Echosat 20700 HD FTA HD satellite demodulator

Arrived promptly and as described. Overall a good value HD receiver at this price. The picture quality is good on two HD TVs tested so far. The user interface could be improved. The instructions for set up could be tricky if you do not have any prior experience with satellite receivers. Manual was in German. Recording to USB and media player functions are good at this price point. The only issue that I have encountered is that the record timer does not seem to start from standby. The box needs to be left on for the recording to start on schedule.

My requirement is to view Italian tv channels which are hosted on Hotbird 13E (Eutelsat) and this unit is just right for the job.Previously I used a Humax 1100s which was possible, but painful because it reverted to Astra every time it went to sleep/standby mode, so needed constant setup. I also tried a GTMEDIA V9 Super which had a horrid GUI and remote control that was completely over-engineered, offering games/films and everything except a decent satellite menu. I put up with that until the IR remote became unresponsive and therefore the box (with no controls) became unusable.The Echosat HDMI SCART HD Receiver was by far much cheaper than the other two and also much more suitable in every way. It has a sensible and straightforward setup menu and easy to use remote. It also has enough buttons on the box to be able to control the unit should the remote become unavailable.It has HDMI and legacy Scart, so good enough. It doesn't have ethernet/wifi because no one needs that for satellite reception. It doesn't want to unilaterally hibernate when not in use, so channel viewing is immediate.I am very pleased with this unit and only wished I'd had this one from the start.

I found this difficult to set up. The default software is in German and it took me a while to find out how to get the English version of the software. This software is only partly translated from German. I found the manual hard to understand. It took several hours for me to get it searching for channels! It found over a thousand channels. To select the channels wanted as favourites I had to assign them to a category such as Films! The HMDI and power cable supplied were short. The picture quality was very good. Despite all the above it is a bargain at the price.

Really good value for money. Easy to set up

Waste of money and time.I waited patiently as this item was not available on Prime and upon arrival I was baffled with the set up instructions. I had to negotiate, in the settings, a way of changing the language from German to English. Quite why the setup instructions are not in the Lingua Franca of English is anyone's guess? The instructions themselves were in macro print and written in poor pidgin English. Having eventually found the correct Hotbird Satalite I was presented with hundreds of TV stations and had no way of arranging the few I wanted, as I only watch BBC and a few independent channels. I did eventually sort the channels in alphabetical order,, but even then all the BBC channels were in regional order and it seems impossible to just prioritise Beebs 1 2 4, as I had to scroll through scores of first Beeb 1, and then scores of Beeb 2 when all I wanted was four channels in order. As with all manufacturers instructions, they had to be read using the Rosetta Stone. Why oh why can't we just plug and play without days of stress and frustration and the outcome is that it has been returned for a full refund. Grrrr

seems to do the job ok

The product is excellent. The courier delivery service was terrible. It sat in their depot a few miles away for more than three weeks before being eventually delivered.

This unit has its pros: Good reception and clarity, easy to connect and reasonably priced. The main disadvantage for me is the option to store favourites. As mentioned in other reviews, you get all the BBC1/BBC2/ITV regions in a row. Hundreds of channels mean endless scrolling to get to the one you want. On several occasions I have gone through the time consuming exercise of sorting the favourite channels I am interested in to Sport, News, Entertainment, Documentary etc only for my efforts to be wiped out once the unit is switched off. The system simply does not save them. This is a major disadvantage when there are over one thousand channels listed and you only want maybe 40 to 50. Am clipping three stars off for this inconvenience alone and taking one star off for the poorly worded instruction booklet which gives me no guidance regarding solving the problem. I have a Walker receiver which is about twenty years old and it is far superior to this model and is so user friendly. Would not buy this Echosat model again.