Blade BM7000s

For an enthusiast’s receiver, HD reception is a given these days, and blind search is a must, as is comprehensive antenna connectivity and full DiSEqC compatibility.

But is PVR functionality strictly necessary, let alone the ability to play back externally recorded video files? How about common interface and an embedded CAM? Where do you draw the line in the specifications wish list?

Fortunately, the BM7000s from Blade media provides all these functions as standard, and does so in a box that looks stylish in the living room and is stable and simple in operation. But best of all, the BM7000s achieves all this for a £150 price tag.

Build and connectivity

Only 26cm across, the BM7000s is smaller than it looks from its pictures. It’s solid in construction and fairly simple in styling, with a square plastic front panel broken up by the small four-digit display in the centre (for time in standby and channel number when on) and three silver-bronze shiny spun discs, which are the power push-switch and two-way and four-way rocker switches for basic menu control. It’s all a bit retro, but none the worse for that.

A fold-down flap on the right-hand side conceals a common interface slot and card reader for the embedded Conax CAM.

The BM7000s’s remote control handset is also black, sleek and stylish. Although it’s a bit plasticky, it is slim and nicely shaped to fit right in with the handsets for your big name TV, DVD player, and so on. It’s pretty sensibly laid out too, with buttons for different functions grouped together and sensible use made of different shapes and arrangements to help you find your way around.

The back is busy, with a wide range of connections. There are two F-connectors for the LNB input and loopthrough. The BM7000s has just one tuner but this can drive a DiSEqC 1.2 or USALS motorised mount, so you needn’t be stuck for satellites. It can also operate a DiSEqC LNB switch, either level 1.0 or 1.1, so you could connect to as many as 16 satellite positions this way.

Because this is an HD receiver, HDMI is the main AV connection with YPbPr component video too. The BM7000s is full HD (1080p) capable but it’s unlikely that you’ll find any full HD broadcasts. Blade also claims that the BM7000s is 3D compatible as well, though 3D compatibility is not hard to achieve – even the ageing Sky HD box manages that.

SD output is by way of TV and recorder Scart sockets and separate composite video output. There are also stereo analogue audio and optical S/PDIF digital audio outputs.

Data connections are an RS232 serial interface (largely redundant), USB for upgrades and storage (a second, convenient front panel USB would have been useful), and an Ethernet LAN connector for internet access.

Setup

Had the manual mentioned that the BM7000s setup wizard requires the Page Up/Down keys to move through the steps, it would have been easier. Once that has been discovered it’s all pretty straightforward.

The onscreen language and clock settings are first made and then the LNB/satellite positions programmed for LNB type, power, local oscillator frequency, and so on, and the DiSEqC switch port or motorised mount positions set. The menu screen includes a useful graphic to show the DiSEqC switch arrangement selected.

Each satellite to be received is then scanned for active broadcasts, either one at a time or together in sequence. There are several scans available. You can search a satellite according to the transponder tuning details stored in the receiver’s database, or search a single transponder (using details from the database or entered manually) either specifying the PID details or not. The search can be limited to TV channels only, or to any free-to-air broadcast.

The BM7000s is not very fast at scanning satellites (especially compared with the Technomate range of receivers, which share some heritage with this machine), taking over five minutes to search Astra 19.2°E and even longer for Hot Bird.

There’s also a blind search to step through all the frequencies available to search for broadcasts not in the database. This is naturally a slow process, although the size of the frequency step can be varied from 1MHz to 16MHz and the search limited to one or the other or both polarisations, to control the time taken – but the BM7000s does well, completing a blind search from scratch of both polarisations of Astra 28.2°E with a frequency increment of 4MHz, in under 16 minutes.Once found by the blind search, ‘new’ transponders are stored in the database so they can be used in the next normal scan of the satellite. However, the transponder database cannot be manually edited to account for broadcasting changes; the only way it can be altered is by blind search or downloading a new database.

Basic use

Channels can be selected by entering the channel number or by stepping through the channel list with the Up and Down buttons. For channels less regularly accessed, there’s an onscreen channel list. This operates with a double button-push system: highlight the channel you want in the list, press OK once and it is displayed in the inset window, along with details of what’s on at the time; press OK again to switch to full-screen viewing of that channel.

Against each entry in the channel list is the channel name and number, an indication of encryption, and the current/next programme (after the transponder has been visited or all the data downloaded manually). The list can be displayed by satellite and in order of name, transponder or encryption but unfortunately there’s no separate list or even indication of HD channels. The channel list can also be manually re-arranged by renaming, moving or deleting individual channels.

There are 16 favourite channels lists (news, movies, cartoons, hobby, and so on) and these can be renamed. A recall button switches to the last channel accessed and you can also select your channel for viewing from the ‘mosaic’ of thumbnail icons – with two, four, six or nine consecutive channels displayed on screen.

The BM7000s’s EPG can display the programme information in two modes – a schedule for one channel or a small grid of the programmes for five channels, with an inset of the channel’s current broadcast and details of the highlighted show, up to seven days ahead (precious few channels provide more than now-and-next data in the open DVB standard but Blade is promising a UK seven-day EPG in forthcoming software).

Highlighted programmes can be set for viewing at the allotted time or recording (provided there is storage connected). There’s a sleep timer and the option to set a regular wake-up time and channel.

The BM7000s also offers the usual soundtrack choice, subtitle and teletext options, picture freeze and zoom functions, video output format selection and a calendar and games.

PVR and multimedia

With a portable hard drive or memory stick in the USB socket, the BM7000s becomes a fully fledged PVR – and unlike many PVR-ready machines, it has a decent array of PVR functions.

The single tuner limits it but the BM7000s gets around this as best it can. While you are recording a channel you can record a second, and even watch a third from the same transponder (the channel list shows which channels are available) but the likelihood of three wanted channels sharing a transponder are small.

Live broadcasts can be paused but the reception is not buffered, so it takes a fraction of a second to kick in and you cannot rewind back before you pressed pause. However, when a recording is underway, you can start to watch before it is finished, although when you return to a recording watched half way, it starts again at the beginning.

Playback offers half or quarter-speed play, fast-forward and rewind up to 32x normal speed, bookmarks, and a progress bar which can be dragged to jump to any point of the recording. Unusually for a PVR-ready machine, the BM7000s can even do rudimentary edits on a recording – a marked section can be deleted or copied.

Blade makes much of the BM7000s’s multimedia capabilities. From USB storage, it will play MP3 music files, show a slideshow of JPEG images, or play video files in MPEG, TS, DivX, Xvid and MKV formats (including 1080p files).

Sadly there is not (yet) provision for streaming video across a LAN and in this test, connecting the Ethernet socket would only crash the receiver.

Performance

Whether it’s the 1080p capabilities of this machine or not, the picture quality on even a 720p TV is excellent. From the HDMI socket, HD channel images are extremely sharp and lively, more so than those from many HD receivers. SD images too are very high quality with very few edge effects or upscaling artefacts.

Although the images through the Scart sockets are, of course, less impressive they are well up to the standards of any other SD reception, and recorded video (both broadcasts and downloaded material) is reproduced faithfully, losing none of the original quality.

It’s a bit disappointing that the sound, from either the digital or analogue outputs is a little dull and bland, but this is only a minor quibble Geoff Bains

Verdict

It’s hard to seriously fault this receiver. It produces really excellent quality reception of HD and SD broadcasts, connects to a wide variety of antenna setups and boasts a good blind search. It also provides more than adequate PVR recording facilities, plays a range of media files from a USB, and has both common interface and Conax CAM provision. The only real downsides are the absence of a front USB, the slowness of searching and the (so far) useless Ethernet socket. But let’s keep this in perspective; this receiver costs £150 – that’s something of a bargain.

PLUS
-Excellent image quality
-Decent PVR functionality
-CAM and CI slot
-Good value
Minus
-No front USB
-Ethernet and media streaming not available n Slow satellite scan
Build    ★★★★★★★★
Setup    ★★★★★★★★
Searching    ★★★★★★★
Navigation    ★★★★★★★★★
Performance    ★★★★★★★★★★
Features    ★★★★★★★★★
Value    ★★★★★★★★

86%


No LNB inputs: 1
LNB loopthrough: Yes
DiSEqC: 1.0/1.1/1.2/USALS
No. channels: 10,000
Selectable FEC: No
Symbol rate range: 1000-45000
Blind search: Yes
Linux: No
CAM: Conax
Common interface: 1
Teletext: DVB decoded and VSI embedded
EPG support: DVB now-and-next, 7-day
Timer: 8 events, unlimited period
Hard drive: Via USB
UHF modulator tuning: N/A
Software upgrade: USB download
Data ports: RS232, USB, Ethernet
AV outputs:
SD out: TV Scart (composite, RGB), VCR Scart (composite video), composite video
HD out: HDMI, YPbPr
Audio out: Stereo analogue audio, optical digital audio