Comag: Porty II

Your Views

Comments (19)

Alex Jones, Pembrokeshire on June 12th, 2005
AKA "The Lidl Box" due to the fact that the majority of these boxes sold in the UK are from Lidl's. It's quite a good FTA box with transponder lists of the majority of satellites. You can show or hide Encrypted Channels and sort channels by Satellite or A-Z. There have been some reports of these boxes overheating but provided the box top is not covered and it is placed in standby when not in use I have not found this a problem. Overall an easy to use and cheapish FTA digital satellite box.

Vincent Lo, Hertfordshire on June 21st, 2005
I'm only mainly going to list the bad points of the box: The response of the box is pretty slow when controlled by the remote control, and sometimes doesn't respond at all if you zap too quickly. There's not much point in remembering channel numbers if you intend to add more services and/or sort the list. I don't believe you can manually allocate channel numbers. Even favourite channels are ordered automatically in an integer-incremental fashion. The radio function isn't the best if you plan to surf. Audio "fades in" after you select each channel meaning you having to wait for a bit. It seems a bit of a pointless "feature", really. It's apparently for Disecq functions, which is a bonus, but I've not been able to try this out yet. However, it's cheap and I love it for that!

Nick Burman, Orpington, GB on June 21st, 2005
The Porty II is my first satellite reciever and works very well at 28E. It didnt have some of the transponders, but a handy feature of the box is that you can add/remove transponders from the list provided. Did so and my channel count is around 180/250. Radio is a good function, I like the fact it fades in, so as to not to damage your speakers if they are set too high. Very well recommended, as Vincent mentioned, it can be a bit dodgy when operating by remote control, but only at far distances... (up to 6ft away) Very Good box..

David Craggs (aka 2cvbloke), Lancashire on June 23rd, 2005
This for me is also my first proper digital satellite reciever and I love it. The signal meters respond immediately (unlike a certain satellite company's boxes...) and have a dinging sound, which is actually from MS Windows 3.1/95 as are a few other sounds my box has played, the auto-fade is, as Nick states, very handy for when the HiFi's volume is turned up a bit too high, the LNB passthrough is rather handy as I also have an Analogue reciever which I use when not pointing the dish at 28.2E as well as a sky Digibox when I am pointing at 28.2E. All in all, it is a very good box, and as a kit with the dish etc it is very good value for money. Let's hope Lidl sell them again in the future!!!!

Terry, Belfast on June 24th, 2005
This is also my first non sky digibox and so far so good! I am pointing the dish at 19.2 east and was wondering if it would be fine to add a dual LNB to my dish and receive another satelite through the porty box??

Ally Sloper, Eastbourne on July 23rd, 2005
I bought one of these from Lidl's on the Ile de Noirmoutiers during the Tour de France. It overheated (terminally) in circa two minutes.

Dermot, Ireland on August 6th, 2005
this is a good cheap box and easy to set up but the remote is useless

Wyn Lu, Surrey on August 9th, 2005
It is a good value for money FTA box. The LED clock is of good size and clear but does not keep the time correctly. Probably I have to point to Astra to get updated?

Aaken Schmidt, Bonn on August 23rd, 2005
I use mine in a camper on 12V and have no complaints. Yes it is slow but I suspect that is to keep the power consumption low. One niggle is the mains lead stays attached and is a pain - a detachable figure of 8 connector would make it much tidier when used off 12V or even a completely external power supply.[BTW my box runs quite cool by comparison to some. The hot boxes are probably on 220Vac and not 12Vdc.] Picture quality is well up to boxes costing double. Dish is a bit small especially when watching BBC in middle europe so I use a 60cm one.

Max Smith, Galway, Ireland on September 5th, 2005
A great FTA box much faster than a lot of rivals I have 3 LNbs feeding in and very fast sat switching. Picture quality is good and sound is great on music channels,they are very scarce now but much better than the current one they are flogging. All in all great value for €99.

Ivan, Derbyshire on October 20th, 2005
For 60 quid, you can't go wrong. Have used this box on both 12volt and mains at home and as far south as the Algarve with absolutely no probs at all. Picked up astra 1,2 and hotbird using the heath robinson sat finder that comes with the kit and the box's built in signal meter in about 5 mins. The only prob I've had is that hotbird will only store about 100 channels. All in all a great little bit of kit. 10/10

Mick, Sheffield on October 23rd, 2005
Never had satellite before I bought this in France for £60. Although instruction book in French (which I don't speak) managed to get it going in caravan in a couple of hours. Used Astra1 and got a view English channels including Sky News at time of London bombings. Back at home have bought larger 80cm dish and get Hotbird and Astra2 fine. Box locked up but speaking to Comag's support desk in Great Yarmouth was told how to delete a High Def channel and again works fine. Great value but where are all the decent English channels?

James, London on January 5th, 2006
ok, where do i start? this receiver is slow with remote, slow to find satellites, locks up frequently, picture and sound quality is not as good as other receivers, channel change is slow, gets hot quickly (i don't have anything on top of it, so ventilation is good), does not find all the channels- the list goes on! But, at the end of the day it is cheap!

Paul, Liverpool on February 21st, 2006
Bought this box on eBay as my first proper receiver. It's an all round good box. I've only come across three problems so far, it's slow when used with the remote, the remote seems to lock up a lot (three times in six hours) and the channels list is pretty awkward to edit to suit yourself. Other than that, it works great, although it may end up back on eBay and a Technomate being bought in its place.

Kaz Szatkowski, Northamptonshire on March 24th, 2006
Just installed one to drive dish through DisEq motor. When on station, picture and sound good. Remote control very unreliable making it difficult to set up. Don't like the way merely scrolling through the channels list looking for next station automatically selects that station and worse still, sends move signals to the dish motor. Scrolling through the channels list totally confuses the machine and it gives all sorts of screen messages about motor movement that may or may not actually be happening. To be fair, as a mobile receiver and used with portable dish the equipment is fine. I would not recommend its use with a motorized dish. As seems to be the case nowadays, the instruction book falls very short of user friendliness. Technical authorship continually fails to keep pace with advances in technology. My rating is based upon the fact that the receiver has motor control as a stated feature and in that application it fails to impress.

Andy, Lancashire on April 8th, 2006
this is a good portable satalite system but i found it hard to setup with compus provided by comag

SDPorter, Cwmbran on May 15th, 2006
I purchased this box (COMAG SL65) in Lidl for my redundant 40cm SKY Dish.The manual claims it is Diseqc 1.2 & GOTO X compatible. I have just installed a Jaeger DG120 motor. It certainly drives the motor, cos the manual is c***p it is n't too helpful in setting this feature up. I expect once I've overcome these set up issues to be happly viewing stuff from H to H. I echo the comment below about the annoying tendancy to change satellites if you flick through channels. But as I paid less than 40 quid for the box with the expected feature I'm not too upset

norman wake NORTHUMBERLAND, U.K. on October 13th, 2006
I cannot fault the quality or performance of the 'porty'. Purchased from a Lidl store in UK. I then installed the unit in France. It took a little patience, after which a wide selection of UK. channels could be received perfectly. I intend buying another for my home use.

Alice Molloy, Ireland on January 18th, 2007
can anyone tell me where I can buy a remote control for the Comag: Porty II satellite system