will not give coolsat updates anymore

hello

i no longer have a coolsat and i don’t want to continually give updates on coolsat products anymore.  may occasionally post here but will not continually update people about coolsat status.

please check out this link for updates:

cs 6k is up with 164

according to forums…

but not up on b3v

Review of Captiveworks 800 PVR USB Timeshifting

This is a very functional receiver for a very good price.

Ups and Downs

Upside: walks like a duck and talks and flies like a duck (has pvr, usb, timeshifting, good support) for the price of something cheaper than a duck.

Something people don’t mention but which is important to me is the size of the receiver. This one is nice and small and fits in my small entertainment center with lots of room to spare–like my CS 6000 used to. The VS 7000 is humongous–I would have to upgrade my entire entertainment center to accommodate it.

I LOVE the remote control for this machine–that is not sarcasm. It is the first universal remote that ever was able to control the television i have parked above the receiver. It is stylish and very easy to understand the functions. The only part of this receiver that I like more than the Coolsat components (other than additional features) is the remote control. Probably the people complaining about the remote need new batteries (unfortunately it uses 2 AAA’s, so it probably runs them down pretty quickly–I’m now on my second set).

you can get an 800 easily for 139, that’s pretty cheap.

 

Downside: usb is on the back not front (only a minor problem for me), pvr does not function flawlessly especially on timer (moderate problem), picture quality is adjustable but by default not ideal, epg is slightly mediocre, files come out quickly but do not operate quickly. you will have to buy a hard drive for this unit, but you can get a good one ready to plug in with 250 gigs for about $75–and you can then use that hard drive on your next receiver after you move up.

CW 800 has some weird idiosyncrasies: you have to plug in the usb flash units and hard drives while the machine is turned off from the back; you have to hit F1 000 to enable patches; the timer function on the pvr doesn’t really work and certainly doesn’t integrate well with the parental controls; the default screen colors are dark and dingy. When you watch one network for a long time (a few days) the other one scrambles and you have to park on the other one for 10 minutes waiting for it to unscramble.

Features and Components:

Manual

As normal with FTA receivers, the manual was written to describe minimal features by a person who is not a native English speaker.  It frequently has bad or unintelligible English.  It is certainly not very useful.  As I recall, the Coolsat 6000 instructions were slightly better–which is not an endorsement of the Coolsat instructions.  You have to learn how to use your FTA receiver by going online to one of the forums.

EPG

The EPG works. Problems with it include that it only shows a small percentage of shows at any one time–you can see about one hour at a time, and maximum 6 channels at a time.  It takes a long time to populate and it does not automatically populate itself.  To populate your EPG you are supposed to park on a certain channel (200/CNN for DN) and wait 10 minutes.  When I do this the EPG still doesn’t populate for all channels.  I have to flip through channels that I like and watch them for a while and then nearby channels seem to populate. 

Alternate EPG:  On the CS 6000, you could just hit “Enter” or “OK” on the remote while you were watching a show and you would get a list of channels neighboring your current channel, and you could see what was on each of those channels.  On the CW, if you are watching a show and you hit “OK,” you will move to a view of all the channels but you cannot see what each one is playing.

There is also an extended EPG (EEPG) which you are supposed to populate by parking on specific channels or transponders.  This for me also fails to completely populate.  I believe 239 is one of the DN EEPG channels.  Some people park on 239 when they sleep so as to maintain populated channels.  EEPG is supposed to go 7 days into the future on some channels.

On the CS 6000 there were several ways to see several shows at the same time–more than 6, and as I recall it would also show more than one hour at a time.  Any number of ways to see what was on TV, only one of which was EPG.  This EPG might be CW’s greatest weakness.

Search

This receiver has a search function which is very cool, with some small problems.  You push a button (there is a button on the remote labeled “Search” –> then “OK” –> then you spell the name of the show you are looking for using the remote and an onscreen keypad  –> then push “Red” button to search.  Then it says a message like “Searching database” or somesuch.  Then sometimes for me the receiver completely crashes.  Sorry, no offense, but that’s what happened.  Most times it then gives me a list of however many shows– but what it actually shows me is the channels that have shows with the search term.  You have to select each channel one by one to see what show is actually listed for that channel.  It tells you the name of the show and when that show begins, but as i recall it does not tell you the duration of the show. hmm.  Useful possibly for recording purposes.  Sometimes you get lucky and the show begins in five minutes.  This is actually kind of a cool feature, but the amount of work you have to put into it for varying results means that i have only done this two or three times over about 3 months.

A stronger more viewable and user-friendly EPG would be better than their search feature.

There is also a built-in search feature for movies, news, and 5 or 6 other possible topics.  This is actually also a very cool feature.  You just click that search button and the receiver gives you a list of all the (for instance) movies that are currently showing.  Again, unfortunately, it doesn’t tell you when those movies began or when they will end–you just get the title and channel–so you might get 50 movies, of which the one you want is ending in 5 minutes or began one hour ago–sometimes you get lucky and the movie you want just began.  It will not show things that are about to begin.  Still, this is a pretty cool feature.

PVR/Timeshifting

Okay, the rule is:  buy a good Hard Drive.  Don’t park your usb flash drive in the back of your machine and expect to get good timeshifting (I am telling you from experience).  A 1 gb flash drive will give you about an hour of recording time, but…  With my flash drive I frequently had very choppy and unwatchable shows.  I also had a lot of trouble initiating timeshifting (where you pause and then you can fast forward, rewind, and play and pause to go get popcorn or go … respond to nature’s calls or when your viagra kicks in or whatever).  What would happen is I would push “pause” or alternatively the green button and it would initiate timeshifting but then I had to carefully time it to almost exactly four seconds then push the “play” button and if I failed to push the play button at exactly the right time then the machine would just freeze and I would frequently have to either just wait (then when the machine comes out of shock it executes every single command I have given it since I tried to initiate timeshifting) or cycle the power from the back.

You can get a good hard drive online–I use a 160 gb USB laptop hard drive that doesn’t need to be plugged into a wall outlet; it just feeds off the USB current.  Now timeshifting almost always works flawlessly.  I just push “pause” and wait for a few seconds, then “play” and I can have the benefits of timeshifting.  It’s cool.  One problem is sometimes I am timeshifting and then I want to check what else is on and I can’t–my options during timeshifting are just limited to the timeshifting controls and volume and info, and that’s about it.  Another problem is that I am timeshifting and I think how cool is this show I want to record it and keep it around–but I don’t know how to convert a timeshifted recording into a permanent recording–maybe this is possible I don’t know.

Timed recordings

Timed recordings are a problem.  What happens to many CW 800 users is that they schedule a recording at night on a different channel than what they are watching (this is done by means of the EPG and the green button), then they go to sleep.  When they wake up they click on the “USB” button and see all files on the USB including their movie or show or whatever.  The file they recorded last night is there, but when they click on it they get a weird black screen showing inaccessible timeshifting controls and whatever they do they cannot watch that show.  Workaround:  you use the green button to schedule a switch to the channel you want a few minutes before your show begins.  Then you schedule another green button timed recording immediately after for the duration of the television show you want to record.  This is supposed to work but it doesn’t work for me because I have parental controls and in order to switch to a channel (even by means of the timer) you are still supposed to input the code in order to watch the show you want or it will not display or record that show.  I had to dial back my parental controls from PG-13 to R so that the timed recordings will work better.

Favorites

The favorites are actually one of this machine’s strengths.  You can rename up to I believe 7 different favorites categories and you can list access those channels by clicking the “Fav” button on the remote–you can cycle through any of the groups of favorite channels, although unfortunately you cannot see what is on those channels as you cycle through them.  But it’s a way of getting fast access to your favorites.  This is actually pretty good.

Channel controls

Another strength of the Captiveworks machine is working with channels–the menu for controlling the channels is better than the Coolsat one.  In Coolsat 6000, you had to open the “lock” menu, then lock channels, then the “delete” menu, and delete channels.  With the CW 800 you open a “channel management” menu and you can do all of that from that one control panel.  Like the coolsat, it displays a picture of the relevant channel in the EPG slot when you hover on that channel for a long time.  You can delete one channel, lock the next, delete another, and so on, all while staying in the same user interface.

Parental Controls

This is accessible in the menu for the receiver.  The parental controls are 100% better than the coolsat 6000, although there is an important flaw.  In the CS 6000, you could put a lock on all rated R movies, but you could then open a rated X movie without having to input a code.  In the Captiveworks, you can use the parental settings to exclude all R, NC-17, and unrated movies.  Much better than Coolsat 6000 on this issue.  A downside:  it appears to be impossible to lock the machine so that it cannot be turned on at all.  There is a system lock available in parental controls, but even with this on it is possible to just turn on the machine and start watching television without having to input a code.  Oh well, you can’t have everything i guess.

Overall

Compared to the other standard definition receivers i believe this is a good one to get to tide you over til you can buy an HD machine–although there are problems with this and it is not completely sweet, as far as i know there is no standard def PVR receiver that is head and shoulders above this one. and nobody beats the price. the essential issue is file support, and CW is probably second-best or possibly the best on file support. at worst it is third-best among 3 very competitive products.

HD has to be your ultimate destination, and hopefully in a year or less the prices will fall to 300 or below. They are already making second generation HD machines (see Sonicview 360), so that is a good sign. also there is more competition now from manufacturers. If you can afford an HD receiver now, buy a Sonicview 9000–that’s what I would do if i could. Then you get your pvr and hd too.

This CW 800 cost me $30 less than my Coolsat 6000, and the 800 included a 1 gig usb flash drive. But I love my coolsat more to be honest, even though it didn’t have pvr or usb, but it just couldn’t keep up with two big corporate satellite entities. I just don’t have the same affection for my CW 800 that I had for the CS 6000.

So my recommendation depends on your budget–if you have 500 in your budget now, save yourself time (and money in the long run) and buy HD now–you can probably buy yourself an HD TV next year for 500 if you don’t already have one. If you have a budget of 200 total, you can buy the 800 plus a hard drive and bide your time til you can usurp the HD receivers. If you are money-comfortable and don’t want HD yet, you should take a close look at the VS and SV PVRs–i’m not sure what their prices are.

I’ve seen the CS 6100 (USB and PVR ready) for $89, if you are willing to go there. For me I probably won’t be going back to Coolsat, speaking for myself.

everyone up except wicked sisters 4-5-6

coolsat b3v is back up except for the 3 wicked sisters coolsat 4/5/6

coolsat down on b3v

CW, VS, PS, and SV are all back

CW=Captiveworks

VS=Viewsat

PS=Pansat

SV=Sonicview

Still down on DN:  Captain is down, Coolsat is down (except their HD boxes)

dn down since about 4:45 pm on wed 7/23

b3v back up for all major boxes except cs 4-5-6 and sonicview

cnx & kbox up on b3v