Setting up a Dreambox

If you are interested in watching live TV or playing videos from files we can recommend a small box called Dreambox.

The Dreambox was voted the best box for watching for many years, also because it has an extremely short delay while switching TV channels. For videos it has also the huge advantage that those can be supplied with subtitles in about any language on the planet. Check out our Windows software Atlas Subtitler which can add subtitles to a whole series with just 2 clicks. Nothing more required. With Atlas Subtitler you can do many more things, such as shift subtitle timings (synchronize them), improve subtitles, manage a list of movies you have watched, and much more. How can you profit from this? Here are the steps one by one:

1. Purchase of a Dreambox. We always recommend to buy the original Dreambox and not a VU+, because the Dreambox is the high quality original, while VU+ is just a low quality Asian copy. This reverse engineering and copying is very unfair to the Dreambox manufacturer who put a lot of work into the Dreambox design and still does. The Dreambox has been voted #1 by TV box users for years and this should be appreciated. The small differences of the VU+ often create incompatibilities with the original Dreambox software that will annoy users afterwards. So, better stick with the original.
   
   
2. We find that the older remote controls up to model RC10 were much better than the RC20 (sadly to say):
   
   
   
   We therefore recommend buying an RC10 in addition to the box. If you agree, please help Dream Multimedia making the better products in the future and write a short message like "Hi Dream Multimedia, the previous remote control RC-10 was much better than the new ones. Please change the design back to the old one in the future. Thanks for your understanding." to the contact form of Dream Multimedia. We did this already.
   
   
3. Purchase of a hard drive. It can either be one for the existing drawer or another one connected via USB-A. The drawer can hold a maximum size of 2.5-inch (DM 900 in the example). At the time of writing, the maximum storage capacity of 2.5-inch SSDs is around 2 TB. Since we had a negative experience with our Samsung 870 EVO 2TB, broken after 6 months, we advise against this series to be on the safe side. Installing the internal hard disk goes without screwing, simply putting int into the drawer provided and shoving it into the box.
   
   
4. Flashing the NewNigma2 image into the box. There are instructions for this on the internet. For most models it's done by holding a key on the box while restarting and then directing a web browser to the box's IP to upload the image. After that you have to install the Enhanced Movie Center (EMC) plugin. With the EMC you can watch movies very comfortably, but unfortunately it does not show the corresponding subtitle files. You should make sure that you have the latest version, because there are still a few bugs fixed (eg. the wrong progress bar) that are still in the version in the image (can change at any time). This is basically done with GithubPluginUpdater or otherwise by downloading the plugin from github (=OpenSource Server) and copying over the existing one. We have added a corrected and especially improved variant adapted for Subtitler in the chapter below. For example you will have the Rename function directly on the blue button. The plugin will end up in the box's folder "\usr\lib\enigma2\python\Plugins\Extensions\EnhancedMovieCenter". Don't forget to always make a backup of the old files before overwriting.
   
   To see the subtitle files and rename them easily we also recommend to install the DreamExplorer plugin. Again, an special variant improved for Subtitler is in the chapter below. The plugin will end up in the box's folder "\usr\lib\enigma2\python\Plugins\Extensions\DreamExplorer". If the subtitle files are not appearing in DreamExplorer, press the Audio button on the remote control. This will disable filtering for movies and the files will appear.
   
   
5. Make sure that the movies in the box are visible from the network. In other words, you make a file server out of the box. The newer images of the box software can already do this without any additional effort. If the image you are using cannot do this, install the Samba extension in the Dreambox. Again, this is documented in detail in various texts on the net. This is also possible with other images (Merlin etc.), but we did not test it. Presumably it all applies to the VU+ as well.
   
   
6. Open a command line window (e.g. with Windows app 'Tera Term' or Android app 'JuiceSSH') and enter this command:
   tune2fs -c 1 /dev/sda1
   This activates the built-in drive to perform a self-test with repair every time the box is booted. Very important, I once lost all the data on my 2 TB SSD due to a corrupted file system. Check out how you can avoid a corruption by power loss in this text here.
   
   
7. Install Atlas Subtitler on one of the Windows PCs or notebooks in the network.
   
   
8. Start Atlas Subtitler and go to the RemoteSubz setting. There you can add the top folder of the movie hierarchy of the Dreambox (eg. "Y:\movie"). Select the predefined 'Dreambox and VU+' as 'Player Profile'. Depending on the width of the connected TV, you can enter a smaller number at 'Max. Log width', down to 68. Finally activate and select the entry and press the button 'Copy Help File'. Confirm the dialog.
   
   
9. Optionally, you can go to the Settings->Dreambox/VU+ dialog in Atlas Subtitler and improve the position of the subtitles on the TV there
   
   
10. Now you can simply insert two capital letters and a space at the beginning of a video or folder name and the action will be executed. Take a look into the file Atlas Subtitler RemoteSubz Help.txt to see what the supported abbreviations are.
    
    
11. We recommend installing a fan as an optional extra. Here are simple instructions on how we successfully did this ourselves.
    
    
12. To be safe from data corruption by power outages up to a minute we recommend to plug it to our very cheap Atlas 12V UPS.
    

Improved Source Code for the Dreambox NewNigma2 Firmware

Atlas Informatics has made some improvements on a few of the Python files of the recommended software of the chapter above. These improvements make for example the handling of subtitle files like *.srt easier. Other improvements reduce the risk of so called Green Screens which abruptly stop the user interface and result in an automatic restart of the box. By using more careful programming these can be avoided. These improvements were also uploaded to the source code repository but sometimes it's hard to get these enrolled into the distributed firmware (sometimes there are irrational arguments in the community). You can download them directly from here, but there is no guarantee that they will work together with future firmware releases. It is advised to make a backup of the old source so you can go back to them if needed.

Last modification: 08/28/2024.

• Enhanced Movie Center (EMC) Improvements:
  • Renaming of a movie or folder directly with the blue button
  • Corrected renaming if umlauts (ie. äöü) are in the file name
  • Corrected renaming of folders
  • No green screen if renaming fails
    
    
• DreamExplorer Improvements:
  • If you have a text file open, for example a subtitle file: New function 'View End' on the blue button
  • Saving the current directory when leaving
  • Bigger widths of dialog elements for resolution 1920+
  • Avoiding a green screen if a file is missing.
    
    
• General Improvements:
  • \usr\share\enigma2\Nuke.Evo\skin.xml: Window with the character overview correctly positioned when renaming files/folders.
    
    
• Repairing the Progress Bar:
  • With the new image or if you update it automatically, you may get the version with the broken progress bar again when playing a movie. You can then simply copy these 3 files back to their locations and restart the GUI. These fixes stem from github, not from Atlas.
    

These files can just be copied over the existing ones after making a backup of the originals. The location in the box is basically inside "\usr\lib\enigma2\python\Plugins\Extensions", for skins below "\usr\share\enigma2".

Helpful Stuff

• Web Manual to the Enhanced Movie Center in German
  
  
• Efficient searching of directories on the Box: The Windows search is not suitable for this, as it can go round in circles and cannot be restricted to certain file types. Atlas has programmed a much better search for this: See String Hunter in Mighty Desktop.

Golden Tip

As mentioned here, I once lost all the data on my 2 TB SSD due to a corrupted file system. This happened after a power failure lasting about 1 second caused by a flash. To mitigate this, you should do the following especially if you have no UPS like for example the Atlas UPS: Open a command line window (e.g. with Windows app 'Tera Term' or Android app 'JuiceSSH') and enter this command:

tune2fs -c 1 /dev/sda1

This enables the built-in drive to perform a self-test with repair every time the box boots.

It's a pity that nobody had pointed this out to me before. Maybe it would have saved my data. That's why I mention it explicitly here.

More Stuff for the Dreambox

• Cheap UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) for the Dreambox
  
• Cooling Fan for the Dreambox