The Bigsat Golden 1CR (manufactured by Golden Media) has that diminutive price tag (it’s even available for less) but packs a remarkable specification. This isn’t a high-definition receiver and there’s no trace of PVR about it, but it will drive a decent antenna setup and even has a Conax CAM built in for foreign pay-TV aficionados.

 

Build and connectivity

The Bigsat Golden 1CR is as small as its price. The size of a small hardback book, it is not stylish but nor does it offend. The front has more logos than usable features, but there’s a small four-digit display, power and signal lock LEDs and a card slot for the CAM. Unusually, except for the Power switch, there are no buttons.

 

The remote is rather tacky. It’s shaped to fit in the hand but it’s small and not that comfortable to use. The button layout is good for the (relatively) few functions the 1CR has to offer. The back of the machine is remarkably sparse given the small area size. There is one LNB input with no loopthrough output – unlikely to be a huge problem for most users but it’s rare to see no loopthrough these days.

 

 

The standard-definition output is via a single Scart connector (composite and RGB) or the separate composite video phono output. 

There are also stereo analogue audio outputs on phono and an S/PDIF digital audio output. However, that’s it – no S-video, let alone an upscaled HDMI output, nor even a VCR Scart socket. The 1CR also has no USB connection for either software upgrade (RS232 or over-the-air downloads take care of that) or PVR storage addition.

 

Setup

The 1CR’s single LNB input supports DiSEqC switches of level 1.0 and 1.1 and both DiSEqC 1.2 and USALS motors – so it can cater for a complex antenna setup. The satellites to receive are set up first, selected from a list. Inconveniently, the 1CR has them all selected when first switched on so most must be deselected or deleted to leave those you actually want/can receive.

 

Then the receiver is programmed with the LNB LO frequency and the LNB switch or motor setting to access each satellite before the satellites are scanned. This can be done individually or all selected satellites one after another.

 

The 1CR offers two satellite scans – the normal database scan and a blind search. Either can store just TV or radio channels, and just free-to-air channels, and the database scan has a network search option too. The blind search has no parameters to set (frequency range, increment and so on) and in use is just another search, but it’s effective enough, finding plenty of active transponders not in the database and storing them for future database searches.

 

The database can be edited to add, remove or alter transponders stored, and from here you can also search an individual transponder but you cannot enter PIDs. Although search speeds are not the fastest ever seen, they are by no means slow and the blind search in particular is pretty nippy – especially for such a cheap machine.

 

Basic use

It is in everyday use that the 1CR’s corner cutting is most evident. The channel list, for example, is basic. The channels stored are listed, altogether or by satellite, with a $ symbol next to those that are encrypted. There is no way to step through the list a page at a time and the list can’t be reordered by channel name, network or encryption, except by manually editing the list to move channels around. But the 1CR does include a mosaic function to show nine channels onscreen at once, and a useful last-channel recall button. 

 

There’s also a string search to find a channel by name. This will search for every occurrence of a sequence of letters (ignoring the case, even though you can set this while entering the string) in the channel names, and works very well. The receiver also has eight favourite channel lists, which can be renamed and populated with any channel – although the process to do this is about as tedious as can be imagined.

 

For each channel that you want to put into one or more favourites lists, you have to select it in the channel list editing screen with the favourites mode engaged, then select which list or lists it’s going in, then exit back to the channel list to find the next one (without any means to skip through the list).

 

The 1CR displays the usual now-and-next info for each channel and also has an EPG, although this is unlike any other; it uses the DVB seven-day EPG data but displays only five days. Programmes are displayed (five at a time) for each of the next five days from one channel (also listed five at a time). The Info button displays the highlighted programme’s synopsis and you can set the timer with a single button press from the EPG. The 1CR also offers such luxuries as a choice of transition between channels, programmable menu transparency, and Tetris and Othello games.

 

Performance

The 1CR is ‘only’ a standard-definition receiver but it produces a pretty good picture quality, so far as its RGB and composite outputs allow. Given a decent signal source and a good TV, the images are remarkably crisp and clear with strong colours and little video noise.

 

Sound from this receiver is very pleasing for so cheap a machine, and it’s good to see (or hear) the digital audio output to take full advantage of this.

 

Verdict

This receiver will not win prizes for its wealth of features. The everyday navigation is poor and the connectivity basic. But it does have a Conax CAM, is fully DiSEqC-compatible, manages good search speeds, and performs well enough. So it’s hard to really criticise a receiver that basically works for so low a price. 

 

 

 

Ratings

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