Basic help on cams please

[John T]

I know what a cam does and am looking to a Dragon. However I do not fully understand the relationship beween:
Dragon Card
Loader
Access Card.
First do I need all three, if so is that game set and match? If anyone can please point me in the right direction I will be delighted, spent ages searching to no avail.

 

[Leee]

for Dragon, you will have the CAM and will likely need a loader card (FUN7) and a programmer.

You program the card and place the card into the CAM. Through the CAM menu on your receiver, you upload the new Predator firmware onto the CAM.

Usually Dragon needs no access card - unless you have a real subscription card already.

Looking at what I spent on Dragon (now called T-Rex btw) and FUN7 and programmer (as well as receiver), I could've actually got the little Dreambox as you can load modules on that to do the same job as Dragon.

What do you want to achieve with your setup?

 

[John T]

What do you want to achieve with your setup?

Thanks Leee, I wish to set up a system similar to SKY+, so a PVR with dual receivers also, I thought, Dragon cam and the Sky card I already have. Apart from those three items is there anything else needed, eg cables?

 

[Leee]

I would not rely on Predator supporting NDS given that 3.22 removes this support. Also you do need a real Skybox to keep the card alive, apparently.

Don't you love them, huh? ;)

Consider Dreambox 7xxx with HD btw. Possibly the most flexible but perhaps daunting if you're scared of *nix and the command line...

 

[John T]

Thanks Leee for your help, as I said in the other thread I will have a think. By the way, this time your avatar did not blind me!

 

[misterminibus]

I can confirm an active sly box is needed I have a dragon and a sly card in it and every month or so it stops working on astra 2 and I have to insert the sly car in the sly box for the night for it to be updated and the put it back in the cam.
However the latest software for the dragon is pred 3.22 and the nds has been removed nds means you can use you sly card to view your subscribed or free to view channels and so you now loose itv 1 2 ch4 & ch5 but retain the bbc one's as they are fta the only way you can perhaps get round this is to use pred 3.21 and update the keys so your sly viewing will still work.
Does that help or just confuse matters?

 

[John T]

SNIP is to use pred 3.21 and update the keys so your sly viewing will still work.
Does that help or just confuse matters?

Strangely (I must be learning) I do understand that. Now, in therory, I do know what to do, however I have a Smartmouse SA Serial Programmer (Com 1/2 interface) and am totally unable to get it to communicate with my Fun7 card, indeed I am unable to communicate with the programmer itself. I have scoured the Net for software to drive it, tried quite a number of programs but none of them work, any ideas please?