Skybox F3 or F5 help, advice or support needed? give uncle det a shout.

[Detector]

Ok having got my Skybox F5 up and running plus ive also had the infamous hang/crash at 100% error and sorted that out in minutes. if you need any help or advice let me know.

Ive had both F3 and F5's, I currently own 2 F5's, 1 downstairs for her indoors and one upstairs for me and my son to watch films, storage wars, pawn stars and mudmen!

I will also be looking into making my own legal firmware soon, plus im also looking into getting my own tools built for these boxes which COULD save people a lot of money more to come later.

det

for now here are my thoughts on each box:
Skybox F3:
The skybox f3 is a basic receiver which will not win any awards for design or features, its a standard box that is ideal both as a freeview HD receiver or Sky Receiver too.

The good points: Cheap, easy to fix when they break and easy to use
The bad points: Very shitty cheap nasty design with one big flaw - the USB in the front under the front flap. if you knock the box while the USB drive is plugged in you can fuck up either very easily. its also easy to fuck up when updating which then requires a lot of messing about with rs232 cable etc


Skybox F5: my favourite
The skybox f5 is a much better eye catching design with more or less exactly the same features as the skybox f3, I love this box so I ended up buying 2 of them.

The good points: still cheaply priced, easy to use, easy to fix and great asthetic design! plus the USB is now at the BACK of the box making it much safer which is a big plus imho.

The bad points: easy to fuck up when flashing/updating which again like the f3 requires an rs232 cable which you should have in your toolbox anyway. apart from that, the machine is a good one.

[Ashley]

What made you choose them over the VU Solo's and other cheap enigma2 boxes?

Surely you could do a lot more with the Enigma ones.

[raelmadrid]

boxes are total trash, spend a little extra and get a proper box

edit: my opinion, i've used them all

[Detector]

price really, found a supplier which is cheaper than anyone else really. and they are ok if you like plug and play, they are not complicated and easy to fix.

[macmilm]

wots the epg like on em tho??

[raelmadrid]

why not just get something that doesn't need fixing in the first place? u know sods law it will fail when the match is about to kick off lol

[MoNkFiSh]

My F5 has never given me any problems and for under £50 you cant go wrong- the HD picture on it is better than the HD my normal sky sat box put out, its easy to set up and easy to put codes in- the only downside with it is the epg is crap but again for nder £50 I can live with it - plus the userbase for these is in the tens of thousands so there's always plenty of info available on them should you need it.
I would like an vu duo but the price is off putting for something that basically does the same thing.

[Detector]

f5 only need fixing when you flash them, sometimes the flashing can go wrong but thankfully they are designed to be easy to fix.

the epg's on many of the type of boxes are shit, that's what the sky guide on the net is for.

plus f5's can be flashed with custom software to allow many different things which I cannot go into

[MoNkFiSh]

Which firmware did you flash yours with Det?

[Detector]

ive tried skydiver and a few others but the current best one for sky is stingray, there are others out there which are interesting to say the least but you need a motorised dish to get the best out of them. if you have that, you have in your hands a very very cheap multi sat entertainment system.

the skybox F5 picture (HD) is more crisper and more HD like than SKY!

[rookie]

i like my skybox, not messed about with firmware as havnt needed to ive updated the channel
list once but im
bot one to mess with somthing if its working fine, also why buy a box that could potentially be useless in a few months, my £48 sky box has alreqdy paid for itself, ok its basic but my family have never had sky so dont no any different

[macmilm]

They are cheap and for that I am sure they are a cracking box but if you do need/want a lot more features, better epg and are not satisfied with just plain viewing a channel then you can
get as I did a clone vu+ solo from hong kong for about £25 more than a Skybox F5 delivered.. it does crash from time to time being a clone and need a reboot but that is about it..

Just me 2p

[Detector]

is it worth spending an extra £25 just for a better epg and a few more features? plus waiting for a week or two for it to arrive with the possibility of getting scammed with customs fees?. ill have a word with my supplier and see if they can get any into the country. what make/model are they pal

for what I now pay for the skybox f5 its more than value for money and if I only got 1 month viewing out of it I would still be in profit

[digi247]

Any of the Openbox / Skybox are cheap tat simple as that limited to 5000 channel memory so crap for motorised, they are basically the lazy arse way to plug and play on 28.2° east and thats it, even spending double should get you a better box than this chinese crap the Technomate nano comes in at £130 and gives you full Linux E2 not a clone and will give you full 7 day EPG plus all the usual iplayer , ITV player , 4OD etc... as well as TSmedia for streaming HD movies from the network + tons more stuff that even the £50 receivers can only dream about

[macmilm]

is it worth spending an extra £25 just for a better epg and a few more features? plus waiting for a week or two for it to arrive with the possibility of getting scammed with customs fees?. ill have a word with my supplier and see if they can get any into the country. what make/model are they pal

for what I now pay for the skybox f5 its more than value for money and if I only got 1 month viewing out of it I would still be in profit

Its a clone vu+ solo (think it said v3.2) it was from aliexpress and only took a 7 days from order with no customs fee's.. I know what u are saying tho.. there is a risk from overseas !!!

[Detector]

@digi247 my skybox has all the players available including youporn, youtube, itvplayer, 4od, bbciplayer and about 12 more. I will admit epg is shit but all I have to do is log onto sky.com click on the guide and I can see whats on anytime of the day they may be cheap but they do the job for thousands. fuck paying £130 for a technomate, I had one of those for the foreign sat and I hated it.

[digi247]

@digi247 my skybox has all the players available including youporn, youtube, itvplayer, 4od, bbciplayer and about 12 more. I will admit epg is shit but all I have to do is log onto sky.com click on the guide and I can see whats on anytime of the day they may be cheap but they do the job for thousands. fuck paying £130 for a technomate, I had one of those for the foreign sat and I hated it.

First i have heard of the Skybox F5 having he Ondemand players iplayer,ITV,4OD etc... thats a new one on me

[Detector]

if they can run youporn and youtube why not the rest
depends on the firmware you have installed, they have to be installed as part of the firmware and not through plugins which you will probably be used to?

[digi247]

if they can run youporn and youtube why not the rest
depends on the firmware you have installed, they have to be installed as part of the firmware and not through plugins which you will probably be used to?

I am not saying anything about the Youtube and Youporn players as the Tm5302 and 5402 have these as standard as well i am actually talking about a working BBCIplayer ITVplayer 4OD etc.. working on these open/skybox F3/F5 and so far i have not seen any firmware with this ability to run them if you have one then out of all the posts on different forums you are the only person i know to have these running on that box.

That is all i am asking at present do they have iplayer,ITVplayer 5demand etc.. running as part of the firmware

[Detector]

they are in the network apps, youtube, youporn, weather app, bbciplayer, itvplayer and a couple more. just tried a couple of them and they are terribly slow, the youtube one took 3 minutes to load a shitty video in. and fyi ill be hopefully releasing my own firmware very shortly which may include all of the above and more if I can get them all to work 100%. you will be the first person to try them out