TEST REPORT HDTV Satellite Receiver with PVR

12-01/2010

Nanoxx 9800HD
NANOXX 9800HD
An outstandingly equipped universal
HD receiver with an unprecedented
number of features

Sharp, Sharper, Nanoxx

Sharp, Sharper, Nanoxx! This advertising slogan pops up on German manufacturer
Nanoxx’s website and with good reason as our tests will show. But one thing at a time.
When Nanoxx asked us a few weeks ago to take a closer look at their new 9800HD,
naturally we said yes. We’ve already tested a variety of Nanoxx receivers and were
impressed each time.

We were quite excited when
the delivery truck dropped
off the package with the
receiver at our test center.
The 9800HD managed to
earn its first plus points while
we were unpacking it; as has
been typical with Nanoxx,
they stuck with an elegant
and above all slim design.
At just 30x6.3x22cm in size,
it easily fits on any TV stand
or in any living room cabi-
net. Its discreet silver/black
color combination is incon-
spicuously elegant and it has
an easy to read blue colored
alphanumeric display.
The front panel comes with
six buttons used to operate
the receiver in lieu of the
remote control plus a sev-
enth Standby button that is
illuminated in blue while the
receiver is in use. Two CI
slots capable of working with
all the popular modules, such
as Irdeto, Nagravision, Cryp-
toworks or Viaccess along
with a card reader for Conax,
X-Crypt, DG-Crypt, Firecrypt
and Crypton can all be found
behind a flap on the right side
of the front panel.
When you take a look at the
rear panel and all of the con-
nectors on the new Nanoxx Exceptional audio is supplied
receiver, you would have by optical and coaxial S/PDIF
to ask yourself, “did they outputs.
forget anything?” If you look
closely, you’ll see that every Communicating with other
possible interface is available devices can be handled via
and usable.
Of course the most impor-
tant of these would be the two
satellite IF inputs for DVB-S
and DVB-S2 that also sport
looped-through outputs. The
9800HD can be connected
to a TV or projection system
using the HDMI interface, the 0.56
three RCA jacks for YUV, an
S-Video jack, a CVBS jack as
well as two Scart connectors.

14 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com

Channel list with numerous sorting capabilities

www.TELE-satellite.com — 12-01/2010 — TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine 15

the two USB jacks (Type A
and Type B for linking to an
external hard drive or a PC),
an e-SATA interface as well
as an Ethernet interface.
There’s even a good old
RS-232 interface available
that can be used to upload/
download channel lists. It’s
all topped off with a main
power switch, something
that you unfortunately don’t
always find on other receiver
brands.
The included remote con-
trol is just as elegant and
sits nicely in your hands. The
buttons are ideally labeled
and after only a short time
getting to know the remote
you’d be able to operate
every function blindfolded.
All of the buttons are easy to
reach and easy to depress.
The detailed, fully-illus-
trated user manual printed
in English and German will
answer any questions you
might have regarding the
operation of this new Nanoxx
receiver. The manufacturer
gets a nice pat on the back
for this effort.
Everyday Use
After the receiver has
been connected to the satel-
lite antenna system and the
TV and it has been turned on
for the first time, the Instal-
lation Assistant immediately
appears.
It is a very helpful tool
16 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com
when setting up the receiver
for the first time. For the
OSD (on-screen display)
language, 25 choices are Nanoxx 9800HD’s main menu
available including English,
German, Turkish, Russian,
French, Arabic, Italian, Por-
tuguese, Spanish, Danish,
Dutch, Polish, Czech, Swed-
ish, Norwegian, Finnish,
Greek, Serbian, Hungarian,
Croatian, Albanian and Farsi.
All in all, a very international
receiver.
The next step involves set-
ting up the local time zone
and whether daylight savings EPG multiple channel view
time should be turned on or
off. Once this is taken care of,
the receiver is then matched
up with the existing antenna
system. 153 European, Asian
and American C and Ku-band
satellites have been prepro-
grammed into the Nanoxx
all with relatively up-to-date
transponder data.
The Nanoxx concept sees
to it that the satellites are
set up and activated during
Blind Scan channel search with variable step frequencies
the initial settings phase so
that later on during a scan
only those satellites that can
actually be received will be
available. The user simply
checks off all of the satellites
that his system is set up for.
Each satellite has its own
configuration menu in which
numerous parameters can be
set up. In addition to a vari-
ety of useable local oscilla-
tor frequency (LOF) values,
there are also LNB settings EPG single channel view
 available based on the SCR
standard.
Manual LOF entry lets you
set up other LNB’s such as
those for the S-band. Natu-
rally the Nanoxx 9800HD also
Expanded EPG information supports all of the DiSEqC
protocols: 1.0 for multifeed
antennas up to four satel-
lites, 1.1 for the expanded
version for use with up to 16
LNBs, as well as 1.2 and 1.3
(USALS) for motor control
and naturally also the SCR
standard (Unicable).
Before the installation
assistant permits a channel
scan to be started, the final
set up step involves deciding
how incoming signals should
Channel Info Bar
be routed to the two tuners.
This could be separate cables
with identical switches, sep-
arate cables with different
types of switches or a loop
through connection between
Tuner 1 and Tuner 2.
Don’t worry, at first it
seems complicated but the
proper choice almost hap-
pens by itself; Nanoxx blends
in connection diagrams that
makes it much easier for
Overview of recordings as well as MP3 and JPEG the user to make the right
choice. For those who don’t
have much patience, Nanoxx
offers instead of a channel
scan a preloaded channel
list for Germany, Austria and
Switzerland.
It not only carries the
advantage that all unwanted
channels have already been
done away with and that all
of the remaining channels
have been sorted, it also
saves viewers in these coun-
Network Settings
tries a lot of time since in the
end all they want to do is get
to watching TV as quickly as
possible.
The receiver stores the
selected options thus com-
pleting the initial installa-
tion. Before the owner of his
newly purchased receiver
actually gets down to using
it, there are a few recom-
mended additional settings
that can be handled via the
Playback of a recording main menu.
18 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com
By pushing the menu
button on the remote con-
trol, the Main Menu appears
with the current TV image
minimized to a small window
in the upper right corner of
the screen.
It was designed especially
for high resolution TVs and is
thus sharp and easy to read.
It is divided into seven sub-
menus (Installation, System
Settings, Channel Settings,
Child Protection, Games,
Multimedia and Conditional
Access.
The installation menu will
only be needed again when
looking for new channels or
when new satellites need to
be added; everything else
was already taken care of in
the initial installation.
Here you will also find a
variety of other options that,
for example, would allow
you to reset the receiver to
factory settings plus among
other things load one of the
preprogrammed channel
lists.
In addition to a variety of
language choices (subtitle,
teletext, audio language,
etc.), it is also possible to
change the video output
signal. The 9800HD supports
PAL and NTSC in 1080i, 720p
and 576p resolutions. There’s
also an automatic mode that
matches the resolution to
each transmission resulting
in optimal picture quality.
Naturally, the receiver
can also automatically rec-
ognize and take 4:3 signals
and either display them with
black bars on either side
of the image on modern
16:9 TVs or zoom in on the
image.
Also worth mentioning is
the Video switching option.
This option essentially keeps
the current channel image
on the screen until the new
channel is ready to be dis-
played. This has the advan-
tage of making it appear that
the already short channel
switching time of about one
second is even shorter. It’s
nothing more than an opti-
cal magic trick, but it looks
really good!
Even the on-screen display
can be adjusted a variety
of ways; for example, level
of transparency and display
time. Another useful fea-
ture is the Lip-sync option.
In cases where the video
and audio of a signal are not
quite 100% synchronized,
this feature lets you match
them together.
As practical as the pre-
pared channel list is, we here
at TELE-satellite are espe-
cially interested in the Chan-
nel Scan menu – that was
the next step for us.
The Nanoxx 9800HD comes
with four different modes.
The first is the automatic
scan. In this mode the user
only needs to select a desired
satellite and choose between
ALL, NIT, Fast, Free, TV or
Radio. These choices can
be set up individually for as
many satellites as needed.
Owners of DiSEqC motor-
ized systems can thus select
all receivable satellites for
an automatic scan and sit
and enjoy a DVD while the
receiver takes care of the
work.
Through all of the different
search modes it’s also pos-
sible to scan a satellite like
ASTRA 28.2 east with all of
its encrypted channels only
for those channels freely
receivable, while scanning
ASTRA 19.2 east for all
channels and HOTBIRD 13
east only for radio channels.
It doesn’t get any more user-
friendly than that!
Manual scan mode lets you
search on one transponder.
The well thought out and
logical operational concept
of the Nanoxx receiver can
only be appreciated when
you see it for yourself.
For all you DXers out there
we want to point out that of
course a manual scan with
PID entry is also possible.
And while we’re on the
DXer subject, they would be
very happy with the third
scanning mode, namely Blind
Scan.
We’ve all seen this prob-
lem before: new channels
are always being added, old
ones removed and symbol-
rates are constantly chang-
ing. If you want to keep your
channel list as current as
possible, you either have to
refer to the up-to-date chan-
nel lists from www.SatcoDX.
com or you simply use the
Blind Scan feature of the
9800HD.
This feature lets you scan a
user-defined frequency range
for all active transponders,
identifies the symbolrate and
FEC and reads all the avail-
able TV and radio channels
into the receiver. Since this
type of scan can take much
longer than a simple scan of
a preprogrammed transpon-
der list, the Blind Scan on the
one hand can be limited to a
single polarization while on
the other the scanning steps
can be adjusted between
1 and 4 MHz in an effort to
speed up the overall scan.
If you want to use Blind
Scan to search a DTH posi-
tion such as HOTBIRD at 13
east, 4 MHz scanning steps
would be sufficient. If you are
www.TELE-satellite.com — 12-01/2010 —
searching for SCPC signals, or transferred to one of the
then 1 or 2 MHz scanning Favorites lists.
steps are recommended.
It is also possible to delete
In general, the larger the a group of channels with
scanning steps, the faster the push of one button plus
the overall scan. you can transfer channel
An automatic scan of HOT- data, system settings and
BIRD at 13 east needed 7 timer entries to an external
minutes and 33 seconds to medium so that this data can
be completed and managed be worked on using an Editor
to find 1232 TV and 421 program on a PC.
radio channels. A Blind Scan
required 17 minutes and 52 Afterwards, this modified
seconds during which 1344 data can be uploaded back
TV and 455 radio channels to the receiver via its USB
were found. interface.
We also wanted to test the After the channel list has
capabilities of the Nanoxx been edited to your liking, a
9800HD tuner and were push of the Exit button takes
pleasantly surprised with you out of the main menu
the results: SCPC reception and the 9800HD switches to
was possible starting at 2.0 the first receivable channel.
Ms/sec and very weak sig-
nals such as those on NILE- After each channel
SAT at 7 west and ASTRA 2D change an informative Info
at 28.2 east were also easily bar appears that provides
handled by the receiver; it information on the current
was able to present an inter- channel including language
ference-free picture with C/ selection, teletext, encryp-
N values starting at 4.5 dB. tion, subtitles, etc. as well
as programming information
Once all the basic settings on the current and upcom-
have been taken care of, the ing programs. Even signal
10,000 possible channels strength and signal quality is
that can be stored need to displayed in the form of bar
be freed up of any unneces- graphs.
sary or unwanted entries.
A push of the Info button
This is handled by the displays an expanded EPG
Channel Settings menu. view of the current program
From here channels can be as long as this data is made
deleted, renamed, moved available by the provider.
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Available online starting from 27 November 2009
TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine 19
 Record up to two channels at the same time
A second push of the Info
button displays detailed
reception information on the
current channel.
As is typical with almost
every receiver on the
market, and the Nanoxx box
is no different, the chan-
nel list appears with a push
of the OK button. It is very
clearly laid out with HD and
encrypted channels easily
Storing channel list, timers and settings recognizable thanks to cor-
responding symbols.
There are also a number of
sorting methods that in the
end will make it very easy
to find the channel that you
want. You can sort alphabet-
ically, by frequency, provider
and HD or SD.
As we already mentioned,
the channel switching times
of the 9800HD are quite fast
within the same transponder
Setting up a new timer event
and also between HD and
SD signals. During our tests
we were impressed with the
integrated upscaler. Its job
is to convert SD signals in
such a way that they can be
shown on larger TVs with a
sharp and high contrast pic-
ture in higher resolution.
If automatic resolution has
not been activated, a dedi-
cated button on the remote
control switches between
Up to 40 timer events can be set up the various resolutions so
20 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com
that the best picture quality
can be achieved.
The more channels that
can be received, the more
important it is to have a
decent electronic program-
ming guide (EPG) since in
the end the user wants to
maintain an overview and
always be kept up to date on
current programs.
To that end, the Nanoxx
comes with two different EPG
modes: a single channel view
and a multi-channel view in
table format. Which of these
is more useful will depend
on the user; both functioned
perfectly in our tests. The
data was correctly sorted and
above all quickly displayed.
Timer entries can also be
handled directly from the
EPG as can recording set-
tings. For example, you can
dictate whether the record-
ing should end up on an
external USB or e-SATA hard
drive and also in what sub-
folder it should be stored.
Up to 40 timer events can
be set up and these can be
one-time, daily or weekly
recordings.
PVR
Nanoxx with its 9800HD
has remained with their
 external hard drive concept
and for good reason.
Today’s external hard
drives are not nearly as
expensive as they used to
be, come with plenty of
space and can be easily car-
ried around from one place
to another.
For our test we used a
Freecom 2.5” hard drive. It
Video Settings comes with the advantage
that it doesn’t need an exter-
nal power source; it receives
its power through the USB
interface.
The Nanoxx 9800HD can
record up to two programs
at the same time (SD and/or
HD) on the hard drive while
a third program is either
watched live or played back
from the same hard drive.
Even hardcore couch pota-
toes will be satisfied with all
SCPC reception via TURKSAT at 42 east
the different possibilities.
Thanks to the inte-
grated time shift function,
a telephone call from your
mother-in-law can no longer
interfere with your evening
TV watching mood: the pro-
gram is simply paused and
then restarted at the point
where it was stopped at the
end of the phone conversa-
tion without missing a thing.
PVR Settings Numerous PVR func-
22 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com
tions performed correctly
during our tests no matter
how hard we tried to derail
the receiver with multiple
recordings, timers and time
shifting. The receiver did
whatever we asked it to and
reliably recorded all of our
selected programs.
We all know that provid-
ers don’t always follow their
own broadcasting schedule
so it’s nice to know that the
9800HD can automatically
extend the recording time of
a program by a user-defined
amount of time.
There’s also a special ver-
sion of Haenlein’s video
editing software from www.
haenlein-software.com. This
lets you edit both SD and HD
recordings on your PC.
And let’s not forget the
media function. This is the
control center for the play-
back of all the multimedia
content on the hard drive;
it too functioned perfectly
during our tests. Similar to a
data manager, it presents a
clear overview of all the data.
To that end, the Nanoxx
supports not only its own
recordings, but AVI (XVID),
JPEG photos and MP3 music.
During playback there are a
number of playback speeds
available.
 The receiver can also
remember where a playback
was stopped so that it can
continue from the point it
was stopped the next time
playback is started. To uti-
lize the PVR functions all you
need is any external USB or
e-SATA hard drive formatted
in Microsoft FAT32.
Most hard drives are
shipped from the factory in
FAT32, otherwise the manu-
Manual Scan
facturer offers a free for-
matting tool through their
web site.
Network
Slowly but surely, more
and more manufacturers
are including Ethernet con-
nections on their receivers,
Nanoxx is no exception.
Thanks to the ability to
link to a local network or the
Internet, the possibilities are
Every possible LNB setting is available
endless; receivers without
a LAN connection can only
dream of what it would be
like.
The connection is set up
very quickly; the 9800HD
utilizes DHCP and can auto-
matically detect all the nec-
essary parameters directly
from the router or DSL
modem.
For more experienced
Channel list editing users a manual configura-
www.TELE-satellite.com — 12-01/2010 —
tion is also available. Once
the receiver is connected
to the home network, it
becomes possible to access
the hard drive connected to
the 9800HD from the PC via
FTP. This makes it easy to
further process recordings
on your PC.
The receiver itself prof-
its from the Internet con-
nection: a connection with
the Nanoxx FTP server can
be made directly from the
receiver. There you will find
current software as well as
channel lists for Germany,
Austria and Switzerland.
And best of all: Nanoxx can
expand this by offering more
channel lists and other useful
features that the user can
upload to the receiver with
the simple push of a button.
Software updates have
never been this simple!
The desired image data is
marked and downloaded
from the Internet directly to
the receiver’s menu with the
push of the OK button.
The days of using USB
sticks or null modem cables
to link to a PC are over, even
though the 9800HD still
offers these methods.
Streaming
An especially interesting
feature and typical Nanoxx is
TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine 23
the ability to stream record-
ings between two different
devices on the same network.
Who hasn’t experienced this
before: your laying comfort-
ably in bed and want to finish
watching the documentary
you had recorded a few days
ago in your living room.
With most receivers that
meant you had to get up and
go back to the living room to
finish watching it. Not true
with the Nanoxx!
It can create a link with the
receiver in the living room,
access then data directly
from there and then play-
back the recording on the
receiver in the bedroom. An
absolutely excellent feature!
easy to switch between these
Expert Opinion
channels.
+
The Nanoxx 9800HD has reached new heights
with its variety of functions, its simple operational
The Mosaic function dis- concept and its many cute features. It is very easy
plays the current program to use and functioned perfectly in our tests. It’s
easy to see that Nanoxx took every detail into
from 4 or 6 channels next
account during the design phase. Blind Scan, Net- Thomas Haring
to each other in a minimized TELE-satellite
work Streaming and other features such as Lip- Test Center
format that gives you an Sync and a gentle transition when switching from Austria
overview of what’s playing, one channel to another when channel surfing make the 9800HD
for example, on your favorite an outstandingly equipped universal HD receiver.
channels.
-
None
And to guarantee that you’ll
never be bored, the manufac-
turer also included two video ENERGY
games that can help pass the DIAGRAM
time during commercials.
Mode Apparent Active Factor
Apparent Power
The Zoom function magni-
StandBy 10 W 4W 0.40
Reception 44 W 25 W 0.56
fies a highlighted portion of PVR 45 W 26 W 0.57
the video image and teletext
pages can also be displayed. Active Power

Additional
PC Software
Functions
The user can download a
To top it all off, the Nanoxx
variety of useful programs
9800HD comes with a variety
from the manufacturer’s
of other practical features
website www.nanoxx.info
that we briefly want to touch
on here: there’s a PIP func- including a channel list editor
and a media player that can First 15 minutes: the first minute shows the start up of the receiver fol-
tion (picture-in-picture) that lowed by 14 minutes of normal operation with channel switching, record-
lets you watch another chan- present recordings directly ing, playback, etc. The second 15 minutes: standby
nel during lengthy commer- from the receiver’s hard
cial breaks and also makes it drive on a PC. TECHNICAL
DATA
Manufacturer Nanoxx Germany
Email info@nanoxx.info
Internet www.nanoxx.info
Model 9800HD
Function Digital HDTV DVB-S2 receiver with
various Multimedia Features
Channel Memory 10.000
Symbolrate 2-45 Ms/sec.
SCPC Compatible yes (> 2000 Ms/s)
DiSEqC 1.0 / 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3
USALS yes
Unicable yes
HDMI Output yes
Scart Connector 2
New firmware and settings downloaded via the Internet Audio/Video Outputs 6x RCA
Component Video Output yes
S-Video Output yes
UHF Modulator no
0/12 Volt Connector no
Digital Audio Output yes
EPG yes
C/Ku-Band compatible yes
PVR-Function yes
USB 2.0 Connector yes
Ethernet yes
E-SATA yes
Dimensions 300x63x220mm
Weight 2.2kg
Sorting the channel list by provider

24 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 12-01/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com