Technomate TM-5300 D M2 Super+ Digital Satellite Receiver FTA with Card Reader

After reading all the reviews and doing a fair amount of research I was expecting this product to be overly complicated but technically good. To some extent this could be said of it, however its also relatively easy to set up and use. Once the dish was aligned it took a matter of minutes to connect the Technomate and scan 300+ ASTRA 2 TV channels.The box itself has been in production for a good few years and after using it I get the impression that it hasn't been developed much during that time. However don't let that put you off.The instruction manual is very glossy but little more than a description of features rather than a user guide; however the first few lines of the quick "getting started" guide do describe how to perform a simple scan. Operation of the rest of the features are all fairly logical and easy to work out.The remote is of good quality and easy to use with plenty of useful buttons providing access to useful features.Recording to USB is simple and reliable with a 4GB USB stick providing about 3 hrs of recording.A few minor gripes:1. The EPG (Electronic Program Guide) only shows two programs for any channel and is only shown when the channel has been viewed or selected in the EPG.2. The default channel list was set up for alignment with ASTRA 1 which may be because the original release of this model probably pre-dates the move to ASTRA 2. Its simple to scan channels though.3. Deleting pre-configured favourites took a while to figure out (the trick is to select ASTRA 1 as the satellite as they all refer to it). But a very useful feature all the same.4. Don't expect too much from the support site - there is little by way of useful upgrades or updated channel lists. I did send them a question regarding the EPG and eventually received an answer in broken English.The good points:1. Excellent reception and picture.2. Very useful features such as favoutites, back button and EPG.3. Recording to USB device.4. Deleting unwanted channels and re-ordering channels. The ability to preview the channel from within the deletion operation is really very useful.5. Connection choice is very good, particularly for use with older equipment - pity there is no HDMI though.If, like me, you've chosen to go with FTA rather than FreeSat than you are probably the sort of person who likes to have choice and control rather than being spoon fed. As such this little box definately delivers, but is also relatively easy to set up and use. I wish the EPG was more functional but overal I am really pleased with my choice and hope you will be too.

I bought this receiver specifically for watching German TV from the UK. It was very simple to set up, though some of the more detailed functions are not quite working as I expected, such as setting favourite lists (I am getting on a bit, though!), but it might just be a later software version.I was very pleased with the GUI and it is simplicity to install. Finding a good signal is simplified by the signal and quality meters showing on every channel or in the search page, easily visible from up a ladder at the dish!This also receives far more channels and satellites than any other receiver I've owned, together with the IDLB-SINL40-ULTRA-OPP LNB, also available here at Amazon. I can get all the European channels (French, Italian, German, Austrian, Swiss, Polish) from Astra 1 and Astra 3, and it also has a PVR function, which lets you record and playback video to USB stick or hard drive. The file system allows for hard drive partitioning, as well.At this price point, it's a great bit of kit, and also comes with a nice, colour manual.

Bought one of these to give satellite a try and for the money it's a great little gadget.The best thing for me is the ability to record which it does really well. You can easily just plug in a memory drive and away you go. I plugged in an 8GB flash drive and was able to record straight away. The unit has no hard disk, probably to keep the price down. But this has a real advantage over ones with a built in hard disk as you can easily remove the drive if you want to keep something you've recorded or simply just plug in some other device with space on it.The only thing I have noticed is the quality of the picture is not too good, live or recorded. We've got a 42 Panasonic LCD TV and with the TVs built in free-view tuner it's very crisp and clear but with the Technomate it isn't so brilliant. Also the on-screen graphics and the remote are a bit cheap looking.But for the money you can't complain, it's easy to set-up and re-tune and you can record at the press of a button, time record and pause live TV, all very intuitively. I've now got a load more channels and a PVR for just under £50 so I think that's pretty good value.

The tuner is no where near as sensitive as you are led to believe. The EchoStar HDS 600RS tuner is far more sensitive.

Got two now, one for home, one for van. They are easy to use, just plug into TV, having first plugged satelite ariel into back of this. It is ideal for both home and for travelling around as it gives us a good range selection of both english & foreign channels. Gets chanels when your ordinary TV ariel can't, as it uses satellite. No interferance, no nonsense box. We were fist introduced to one of these by a satellite installer, he said they're the best around and he was right. There are models that do anything you want. There are models with a higher spec than this and there are models below this one. It is up to which model you get,depending on what you want it to do.

It’s not compatible with modern HDMI type tv’s. As needed scart socket to connect which new smart tv’s do not have