I bought a DB500 to get rid of all nagging from the wife at home about that she wants to see that and that and that.

Well bought it , and with a hope that i should only soft it with an image and start streaming like i do with my old 7000

But what an disappointment it was. Db 500 sux more than a prostitute on streaming and after lots and lots of cursing and needles putted into the dream-multimedia voodoo doll i decided to make some serious testing from the exact same location with my db7000 and 500

And here's the results

All the testings are made with wifi and directly connected to a switch. The test is also made with old cables and brand new ones. And it didnt give any improvement. The faults are the same.

DB500 testing

Unscrambled streaming - works like a charm , doesnt matter if its wireless or directly thru the switch. Streaming is without mosaicpixles

If i stream a scrambled channel, then i cant get the streaming to work at all, and if i get it working its like watching pornochannels in norway huge pixels and interrupting sounds. Its seems like the nic cant handle the amount of more data to send.

DB7000 testing

Non problems what so ever. Neither on scrambled or unscrambled

In the test i used originalcards

When i started to look into the matter and especially to see what kind of drivers the db 500 was loading i got a chock.

Actually i thought that the dreambox models had the same base (cpu, nic and so on) except for the bigger models that had som more goodies like usb ide and such
But the vital parts like networkscard should be the same, but there is a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE difference

when i looked in dmesg i find this.

DB7000

smc91x.c: v1.1, sep 22 2004 by Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
eth0: SMC91C11xFD (rev 1) at 0xc305e300 IRQ 28 [nowait]
eth0: Ethernet addr: 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
eth0: PHY LAN83C183 (LAN91C111 Internal)

and DB 500

ne.c:v1.10 9/23/94 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
Last modified Nov 1, 2000 by Paul Gortmaker
NE*000 ethercard probe at 0xc3060600:<4>eth0: interrupt from stopped card
00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
eth0: NE2000 found at 0xc3060600, using IRQ 25.

This makes sence, an old networkwhore like me who hav been working with this kind of shit many many years ago . Ne2000 compatible networkcards. Sorry but i have to say .. worst shit ever seen. And that experience i got from working with it , its only bad. NE2000 is only good for one thing. to fill up space in a storage. it works fine with small amount of data. but when it comes more data it lays on the back screaming for mercy and a screwdriver thru the chipset.

Then i start asking myself. How stupid dream-multimedia is? They try to save a couple of dollars on a already expensive box? [Edit on] Watch your language!! [Edit off]. i guess they just like to piss customers off. And since their customersupport sux in general anyway, i guess this is something we have to live with.

My advice on this.

Stay away from this junk called DB500 if you think you shall stream from it, buy the bigger models

And i guess this thread will be taken away by the moderators. but if they do it means that they cant handle critics. Come with an explaination on why you use this instead. And make a fix for it.

I must say that i'm a satisfied DB7000 user, but when i bought this DB500 and discovered how bad it actually works i must say that i'm reconsidering everything.

This adverts where it says that "You shall not underestimate the power of Db500" we know its a big big lie.