I am being asked by a few guys I have sold the DM500's to in the past about if I am planning to get in any more. At this stage I was thinking no due to my wife having enough, however due to the high value of the NZ$ at the mo I am thinking of doing a one-off bulk buy of the DM600PVR.

The Dreambox DM600PVR is a udpated version from the DM500 which also has the ability to take a 2.5" IDE harddisk in addition to it's many other features.

Features include:

1)Support for full EPG download off the satellite into the box
2)Timed recording of programs off the EPG, setting up timers either via the On Screen Display or web interface.
3)Access to the internal disk via Samba (Windows Share) so you can take recorded movies off the HD, or put MPEG2 videos on.
4)Play ISO images of DVD movies including the full menu system. My wife loves this since now I have used DVDDecryptor to rip all our DVDs into a single directory on the HD, and see can play them. No more scratched DVDs!.
5)Component + Composite outputs (no HDMI) via RCA (composite) or SCART (Composite, SVideo or Component).
6)Ethernet interface for uploading/downloading content, firmware upgrade, or accessing the web interface.
7)Swapable tuners so you can use it with Satellite, or Cable TV (TCL Cable in Wgtn/chch with smartcard). For TCL cable you need to buy a Cable tuner from the DM reseller there, mine was $102NZ all up including delivery for the tuner.
8)Blindscanning. Works well, and am in the process of improving the front end code when I have time.
9)Runs Linux, so you can do pretty much anything you want. There are a number of good images for the boxes, and you can build your own if you want as well as the whole software is open source, if you are up for it!

So this is a full PVR out of the box! And it's only the size of 3 regular DVD cases ontop of each other! Will post photos of mine shortly.

The only downsides to the box is that it doesn't have HDMI/MPEG4 support so you can't use them with a DVB-T tuners to get the DTT service in NZ.

For those interested please PM me, and I was looking at selling them for ~$300, I would be expecting upfront payment before I make the order to ensure you are serious, and if Customs/GST slam me it may be a little more once they land (but i doubt more than ~$330-350 all up, but I hope it should stay just under $300). They are ex-china so not "official" boxes, but I have had great support (albiet a little slow) for the few that have had issues.

I will be installing a customised version of the PLi image (now that I am a tester on PLi, I have access to their source :) with all the NZ Specific settings (Satellite LNB, NZ Program Bouquets setup so the channels are in the right order) done, so there should be very little if any reconfiguration required once the boxes turn up (apart from putting a 2.5" IDE disk in if you want one).