Test satellite
A front panel conceals a CI slot and Conax CAM
Ratings PLUS
n Excellent image quality n Decent PVR functionality n CAM and CI slot n Good value
Minus
n No front USB n Ethernet and media streaming not available n Slow satellite scan
Build Setup Searching Navigation Performance Features Value
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PVR and multimedia With a portable hard drive or memory stick in the USB socket, the BM7000s becomes a fully fledged PVR – and unlike many PVR-ready machines, it has a decent array of PVR functions. The single tuner limits it but the BM7000s gets around this as best it can. While you are recording a channel you can record a second, and even watch a third from the same transponder (the channel list shows which channels are available) but the likelihood of three wanted channels sharing a transponder are small.
Performance Whether it’s the 1080p capabilities of this machine or not, the picture quality on even a 720p TV is excellent. From the HDMI socket, HD channel images are extremely sharp and lively, more so than those from many HD receivers. SD images too are very high quality with very few edge effects or upscaling artefacts. Although the images through the Scart sockets are, of course, less impressive they are well up to the standards of any other SD reception, and recorded video (both broadcasts and downloaded material) is reproduced faithfully, losing none of the original quality. It’s a bit disappointing that the sound, from either the digital or analogue outputs is a little dull and bland, but this is only a minor quibble n Geoff Bains
Verdict It’s hard to seriously fault this receiver. It produces really excellent quality reception of HD and SD broadcasts, connects to a wide variety of antenna setups and boasts a good blind search. It also provides more than adequate PVR recording facilities, plays a range of media files from a USB, and has both common interface and Conax CAM provision. The only real downsides are the absence of a front USB, the slowness of searching and the (so far) useless Ethernet socket. But let’s keep this in perspective; this receiver costs £150 – that’s something of a bargain.
Interface
86%
cartoons, hobby, and so on) and these can be renamed. A recall button switches to the last channel accessed and you can also select your channel for viewing from the ‘mosaic’ of thumbnail icons – with two, four, six or nine consecutive channels displayed on screen. The BM7000s’s EPG can display the programme information in two modes – a schedule for one channel or a small grid of the programmes for five channels, with an inset of the channel’s current broadcast and details of the highlighted show, up to seven days ahead (precious few channels provide more than now-and-next data in the open DVB standard but Blade is promising a UK seven-day EPG in forthcoming software). Highlighted programmes can be set for viewing at the allotted time or recording (provided there is storage connected). There’s a sleep timer and the option to set a regular wake-up time and channel. The BM7000s also offers the usual soundtrack choice, subtitle and teletext options, picture freeze and zoom functions, video output format selection and a calendar and games.
Live broadcasts can be paused but the reception is not buffered, so it takes a fraction of a second to kick in and you cannot rewind back before you pressed pause. However, when a recording is underway, you can start to watch before it is finished, although when you return to a recording watched half way, it starts again at the beginning. Playback offers half or quarter-speed play, fast-forward and rewind up to 32x normal speed, bookmarks, and a progress bar which can be dragged to jump to any point of the recording. Unusually for a PVR-ready machine, the BM7000s can even do rudimentary edits on a recording – a marked section can be deleted or copied. Blade makes much of the BM7000s’s multimedia capabilities. From USB storage, it will play MP3 music files, show a slideshow of JPEG images, or play video files in MPEG, TS, DivX, Xvid and MKV formats (including 1080p files). Sadly there is not (yet) provision for streaming video across a LAN and in this test, connecting the Ethernet socket would only crash the receiver.
The programme info bar displays now-and-next synopses and a lot of technical reception data. There’s also a signal meter for troubleshooting 90 What Satellite & Digital TV February 2011
You can record to USB-connected drives and shows are automatically named. There’s also multimedia playback of a wide range of formats
Video playback includes a progress bar and allows for fast-forwarding and rewinding up to 32x normal speed, bookmarking and basic editing