I have recently purchased a VU DUO clone having succumbed to the draw of the twin tuner ... Now im pretty sure a fair few people may be in the same boat wondering whether to take the plunge with a VU DUO clone.
I already own a DM800SE clone thought it would be a good idea to compare the two...
Price.
- DM800 SE Clone without Wifi or triple tuner comes in at around 140 - 150 GBP frm China suppliers.
- VU DUO clone around 180 GBP delivered from China.
Again prices do fluctuate depending one exchange rates etc..
Appearance
- I must admit I prefer the looks and form factor of the DM800SE over the DUO. The 800SE is nice and compact and the colour OLED and glossy finish with silver ribbon look good under my TV. The DUO is pretty ugly in comparison and absolutely huge in size comparison it's nearly 3 times the size of the 800SE. Also for my usage the front display is useless I dont need to know what channel im watching I can figure that out myself.
- Basically side by side I think the DUO is butt ugly compared to the 800SE. But I didnt buy the DUO for it's looks
Build Quality/Finish
- Wasnt overly impressed with the VU DUO build quality in terms of the metal used on the lid and the front panel plastics the metal on the lid is thinner and paint job is not as good as the 800SE, also front plastics dont looks as good as the glossy finish on the 800SE.
- However internally I dont see any issues with the board layouts and quality of the soldering on the PCB etc looks very good on the DUO. Easy to install hard disk etc as theres a lot more room in the case.The Hard disk bracket is also made of thicker metal than the 800SE version.
- The DUO remote wins over the DM remote..much nicer layout, thinner more responsive and better finish. The 800SE remote is rather chunky and poor in comparison.
- The fan on the 800SE is better than the DUO. Why ?? Because it's silent and controllable by E2 Plugins. The DUO fan is noisy you can hear it as soon as the box is switched on comparable to the fan noise you get from a Network switch or router..you can hear it... Thankfully it does switch of in standby.
Setup and Flashing.
- DUO came preinstalled with a Blackhole image.
- I recieved a V2 clone meaning that it is already upgraded to latest bootlaoder patch so all new images can be used.
I have succesfully flashed the latest daily OpenPLI builds to test, currently running a VIX image.
- Fairly painless and trouble free to flash via a USB key, different the bootloader/web browser **STOP** mode method on DM recievers but not an issue.
- The DUO has so far succesfully accepted any image I have thrown at it.
Operation
- Menu switching, remote response etc, is all very good on the DUO cant notice any lag or performance issues.
- Timeshift works a treat.
- I have a USB drive holding picons and CrossEPG data same as the setup on my 800SE.
- The colour OLED of the 800SE has the advantage of being able to display Picons..but to be fair it's pretty much too small and useless for anything else...you cant read anything on a 800 dispaly unless your right next to the box.
- Duo works fine with Dreamdroid android app as well so you can schedule recording from your phone etc..same as DM recievers.
UPDATE..
Recording and Playback
- Tested the DUO using EPG timers recording a film on a completely different transponder and channel while watching the Champions league Barcelona vs Chelsea match the other day, worked fine no adverse affects to the channel your watching while the recordings going on on the 2nd tuner channel changes etc all fine. Playback also good rewind, forward, pause restart of the recorded content works fine. The Barca match was on sly sports so both the channel being watched and the channel being recorded were on encrypted streams.
Issues...
I have noticed a sort of 1 second glitch/pixellation breakup issues that seems to occur on some channels not very often but it does happen when your watching there will be a freeze slight pixelation and audio breakup for about a second. I need to investigate this further to see if it's just encrypted channels or FTA as well.
This is using the VIX 2.3 GM image. I have seen this issue before on an old PLI image on the 800SE it disappeared with newer PLI builds. Not sure if this the same issue as im seeing on the DUO. I will try a different image at some stage and see if this issue still occurs on a different image.
I've had to reflash the VIX image once...not sure what happened to it but the box got stuck in a reboot loop, after launching E2 the channel your watching would show for a few seconds the n the VIX spinner would appear in the corner and the box would reboot itself. Cured with a reflash im putting it down to image corruption... Pretty typical of linux recievers though not a DUO specific issue..having to reflash.
I already own a DM800SE clone thought it would be a good idea to compare the two...
Price.
- DM800 SE Clone without Wifi or triple tuner comes in at around 140 - 150 GBP frm China suppliers.
- VU DUO clone around 180 GBP delivered from China.
Again prices do fluctuate depending one exchange rates etc..
Appearance
- I must admit I prefer the looks and form factor of the DM800SE over the DUO. The 800SE is nice and compact and the colour OLED and glossy finish with silver ribbon look good under my TV. The DUO is pretty ugly in comparison and absolutely huge in size comparison it's nearly 3 times the size of the 800SE. Also for my usage the front display is useless I dont need to know what channel im watching I can figure that out myself.
- Basically side by side I think the DUO is butt ugly compared to the 800SE. But I didnt buy the DUO for it's looks
Build Quality/Finish
- Wasnt overly impressed with the VU DUO build quality in terms of the metal used on the lid and the front panel plastics the metal on the lid is thinner and paint job is not as good as the 800SE, also front plastics dont looks as good as the glossy finish on the 800SE.
- However internally I dont see any issues with the board layouts and quality of the soldering on the PCB etc looks very good on the DUO. Easy to install hard disk etc as theres a lot more room in the case.The Hard disk bracket is also made of thicker metal than the 800SE version.
- The DUO remote wins over the DM remote..much nicer layout, thinner more responsive and better finish. The 800SE remote is rather chunky and poor in comparison.
- The fan on the 800SE is better than the DUO. Why ?? Because it's silent and controllable by E2 Plugins. The DUO fan is noisy you can hear it as soon as the box is switched on comparable to the fan noise you get from a Network switch or router..you can hear it... Thankfully it does switch of in standby.
Setup and Flashing.
- DUO came preinstalled with a Blackhole image.
- I recieved a V2 clone meaning that it is already upgraded to latest bootlaoder patch so all new images can be used.
I have succesfully flashed the latest daily OpenPLI builds to test, currently running a VIX image.
- Fairly painless and trouble free to flash via a USB key, different the bootloader/web browser **STOP** mode method on DM recievers but not an issue.
- The DUO has so far succesfully accepted any image I have thrown at it.
Operation
- Menu switching, remote response etc, is all very good on the DUO cant notice any lag or performance issues.
- Timeshift works a treat.
- I have a USB drive holding picons and CrossEPG data same as the setup on my 800SE.
- The colour OLED of the 800SE has the advantage of being able to display Picons..but to be fair it's pretty much too small and useless for anything else...you cant read anything on a 800 dispaly unless your right next to the box.
- Duo works fine with Dreamdroid android app as well so you can schedule recording from your phone etc..same as DM recievers.
UPDATE..
Recording and Playback
- Tested the DUO using EPG timers recording a film on a completely different transponder and channel while watching the Champions league Barcelona vs Chelsea match the other day, worked fine no adverse affects to the channel your watching while the recordings going on on the 2nd tuner channel changes etc all fine. Playback also good rewind, forward, pause restart of the recorded content works fine. The Barca match was on sly sports so both the channel being watched and the channel being recorded were on encrypted streams.
Issues...
I have noticed a sort of 1 second glitch/pixellation breakup issues that seems to occur on some channels not very often but it does happen when your watching there will be a freeze slight pixelation and audio breakup for about a second. I need to investigate this further to see if it's just encrypted channels or FTA as well.
This is using the VIX 2.3 GM image. I have seen this issue before on an old PLI image on the 800SE it disappeared with newer PLI builds. Not sure if this the same issue as im seeing on the DUO. I will try a different image at some stage and see if this issue still occurs on a different image.
I've had to reflash the VIX image once...not sure what happened to it but the box got stuck in a reboot loop, after launching E2 the channel your watching would show for a few seconds the n the VIX spinner would appear in the corner and the box would reboot itself. Cured with a reflash im putting it down to image corruption... Pretty typical of linux recievers though not a DUO specific issue..having to reflash.
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