Fortecstar FS-4400 > Reviews (1)

Having recently upgraded my Sky dish to get twin feeds for a FreeSat recorder the aerial guys very helpfully fitted a quad LNB which meant I had spare feeds which I could make use of to install satellite TV in another room. I duly took one of the feeds, passed it right through the roof space to the other side of the house and dropped it down into the dining room.

All fine except I needed a satellite tuner before I could get the programmes on the TV and didn't fancy paying lots of cash for one as it is only a secondary TV. That got me shopping around for options and that is how I found the little Fortec Star FS 4400 in Maplin. On sale for just £49.99 (or £34.99 if you are happy to accept their B grade) it is not only a satellite tuner it also has a handy little record facility so that (as long as you attach a hard drive of some sort) you can record programmes and record in time lapse mode which means you can pause and rewind live TV. It sounded like just the job so I checked the availability in my local store and was soon going through the checkout with it.

Product features

The first that struck me was what a compact piece of equipment it is. It measures just over 10" long, 6" wide and about 2" high (50 x 15 x 5 cm) so it doesn't take up much space. It is black all over so should fit in with most decor.

They boast that it offers the following features:

• Provides digital free-to-air satellite reception
• Use a redundant Sky dish and plug in this receiver to get free satellite digital TV
• No contract required to receive Free Satellite digital TV in standard definition
• USB PVR function - plug in an external hard drive to record digital satellite TV
• PowerSearch - never scan for channels again, automatically scans in standby
• 5000 channel memory (TV and radio)
• 7-day EPG (Electronic Programme Guide)
• PIG (Picture in Graphic)
• Twin SCART video ouput
• PowerScan - makes searching for new channels easy
• Channel switching in less than a second
• Last channel memory and multi-language display
• Fully compliant with MPEG-2 digital and DVB broadcasting
• 950-2150 MHz input frequency
• Upgrading through RS-232 (STB to STB, PC to STB)
• Auto DiSEqC search: 128 satellites
• USALS compatible
• Built-in games: sudoku, othello, tetris

So to me that is pretty impressive given the price and having bought it I can confirm that it does indeed deliver what it promises.

Set up

It is very easy to connect the machine to the satellite cable and then via the SCART to the TV. To be honest I didn't find the instruction leaflet especially helpful for the set up but the menus are very easy to navigate so I was able to set up just by using them and using a little trial and error. I found the trickiest part was selecting the satellite I wanted to tune to but after a couple of attempts I found the right one and left it to find all the available channels.

It found hundreds of channels available and from there it was very easy to select the ones I wanted and delete the ones I didn't. It helpfully marks the ones that are 'pay per view' so I knew they could be deleted as I didn't want them.

I tried attaching an existing hard drive I had to the machine but found it wouldn't read the hard drive however when I connected up a memory stick it read that without any trouble. A quick trawl of internet soon identified the problem - it can only read FAT 32 drives so you will need to format an external drive to FAT 32 (Windows tends to only want to do that for drives 32Mb or smaller - you need to use a DOS command to format larger drives to FAT 32).

Would I recommend it?

Well yes I would if you want a cheap way to access a wide range of Free Satellite channels and also to have a recording facility. It is a bit clunky to use the record facility and it doesn't have the facility to record a 'series' like you have with Sky+ or Humax but it does work for simple recording and time lapse recording.

My only criticism of the unit is that the USB port for the hard drive connection is only accessible by pulling down the front panel which isn't aesthetically particularly attractive. However as a means of getting satellite TV in another room it is great and is a very economical solution which works pretty well.

Certainly worth considering especially if you are upgrading from a basic Sky system - it is well worth having the LNB upgraded to unit with spare connectors so that you can extend the system round the house.