freeview box for my own tv. My unit is the newer "+" version of the T101-FTA, that comes with the 7 day EPG (electronic programme guide). Having read up on the box online, it appears that the older units were supposed to get upgraded via an over the air software upgrade, but it doesn't seem to have happened yet so I guess I'm lucky.
In the box you get the receiver itself, a remote control (with batteries), a scart cable, an aerial cable and the power lead. It also comes with a manual, although it's one of the flimsy, papery fold-out ones that I really don't like.
Physically speaking the box is plastic and is quite small and light, about the size of a hardback book, with five sockets at the back: - two scarts (one to tv, the other to vcr. Only the tv scart socket outputs an RGB signal though) - aerial in and out (rf loopthrough only, so you *need* a TV with a scart socket as the box doesn't generate it's own picture on the rf cable) - power connector
The front consists of a small black panel behind which an led is lit. The led is red while the unit is in standby, green when it is on and orange when a timer event is in progress. There is no slot for top-up tv.
The
remote control is quite nice, running off two AAA batteries and the buttons are arranged quite logically. There are channel + and - buttons for stepping through channels as well as the usual colour buttons and also a "help" button for displaying onscreen help in the menus. The remote control has buttons for entering the menus, navigating them and exiting them, and also a "guide" button which brings up the 7 day epg. A separate button is also provided to directly access the subtitles on/off menu.
However the remote control lacks the volume buttons I've seen on other receivers' remote controls, so that's something of a minus in my book, as you will need the tv remote control at hand for that.
Onto the actual user experience then..
The Echostar began with its automatic setup screen on first use, which tells you to ensure the aerial is plugged in and to press "ok" (I'm just using an indoor aerial). Scanning takes several minutes and feels somewhat slower than other boxes I've used. You might think that's not really a problem as it's not something one does often but in the last month new channels and radio stations have been added to freeview (and more to come I believe) which necessitates rescanning, plus as you will read, slowness does unfortunately appear to be a recurring "feature" of this freeview box.
Once scanning was completed though, I found that I had all tv and radio stations detected and added which was very pleasing, especially with just an indoor aerial. Picture and sound quality seems good to me, with a better picture on the usual terrestrial channels (especially where Five is concerned). The other Freeview channels are mostly good too, although I can occasionally notice mpeg compression artefacts on the pictures of some. But I'm kind of sensitive to such things so it probably wouldn't bother most other people.
A problem I'm finding though, is that the picture will occasionally just drop out to black every now and then for a couple of seconds, although the audio remains fine throughout. I'm not exactly sure why this happens because the signal remains strong, but its something to take into account.
The menus are quite easy to use, and are accessed by pressing the menu button on the remote control. Everything is quite clear and the help is actually helpful if you need it (press the "help" button while at the part you need help on), so activities such as manually setting a timer event are very simple. The main menu provides access to all the setup and tuning options where you can set your tv type, picture output type (RBG or composite) etc.
There is no manual tuning menu present from the main menu unlike some other boxes, but you can in fact access manual tuning by doing the following (if you need to): Go to the tuning menu and press the following numbers "17052002" whereupon a manual tuning screen will appear.
Pressing "i" on the remote control will bring up information about the current programme as well as the signal strength for that station (appears to be a value between 1 and 10). This screen also shows information on the next programme (a now and next). This is separate from the EPG which accessed from the "guide" button.
The problem is that the menus just aren't very pretty at all in my opinion. The colour scheme is of orange, grey and blue panels and buttons, where the colour actually has a gradient (lighter shade of the colour fading into a darker shade), which gives all the screen elements a sort of "curved" appearance. Some may like it, I just don't. Having said that, like I mentioned, it is still very easy and clear to use.
The other problem with the menus is that they seem slow to respond to input. This is particularly evident on the EPG screen, where it shows the channel schedules. Moving up and down the list is slightly annoying but I've discovered that you can use the channel P- and P+ buttons to scroll the list page by page (which is not mentioned in the manual), so that makes viewing the guide less annoying. Another problem with the guide is that it seems slow to update itself to show all the programmes in each channel. There is a definite time lag as you wait for the schedule to be updated on screen.
The guide interface is not without its pluses though as it also provides a nice easy way to set timer events by just highlighting the programme you want to record, then pressing the red button. This takes you to the timer event screen with the time, date and duration updated for that programme and all you then have to do is press ok to set it. The guide also lets you set "reminders" by highlighting the programme then pressing green, which means the box will prompt you with an onscreen reminder at the right time to watch that programme. You can have 8 vcr timers and 10 reminders. The guide also quite handily separates the channels depending on what type of transmission they are, that is, the TV, radio and text channels are all on different lists and pressing guide multiple times moves you between the lists.
Incidentally to cancel a timer event that is currently in progress, press exit. This lets you use the remote control normally again as the remote is otherwise locked during timer events. Another tip is that when changing channels by entering a number, there's normally a 3-4 second delay before the box actually changes over which can be avoided by just pressing the ok button on the remote after pressing the number, making the box change immediately.
The last thing I want to cover is the interactive services provided on some channels. These are normally accessed by pressing "text" on the remote control, or sometimes the channel will prompt you to press the red button. It works, but again its painfully slow compared to other boxes I've used. Sometimes the interactive fails to even load on the first button press and I seem to need to press it again to make it work... A few weeks prior to writing this, I tried playing the Spooks intereactive mission after the show and for whatever reason the Echostar appeared to stop responding to input from the remote control a little way into the game. This was a little frustrating as the only way to get it working again was to exit and restart (which was annoying and pointless since you lost your score so far). That was irritating but most other services, teletext and bbc text, work just fine, albeit slowly.
In conclusion then..
It works reasonably well, but the slowness and the colour/style of the user interface is quite off-putting for me and I can definitely see myself "upgrading" to a better model at some point in the future. Having said that, I think it is very easy to use and would be suitable for someone who really needs ease of use as there are plenty of onscreen hints and help to guide anyone through using it. It also seems to have a very decent tuner as it picks up all the channels for me with minimal to no breaking up, but there remains the odd time when the picture just completely disappears while leaving the sound working fine.
In short, I think it is worth a look if you are after a cheap and cheerful, no frills freeview box.
very helpful by (90%):
helpful by (10%):
