Laser STB-7000

Iam on my 3rd one as all the others have failed – Had to buy the 3rd lazer set top box as thats all thats available in Leonora ,the rest failed after about a year and now find it needs an update for the firmware Happy days

Time for Better Firmware Update Instructions? – I purchased this unit solely for FTA-TV, and like the earlier review by Man of Smoke, I can confirm the irritation I felt when after initiating channel search, all the discovered channel numbers started with "3xx." To overcome this issue, I had to download a firmware update but then I experienced difficulty in installing the firmware. I tried twice but the unit still failed to update. So I emailed Laser service and was pleased to receive a prompt answer that "if the unit is accepting the update then you should see a blue screen with a white dot progress line" - information which is not in the update notes. So I re-downloaded the update again and placed the .bin file in the root directory of my USB memory stick, making sure it was formatted to FAT32. At the upgrade screen the file, as before, appeared but almost greyed out. Despite this I went ahead and just waited. The screen flashed several times but then voila! the blue screen with dotted white progress line appeared. I then rebooted as per the instructions and all is now good. Still don't know why it worked that time but thankfully it did, so clearly patience is a virtue. Like Man of Smoke, I'm not interested in recording to, or playing from, an external USB drive since most FTA stations have a streaming catch-up service, but if I was, I'd want a USB port on the rear of the device as well as the front panel. And I don't use the unit for private streaming either. And don't bother searching for a physical power switch because there isn't one. On the plus side, HD picture quality is excellent and I found myself wishing that Aussie TV networks would broadcast more programs in HD, as does SBS. (Pity about the Ads.) So despite tha above, at $39 this STB is good value for money. I'd even pay more if the PVR feature was dropped in favour of SD upscaling!

Completely satisfied, would recommend – Completely satisfied, I would recommend this set top box to others. It does everything a basic set top box should do and more. I haven’t had any problems with it. I bought at big W for a great price and I’m thinking of getting another to use on an old tv I use for gaming in my spare room.

OK, but the incorrect Logical Channel Numbers (LCNs) detected make it difficult to select the channel you want to watch – Regarding the real-time viewing of FTATV is concerned, this my STB-7000 is working as advertised. The picture quality is good, the sound is good, & the Menu system for OK. As I don't use these machines for the recording or the playing of material from USB sources, I can't comment about that. All that said, my STB-7000 does suffer from two faults:

Fault One: the Logical Channel Numbers (the LCNs) that the box allocates to the TV channels that it detects are not the familiar TV Channel numbers that people know like 2, 22, 24, 7, 73, 9, 99, 10, etc. Instead of starting from TV Channel 1, & then going up to TV Channel 99, they start from TV Channel 350 & then go up, with no gaps, all the way through to TV Channel 388. For example, The first TV channel on the list, TV Channel 350, is 7 Brisbane, a few more TV channels up is TV Channel 353, which is 7mate Brisbane, then TV Channel 359 is SBS ONE, then TV Channel 368 is Channel 9 Brisbane, etc., with the last channel, TV Channel 388, being ABCTV HD. This means that unless the user has a great memory, the user will need to have a pre-prepared 'Cheat Sheet' in order to know what channel to select to get to their desired channel.

Fault Two: In the hope that a software upgrade might fix this problem, I downloaded & installed the latest software version from the Laserco website. While my STB-7000 appeared to accept the latest software update, SW Version 1.1.3, when I checked to ensure that the new software had been installed, the old software, Version 1.1.2, was still the software being used. I tried updating the software three times, with the same result being obtained each time.