The digital future
Yesterday I made the switch from analogous reception of satellite programs to the new digital world. It has been a somewhat forced switch because there was a cheap offer of a digital receiver including a harddisk for recording. Forced also because we had to make the digital leap as DVB-T is causing the analog terrestrial channels to be turned of in less than half a year. Since we had to do something digital in that timeframe I decided to jump onto the DVB-S train.
Now I'm owner of a "Grand Prix PVR 500 CI" or "ZapMaster PVR CI" as it's original brand is called. It has everything we need so far and there is even a Yahoo discussion forum where you can get in touch directly with the developers and get beta firmware.
The whole switch to digital equipment (LNB change, two more cables from it to the "exchange point" in the roof, rewiring everything to exclude the now obsolete multipier, installation of the new receiver) took around three hours but was preceded by lots of preparations, information gathering and price comparisons on my side.
Ok, now one out of five TV sets has been converted to digital and four still to go. I think the rest will be equipped with a combination of cheapest-of-the-cheap DVB-T or DVB-S tuners.