SO it's time to throw out the crusty old CRT albeit with an excellent non-pixelated look to a lot of LCD's.

However this puts me in the market for media players and satellite receivers.

Firslty I bought a cheap(ish) Ch@llenger Black Panther Premium from 'freeviewshop.co.nz' and my first pro's and con's:

Youtube App doesn't work. Search results load, no video plays. The manual states and website states it has S-Video support via scart (until I buy an HD TV next week). Reality, no it doesn't. It's not an option in the firmware. The latest is loaded and was already pre-loaded and not even trying scart S-Video known working leads work.

The reason for this box, I want a DVB-S2 satellite receiver for MPEG-4 HD support. This bit it does. It also tunes to Channel 9 from Australia pretty well and the picture given a 90cm dish is quite good.

Also I can play my MPEG-2 mkv files on my server.  Big bonus for me to setup a home media storage device.

I bought this because I thought I'd avoid running in to clone fake units like the Skybox V8. I'd really like one of these however both parties on Trade Me are accusing the other of being fake units and non-genuine with cheap chipsets in them. So I bought through what seemed like a reasonable online retailer, freeviewshop.co.nz.

However given features don't work on my Black Panther Premium, I'm now starting to wonder if this is a clone box too, or just a crappy buy full stop. I got a reply regarding the problems with Youtube and S-Video from the manufacturer, until I asked would their be a firmware fix to resolve these.... now no replys. Which again makes me wonder if this is a nasty clone.

To keep things balanced, it does play network files quite well. The only down side other than above, if there is a glitch in a DVB-S2 HD channel the audio lip-sink goes way out and doesn't correct until you flip channels and come back. This also happens if something goes wrong with the ethernet side of things. For the most part though, it plays pretty well most of the time.

Does anyone know of someone who sells quality Skybox V8 units that won't fry when software/firmware is updated? Or is there a better satellite receiver out there for closer to under $200 that also does network media playback?

My mkv's are MPEG2 not MPEG4's, basically just DVD's, except I own every movie that I have but prefer the convenience of my media player/satellite receiver and keep my originals away from the 10 year old.

I have an Igloo box for UHF HD but I'm moving hopefully soon to an area where satellite is the only option. I also like satellite because I also watch RT on Optus D2.

Thoughts and opinions on any satellite receivers with media player would be welcomed though. There's to much to choose from and I don't want to keep buying units to find basically nasty firmware on board :o)