Review of Vu+ Solo by Stardust

Review of Vu+ Solo​

The Vu + Solo is created by a corean company Vu Plus , already established to have created older brother Vu + Duo with twin tuners. Let's see what are the peculiarities and characteristics of this product, which in a few months has already gained a good market share and especially in important development team, being a perfect combination of excellent performance and very low cost.



You will find Vu + Solo packed in a cardboard box than from the outside does not show much, if not the specific characteristics of the product. It’s down with corpulent cardboard that is an optimum benefit for transportation, with a package so strong in fact, our decoder will be protected from any impact. Inside the box you will find: receiver, remote control, batteries, the instruction manual and HDMI cable, all carefully and individually wrapped.

Technical characteristics​

My personal opinion is that the appearance of the box is very pleasant. Compared to Vu + Duo in fact it looks a bit 'less Spartan with an appearance much more accurate. On the left there is a circular glass that contains the remote control sensor, and three status LED, green, orange and red. On the front you will find five buttons, which are very useful if you do not have near you the remote standby, ch +, ch-, vol +, vol-.





The reclining door conceals a generous endowment for a decoder so ecnomic: 2 common interface, a cardreader conax embedded, and a USB 2.0 on the front that is for sure the strength of this decoder, if we consider that it’s one of the few in its class to possess it.



On the back, the supply of the connectors are rich and generous. From left, the BCM7325 DVB-S2 tuner, serial port for any emergency update , a scart.



The central part is the heart of the decoder: a reset button, HDMI, ethernet, and USB 2.0: this ons is multi-functional that will give us the opportunity to add hard drives, usb pen drive, digital terrestrial tuner , wlan, all functions that we shall see in detail later.



Further to the right , the generous rear panel Vu + Solo is completed from the output component (please notice that the direct competitors such as dreambox this kind of output is present only on the l DM8000 mode), 3 RCA audio video, optical digital audio output . The big lack is unfortunately represented by the absence of an on/ off power button, but it must be said and emphasized that after the first update , we won’t miss it. Vu + Solo is stable and functional and we'll hardly have to pull the plug due to a problem. The link is easily carried out for almost any video device, it could be a CRT television, a projector, LCD, Vu + Solo always have the right output you will need.





The remote control is undoubtedly the biggest surprise of this decoder. Seeing it on the net I was worried, but I realized that it is the most beautiful and valuable part of this decoder. The **** are small but very precise, the switch on the decoder is a real bomb and it would never happen to press a button with working. The remote, even if pointed in the direction completely opposite to the decoder, will always be able to do his duty. I've never really seen anything like this on other brands of decoders, you can hardly find a remote control, precise and responsive as that of Vu Plus



At a first look inside what you immediately will notice is the absence of a plug & play tuner. On the Vu plus he tuner is in fact an integrated part of the motherboard. You may also notice that everything in the box is neat, clean and well-studied: separate power supply of the motherboard can be easily replaced in case of failure, and the front cam and the card reader completes the inside equipment. There is no fan installed on this box, so it will always be quiet, and the temperature inside will never be a concern. In the test I have done, even after several hours of using Vu + Solo it remains always cold, the heat is practically very little and small amount that is product is dissipated very quickly by the slits. The hardware has the maximum of the votes

This is the complete details of hardware of the decoder::

Open-Source Linux Enigma2
Processor Broadcom 333 Mhz MIPS
BCM7325 DVB-S2 Tuner
128MB NAND Flash/256MB Ram
MPEG2 / H.264 decoding Hardware
2 x Common Interface slot
1 x Smartcard-Reader (Conax embedded)
Ethernet 10/100 Mbit
2 x USB2.0 (1in the fronta/1 on the rear)
1 x V.24/RS232
HDMI Output
Audio / Video cinch out
1 x Scart
1 x YPrPb
1 x S / PDIF optical digital
1 reset button
Size: 28cm x 20cm x 4cm (width / length / height)

Tests of the Vu + Solo​

Promoted the hardware part, now we will analyze in detail what this decoder is able to offer in terms of daily use. It is in this that Vu + Solo gives the best expression of itself.

The uptading unit, a task that the people less pratical are afraid to do, has been simplified. You just have to put in a pen drive your own firmware, which you need to place in the front usb slot of + Vu Solo. Within two minutes the uptading is completed, and we will be ready to use our decoders. While the programming, the LED will turn orange (lecture) and red (writing) and at last it will be flashing green, to indicate that the transaction is completed. All this without using to often and uncomfortable web interface, procedures to be followed to put the box in flash mode.

In this technical test I have used as an image the latest Blackhole, which brings out the maximum performance of this product. Within a few minutes after a first initial configuration, the product is ready for use. The boot is very fast and the decoder, carrying a 333mhz cpu, provides very satisfactory performance.



The DVB-S2 tuner has a very good performance . The channels that could be SD or HD, they are always displayed rapidly, the signal is always stable and on high levels, and there are no problems tuning failure or whatever, that are instead some of the problems of competitors.



The USB digital terrestrial tuner is undoubtedly the most special feature in our vu + together with the blackhole. In addition to the classic inside tuner, we can assemble at any time on a external tuner using the usb slot of the decoder, by simply selecting from the menu the correct driver and installing it. The drivers for the tuner are developed constantly and are always created some new ones, thanks to constant Blackhole team that provides an impeccable functionality of this feature. Once you have installed the drivers, the USB tuner will appear in the menu as a common internal tuner, and we can proceed to search for channels. No mysterious disappearances of the sound, no delays, no problems. With Blackhole + Vu everything is as it should be, and the tuner works perfectly if it’s internal or external, and with hardware decoders, we will be able to watch digital terrestrial channels in HD, even if the tuner we will install does not provide tuning of digital terrestrial channels. It should be specified that the function of external USB tuner is not the only prerogative of Blackhole, but it is thanks to the Blackhole that we have the guarantee that it will work, the Blackhole team works with a lot of efforts so to ensure the maximum number of compatible devices and integrating them with extremely facility. In the screenshot in question I also installed an Avermedia A867.



The network configuration is done not only through the classical LAN port, but also through wireless. Although vu+ does not have wireless lan inside, nothing is impossible: we can integrate it just like we do with the digital terrestrial tuners from the outside. We just insert a pen drive with a chip ZD1112 or RT73 compatible with Vu +, to obtain besides the classical panel for setting of LAN, another panel WLAN. Solution clearly preferred by all who have no chance of passing LAN cables, or who want to save money for the purchase of powerline adapters.



Vu+ Solo is not provide with the possibility of adding an internal hard disk, but this is not a problem. We can assemble at any time an usb hard disk, and again Blackhole will help us. The only thing we have to do in fact is enter the hard drive into a USB port, and from the panel devices manager, format the device and perform the mapping of it in / media / hdd. Within three minutes, our usb hard disk is installed and working perfectly! Without using uncomfortable ESATA that require additional power but more importantly spending more money being that the ESATA boxes are not easy to find as the USB protocol.



The versatility of blackhole with the panel manager devices will let us use simple pen drive as storage for our records, for example in the picture that is illustrated here I have used as a hard disk a 4GB pen drive. Therefore it is not strictly necessary to use a harddisk to store our records.



Vu + Solo is also very good as a media player. With high-definition files like mkv is perfect, no problems whatsoever and we can run smoothly even large files. There are still some minor problems with divx , that often triggers, but it's just a matter of internal drivers that will surely be fixed from Vu Plus, being the company working constantly to improve the product

The cardreader conax embedded used on Vu + Solo is very functional, the card is insert comes completely and once the door is closed it will be completely hidden from view. We would never encounter any problems caused by heat or high voltages that could burn smartcard, the card removed from the decoder will always be fresh without burnings or blackening on the chip.

The picture and sound quality, is in line with the competitors, actually it should be pointed out that on Vu Plus you won’t have a low audio problem on HD channels, on the contrary, they have a perfectly aligned volume as sd. On the video we will have an infinite number of parameters, so we will be able to adjust the image to our taste.



The wide blue panel allows us to access a big amount of options, whatever we want to do with our Vu +, we can do it. Cron manager, advanced devices, servers, samba, cifs server, nfs server, openvpn, usb tuner panel are just some example of what Vu +can offer as equipment with a team picture of the Blackhole.



Of course with all this characteristic an advanced screen graphics could not miss, the most interesting of Enigma. We will see on screen all the information we want to know during the simple zapping. Resolution of the channel, the frequency, which coding are present on the channel, the program that is on air on that moment and the next one, the signal received by the satellite dish, from which satellite we're getting the signal, from which tuner we are viewing it and much, much more.



You can also receive weekly epg for all channels that we want, even for large providers, and unlike of other images, you will not need to install any external plugins. It 's all already integrated, and Blackhole is the only one on the square to provides such a service already built in.



Overall Product Rating:

Channel change speed: 8
Ease of Use: 8
Equipment Hardware: 8
Links: 9
Remote control: 10
Quality Audio / Video: 9
Software features: 9
Temperature: 10

Conclusions
​

Is it possible to ask anything more from this decoder? I think not. You can have Vu+ Solo with 250 € more or less, and you can enter into a universe that up to this moment has required the expenditure of much higher amount of money. Currently this product wins on all fronts, for the hardware level such as quality of components and equipment, and software thanks to the team as Blackhole, known from all and real fans as the ultimate decoder for linux based. Highly recommended!

Stardust