Fortec star = 1002, 1010 Fortec star plus 5100 = go menu,parental control,press red button 4 times press ok,enter new pin code Digital telecom = 1004, 0851 Starsat 120,150, 200, 2000 = go to stb setting and enter 1234 starsat = go to menu,stb,enter 9876 to reset to 0000 E-metabox 1,2 = 1004.
Hi-def television via satellite usually means investing in a Sky HD box, paying for installation, and forking out each month for the subscription, so there's definitely a demand for alternative, cheaper paths to HD satellite material.
You don't need to go the Sky route; a free-to-air (FTA) HD box will bring you the limited UK free-to-air HD satellite channels (ie BBC HD) and, with the right dish setup, European HD ones as well - not to mention access to all the FTA UK and European standard-definition channels, too.
For such 'independent' use in the UK and Europe, Fortec Star has joined Pace and Humax with an HD set-top box. While not a brand well known to most readers, the Canadian manufacturer has a history of producing respected, good value receivers.
This unassuming box is well made and quite tastefully styled, although the circular 'on' light à la Sky+ is a bit cheeky - suggesting PVR function when there isn't any. The remote looks cheap next to TV and DVD remotes from the Japanese multinationals, but it goes one better than Sky, doubling as a universal control for your TV, VCR and DVD player.
Also bettering any digibox, the front panel display names the channel tuned and provides other information, but the Passion is not strictly a rival to Sky's HD box. It can't be used for encrypted SkyHD channels; it hasn't the required Videoguard CAM (Conditional Access Module) and cannot take one because Sky only allows these within its own official digiboxes.
However, the Passion has two 'Common Interface' slots for plug-in CAMs for continental pay-TV broadcasters.
In the UK, you are restricted to FTA channels - that's BBC HD and FTA SD English-language channels (less enticing but plentiful).
This means pairing it with a dish (50cm across most of the UK) pointed at the Astra 2 satellites. Of course, if you do want to extend your viewing to other satellites, too - for SD or HD channels, free or pay-TV - you will need additional dishes, a multi-feed dish, or a motorised antenna.
Unlike a SkyHD box, the Passion can easily cope with all these possibilities - up to four satellites with its industry standard DiSEqC 1.0 switching system as well as DiSEqC 1.2 and USALS motorised dish systems.
Whatever, your dish system, the receiver is easy to set up (for a non-Sky box) as it includes a host of pre-loaded channels on four satellites including three packed with foreign channels (Astra 1, Hot Bird and Turksat) and Astra 2, where the UK digital channels broadcast, including BBC HD.
To check these satellites for recent additions (or for other satellites) the Passion can scan for active channels. It's rather slow at this (it takes about 5min to scan the Astra 2 satellites), but, cleverly, Fortec Star will scan the satellite it's receiving from overnight, leaving the receiver in standby for more than six hours and it updates in its own time.
The Passion will also cope with most TV screens. The main output for this HD receiver is the single HDMI socket and there are component video sockets too, so whatever the type and age of your HD screen, the Passion will feed it. There are also Scart connectors for older TVs and VCR or DVD recorders, as well as separate composite and S-video outputs.
Of course, HD channels are downscaled for these outputs, but they are useful for recording and distribution to secondary TV sets around the home.
One drawback is that the component output is only available when the TV Scart is switched to composite or S-video, so you can't use the superior RGB Scart and component for an HD TV at the same time.
The clear onscreen menus make channel selection and operation about as easy as it can be, but receiving, say, half a dozen satellites, you soon use up much of the Passion's 10,000-channel capacity (even with FTA channels only) and finding what you want can be a tricky business.
The Passion displays the channel list all in one, by satellite or sorted alphabetically, by encryption, parental lock, provider, theme (if programmed) or even SD/HD, and there are also seven favourite channels lists, which can be named by genre or family member to take any number of favourites.
Finding what's on isn't easy either. Sky's elegantly simple seven-day EPG system is a proprietary system and so pan-European receivers like this don't use it. This means that knowledge of what's on Sky channels (including BBC HD, or even Sky News or CNN) is restricted to now and next only.
The Passion will produce a full seven-day guide for several German channels (using the international EPG standard), but it's a bit slow and, because you can't get the same information for all the channels, you will have to resort to channel hopping to find programmes.
Images from BBC HD are stunning. The broadcaster knows a thing or two about good pictures, and the Passion reproduces every nuance with crystal clarity.
Documentaries such as India With Sanjeev Bhaskar and Planet Earth, and dramas like Heroes prove that splashing out on an HD screen is well worth it. Colours come to life and pictures are almost 3D. Some Spanish soccer on Pro7 is arguably more enjoyable than the real thing since it offers better views.
The Passion upscales SD broadcasts to produce better pictures on an HDTV than you'll get from other receivers.
The sound, too, is excellent. Digital sound from the electrical and optical outputs and through the HDMI connection shows what good HD satellite TV is capable of.
You can even use the front USB socket (mainly for upgrading software and channels lists) to playback MP3 songs through your TV or sound system.
The BBC HD channel is the only English HD available at present, but the Passion can also bring you several European HD offerings, a wealth of SD channels (including dozens in English) and best of all, more FTA English HD channels with Freesat around the corner.
Nevertheless, satellite HD scope is still limited at present, and the £200 price tag buys the Passion receiver alone. The full cost of your system will depend on your dish(es), and you will pay considerably more for a system that reaches all the Euro-channels the Passion can use.
Stick to a simple single dish setup for just the FTA UK channels and another satellite full of European ones, and you should be able to get the receiver and dish, installed, for around £300.
We're so used to subsidised Sky packages, paid for over time, that this all-up-front price seems heavy, even for a receiver that does such a good job. However, compare this cost to long-term SkyHD or even an HD DVD player and several discs and it looks more attractive.
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Slacker Software Player
Flexible ResizingRe-size your player to be exactly the size you want. Keep it out of the way while you are working on your PC, and full screen when you want to view the high quality cover art or find new stations. Includes a cool mini-player that gives you all the key player controls without getting in the way.CD Quality Over Slower ConnectionsThe Slacker Software Player supports AAC Pro v2 music compression technology for slower broadband connections. So if you have a slow broadband connection, you still get CD quality streaming without buffering delays.
- Publisher: Slacker
- Home page:www.slacker.com
- Last updated: March 2nd, 2008
Cognex DataMan-Software
The latest DataMan software release supports the DataMan 500 platform only. Support for Liquid Lens Modules including:- Optimize focus at setup- Light Curtain Control- DMCC controlSupport for Product tracking using a Pulse Encoder.Support for the DataMan 500 High Powered Illumination Accessory.
- Publisher: Cognex
- Home page:www.cognex.com
- Last updated: November 23rd, 2011
OptiLayer Thin Film Software
The distinguishing feature of the OptiLayer thin film software family is that it has been designed and perfected by a group of scientists and engineers who have direct practical experience in all aspects of the optical coatings design, characterization and manufacturing. This group includes professional mathematicians and software engineers of the highest level.
- Publisher: OptiLayer Ltd.
- Home page:www.optilayer.com
- Last updated: February 15th, 2012
PCMSCAN
PCMSCAN is a fully featured generic OBD-II scanner and diagnostic tool that supports a wide variety of OBD-II hardware interfaces.
- Publisher: Palmer Performance Engineering, Inc.
- Home page:www.palmerperformance.com
- Last updated: November 17th, 2009
DWGToTIFF
OakDoc DWG to TIFF Converter is an easy-to-use end-user wizard for creating or manipulating tiff format files, It does not need the third part software support such as AutoCAD etc, quickly convert DWG/DXF/DWF files, and vector graphics to tiff files.OakDoc DWG to TIFF Converter supports the fast, affordable way to create professional-quality documents tiff format files.
- Publisher: Oakdoc.com Inc
- Home page:www.oakdoc.com
- Last updated: March 19th, 2010
Employees Payroll Software
Employee attendance application easily manages multiple company records like employee salary, leave details at single place. Staff scheduling software supports password protection feature that prevent unauthorized user to access secure employee data.
- Publisher: Employee salary software
- Home page:www.employeesalarysoftware.com
- Last updated: July 4th, 2011
ImTOO MPEG Encoder
ImTOO MPEG Encoder Standard is an all-in-one video converter for Windows. This application allows us to convert between most popular audio and video formats in the easiest possible way. We can convert our video and audio files, so that we can enjoy them later on our iPhone, NDS, Wii, PSP, iPod, mobile phone, Xbox, and so on.
- Publisher: ImTOO
- Home page:www.imtoo.com
- Last updated: November 16th, 2009
iStonsoft iPad iPod iPhone Data Recovery
In the trouble of losing photos, contacts or any crucial data from your Apple iDevice? Don't worry. The versatile iPad iPhone iPod Data Recovery software is here to help you regain them fastly and easily.
- Publisher: iStonsoft Studio
- Home page:www.istonsoft.com
- Last updated: May 4th, 2015
Fujitsu System Extension Utility
The Fujitsu System Extension Utility is a software that supports system extension functions for the Fujitsu Lifebook Series notebooks. You must first log in as the Administrator in order to install this software. Before installing the Fujitsu System Extension Utility, the FUJ02E3 device driver (Version 1.00 or newer) must be installed separately.
- Publisher: FUJITSU LIMITED
- Last updated: September 29th, 2012
Samsung Printer Installer
The Samsung Printer Software Installer is a versatile solution that supports nearly all connections, allowing you to connect to your printer via USB, network and wireless. Samsung Printer Software Installer automatically analyzes your PC’s operation system and installs the matching software.
- Publisher: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
- Home page:www.samsungsetup.com
- Last updated: July 26th, 2015
CardRecoveryPro
CardRecoveryPro An easy-to-use card recovery software that recovers deleted/lost photos, music, video, and multimedia files from almost all digital card after instances like deletion, corruption, formatting.
- Publisher: LionSea Software inc
- Home page:www.cardrecoverypro.com
- Last updated: December 18th, 2014
DipTrace
DipTrace is an advanced PCB design software application that consists of 4 modules: PCB Layout with high-speed autorouter and 3D viewer/STEP export, Schematic Capture, Component and Pattern Editors that allow you to design custom component libraries.
- Publisher: Novarm, Ltd.
- Home page:www.diptrace.com
- Last updated: October 24th, 2012
JPEG to PDF
JPEG to PDF is an application that helps you getting your JPEG files converted into PDF format. The program is extremely easy to use. It doesn't have many advanced options so it couldn't be any easier to use. Just select the picture you want to convert, choose a folder, subfolder or output directory to get the output file saved to and then hit the convert button.
- Publisher: jpegtopdf.com
- Home page:jpegtopdf.com
- Last updated: December 12th, 2008
KigoVideoConverter
With so many different media formats around, converting video to a format supported by a specific device has become a very frequent operation. In this context, a media converter always comes in handy. KigoVideoConverter can help perform this task easily.
- Publisher: Kigosoft Inc.
- Home page:www.kigo-video-converter.com
- Last updated: February 17th, 2011
Aimersoft Video Editor
Aimersoft Video Editor Software enables you to preview the video and adjust the cutting settings like starting time, ending time and file length; set the splitting manually and automatically; adjust the video and audio parameters like frame rate, resolution, bit rate, encoder and so on to get the best quality.
- Publisher: Aimersoft Software
- Last updated: June 11th, 2014
AI Viewer
Ai file type is associated as “Illustrator” by Adobe Systems Inc. Ai or Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based drawing program, developed by Adobe Systems. Ai file extension representing single-page vector-based drawings in either the EPS or PDF formats.
- Publisher: IdeaMK
- Home page:aiviewer.com
- Last updated: February 27th, 2010
Open Mobile
openMobile is a free , modular, C# driven, multi-platform, mobile computing front end. This software application supports a large variety of Media Databases for fast file searching/browsing, support for any low level hardware including the fusion brain and custom control hardware and much more
- Publisher: boorte, jdomnitz, jheizer, Open Mobile
- Home page:openmobile.sourceforge.net
- Last updated: March 17th, 2011
ImageBadger Image Converter
Save time when working with a batch of images. Convert and process images from the Windows Explorer right-click menu. Easily resize and rotate images, enhance your images with more than 40 image filters, turn any image into an icon, make thumbnail images, create pencil drawings of photos, copy images to clipboard from Windows Explorer and much more! ImageBadger is a cutting-edge batch processing and image conversion software which supports over 150+ image formats such as JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, ICON, PSD and PSP. All features are available through commandline calls.
- Publisher: Kristanix Software
- Home page:www.kristanixsoftware.com
- Last updated: February 14th, 2008