TM800 zap speed?

[szaim]

Could one of the TM800 owners take videos showing TM800 zap speed and upload to youtube?

I have the respective videos for Vu+ Duo in mind. I would love to see how TM800 compares.

For example:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD1o7ANoubw"]VU+ DUO - zap speed - SD to SD - FTA channels (PLi image)[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsL5iI4DpT0"]VU+ DUO TWIN receiver - zap speed - HD to HD - FTA channels[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4ncbi23bso"]VU+ DUO TWIN receiver - zap speed - HD to HD - Encrypted (NDS) channels[/ame]

 

[witchy]

I don't have a local card so even if I did make a video, it wouldn't be a fair comparison.

I'll tell you something though, that Vu Duo is amazingly fast, the zap times in that first video are superb.

The TM800 has a considerably weaker CPU so I'd imagine it to be somewhat slower.

[update]

I'm getting a 1 - 2 second delay zapping between BBC1 London and BBC1 Scotland.

But the box is still running Beta firmware, however I don't see the zap times improving much to be honest.

 

[VectorZ]

Only had time to do a quick test on FTA SD > SD and FTA HD > HD. It's about on par with my old cable DM500 on a neutrino image with fast zap off... thats the difference between a pic coming up quick but then freezing for a second before audio kicks in (and then used to go out of sync for me), or 1-2 sec blank pause then pic and sound kicking in together

 

[witchy]

or 1-2 sec blank pause then pic and sound kicking in together

Roughly the same here mate. I can live with that.

It's faster than the results I had on the Spiderbox, that was really slow on Pay TV.

 

[szaim]

witchy and blokeinkent, Thanks for the replies.

May I offer you a slightly more objective way to measure "average" zap speeds?

If you zap through a large number of channels and measure the time that it takes, you can easily get the "average" zap speed. Say, you start at a channel and then zap to the next one, wait until the screen displays the new channel with audio and video in full order, then zap to the next one and go on like that for 6-10 channels. If you have zapped 10 channels and it took you 16 seconds, then your average zap speed is 16/10=1.6 seconds.

You can use an ordinary watch to measure time, but I have found it easier to use the chronometer function found in many modern mobile phones. You just start the chronometer at the start, forget about it, then focus on counting the number of channels you have zapped. When you reach, say, 10 channels, you stop the watch and look at the total time.

In order to limit the channels to be zapped to a desirable property (SD FTA-to-FTA, HD FTA-to-FTA, etc), you can create a special favorites list and zap within it. Since there are not many FTA HD channels, this may be handy. So, if you have BBC HD and ITV HD on a special Favorite list, then you would simply be zapping "Next" which would take you from BBC HD to ITV HD then to BBC HD again and so on.

I have gotten into this much detail, because apart from comparing TM800 with other receivers, the "average" zap speed info may also be useful when comparing different images or setups for TM800.