User review of the 360 Premier - moved here for other Owners to see/comment

[powerx86]

I now am back from traveling and have been playing with this receiver and I like it better than the CW800 I got rid of. Here are some of my thoughts as a User for this receiver:

EPG - Superior to the CW800 and close to the Coolsat 7000s/Visionsat IV200. The Coolsat/Visionsat has a feature to look at 1 channel listings (hitting Blue button while in EPG mode), but the EPG displayed for this feature on 360P only shows a couple of hours - even though the guide is populated beyond 2 hours(actually several days).
The EPG looks nice - but wanted to know, if any User knows what the arrows left/right of the date can be utilized. For instance, it shows the date June 6 and I see these arrows - I wonder can you move the date to another day instead of cursoring or I guess you can just hit the Next day or Previous day colored buttons. It just make you think, you can tab up there and change the day. Just a nit, but it makes you think that it can be used with Cursor keys. No complaints, nice to be able to move to another day with the click of the colored button. CW800 with KROUND code is sorely missing this feature - User must cursor thru the guide to get to next day very very slow.

USB button/function - I am not sure why when you hit this button, the 360 P has to read the contents of the USB Storage and re-read again when re-visit this menu option again. This is very slow for a machine that has wonderful specs. My Coolsat/Visionsat receiver instantly reads contents and gives you a directory listing. The CW800 also read very quickly. It at least takes up to 5-10 seconds (could be a smaller time - but appears to be very long) and displays a message "gathering information". This is painful because it does it everytime. I basically am using same drive from Coolsat/Visionsat which has a FAT32 format(Seagate external 320GB). This is annoying especially when looking to play something recorded.
Another annoying thing, that I would hope that was added to this receiver was when the User was browsing their recorded list, is that the User could hit info button on the recorded show and get the same info that came from the guide. This is not here, just like the CW800 PVR - but at least on naming convention of the PPVs, the title of the PPV is in filename, meaning the title of the movie. The CW800 just shows PPV/datein the filename and no info on what it is. The 360 Premeir is much better than the CW800 in this regard but falls short again to the Coolsat/Visionsat PVRs (NORW code). I keep referring to the Coolsat/visionsat PVRs - because testing these different receivers makes me appreciate how close they (NORW) got to TIVO/Time Warner DVR/PVRs.
USB ports - nice to have 2 ports but I think this thing acts like one. It appears they do not co-exists at the same time. The User must choose which one to activate and it would be nice if the Receiver automatically would pop up the dir list of the files when USB Storage is plugged in. At minimum for the front USB Port of the Unit . My suggestion would be to use the front to load code and the rear for PVR USB Storage. Again, would be a nice feature to whenever the User plugged in the front panel USB, the dirlist would come up automatically and ask the User what to do or the User could take appropriate action. This makes me wonder about Coolsat 7100 and how it performs.

Search - Very Nice Search facility when you hit the Green Button. It is cool by default looks like it brings up all movies first, then you can put a program name for what program you want to search for.

Search by hitting the Magnify key by the SAT Button - here you can search for a channel - very nice.

SAT Radio - has built in Screen Saver - plus info button shows track playing!!!

Setup - Like that I can use the SAT Setup and choose favorite SATs - sometimes hard looking thru list and this checkmark helps. Also like the way you can SORT by frequency or alphabetical.

Channel Edit - Not sure why there is no Channel Skip - just see delete rename and lock. Not sure why this is there - I use it so I do not have to rescan for channels - I just add skipped channels back that weree previously skipped.

Time shifting is annoying with the current code - Basically it looks like all u can do is hit pause. I hit the pause button and it always checks 1st to see if there is enough disk space - suggestion here would be, to do it like the NORW group with setting aside disk space for dumping video/audio to a file when time shifting is invoked, instead of allocating when the User 1st pushes the button then go thru all the checks again for space etc..... Coolsat/Visionsat still have everybody beat here and they allow you to move backward and forward on a time shift using << >> plus cursor keys usage to move thru file. It looks like all I have available is pause with the latest 360 Premeir code? Does anybody know if that is the way it works for the 360 P??? The CW800 is pause is a clumsy also but it allows u to go backward/forward. Again, if they allocate the diskspace before hand and just write to same file when changing channels this would be world's better or more like a TIVo/TimeWarner PVR/DVR.


Overall - this receiver is a much nicer receiver than the CW800 that I just got rid of - but I have learned every receiver has it's quirks and shortcomings and clear advantages, but right now I feel this receiver is worth keeping for contiuned testing. Others have quicker/better support but testing mutiple receivers gives you appreciation for others.


My favorite is still from a User view, is the Coolsat/Visionsat receiver - even with the slower support and problems encountered with guide/hangs over the past few weeks/months. The CW800 I had for a very short time and and got rid of because it was no better than my CW600 and the EPG/PVR is really a poor performer when stacked against the Coolsat/Visionsat & Sonicview PVR units.

Just curious, if any other User's of 360 Premier have the same feelings about the receiver or is there something I missed in setup/install that would make my experience different.


Currently tested/testing:
CW600
Visionsat IV200
Sonicview 360 Premier
Pansat 2500 (retired)
CW800 (tested then sold)