Putty is popular ssh / telnet client and in this tutorial for Windows we will setup it in a way that you will be able to connect to your Enigma2 receiver. As a bonus you will be able to connect without using any passwords. This tutorial is working not only for Enigma2 receivers but also for other Linux-based devices.

Lets start. First download Putty application from official website and install it.

Once you install it, open it. You should get this window. My “Saved sessions” list is already populated with devices that I connect to.

It may happen that you will not be able to connect with SSH to your Enigma2 receiver. Why? Because password for it is not set! You can fix this by using telnet. You can see this option below “Connection type”. Enter IP of your receiver and select Telnet. Click “Open”. You get this window:

Type “root” and you should get promt for password. For brand new image install there is no password. Just press enter and you should be able to login to your box. Next step is to type “passwd”. With this command you will type new password in order to use ssh. Password will also work for telnet if you will use it.

You can use Putty now to connect to your receiver using SSH. Open Putty again and type IP of your receiver again. Select SSH as “Connection type”. You can already click “Open” and new windows should open with prompt for user and password. Type “root” and password you selected earlier.

I suggest that you save every device/IP you plan to use regularly. As you can see I have quite a lot of devices, three Vu+ receivers, etc. Just enter name under “Saved Sessions” and click “Save”. All settings should be now saved under desired name.

Lets continue with setting up Putty to be able to use SSH without passwords. You will now have to use another small application which you get when you install Putty. Its called PuTTYGen.

Open it. You should get this window:

You need to hover with your mouse over the blank area. While moving your mouse/cursor, key is generating. Interesting approach … When key is generated, you get this:

Click “Save private key” and save it to your hard drive. Now copy the whole key for last step which will be at the end of this tutorial – very important! Go back to Putty and click on one of the saved sessions (in my case duo1). Then click “Load”. You will see that IP appears. This means settings are loaded.

Pay attention to the left side now:

Click on “Data” under “Connection”. You will get this:

Type “root” in “Auto-login username” field. Now search for SSH on the left side and click it. It will expand. Now click “Auth”, you should get this:

Click on Browse and select key that you saved before. Now go back to “Session”:

Click your device that you are setting up and then click “Save”. Settings are now saved!

Last step

Go back to the PuTTY window and connect to your receiver with old user/pass method. Then type:

mkdir .ssh

then

cat > .ssh/authorized_keys

Now paste the text (private key) that you copied earlier in PuTTYgen app, by right-clicking inside the window. The key text should appear. Press ENTER to end the input line, and press CTRL-D to close the file. You are done. You should now be able to connect to your device without inputing username and password.

Any comments? Visit my forum: https://www.satnigmo.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-use-ssh-without-password-complete-putty-tutorial-for-enigma-2.3499/

HD+ German satellite package is now gratis (free) for 3 months due to “coronacrisis”. If you have some old and expired HD+ nagra smartcard you can activate it again. I had HD02 card (caid: 1843) in my drawer and it works! You have time till 28.04.2020 to activate your card and get 3 months for free.

What you need to do?

Just follow instructions on their website: https://www.hd-plus.de/themen/zuhause

Here is also some text in German if it will be easier for you to understand.

Du bist ein ehemaliger HD+ Kunde? Dann schenken wir dir 3 Monate Fernsehen in brillanter HD- und UHD-Qualität. Alles, was du dafür brauchst, ist dein HD+ Modul bzw. HD+ Receiver mit HD+ Karte oder dein HD+ TVkey.

Deine Vorteile:

3 Monate HD+ gratis – keine Registrierung, kein Abo

private Sender in HD- und UHD-Qualität

Freischaltung endet automatisch

Teilnahmebedingungen:

Beginn der Aktion ist der 07. April 2020. Sie endet am 28. April 2020.Die Aktion richtet sich an ehemalige HD+ Nutzer, die ihr TV-Signal via ASTRA Satellit (bzw. über bestimmte Kabelnetzbetreiber (siehe hdplus.de/faq)) empfangen und neben einer digitaltauglichen Satellitenempfangsanlage, welche auf einen von HDP genutzten Satelliten ausgerichtet ist, die nachfolgend aufgeführte und mit einem HD+ Logo gekennzeichnete HD+ Hardware nutzen: HD+ Modul bzw. HD+ Receiver, jeweils mit HD+ Karte, oder HD+ TVkey

• Teilnahmeberechtigt sind ausschließlich natürliche Personen ab 18 Jahren mit ständigem Wohnsitz in Deutschland, die bereits Nutzer von HD+ waren und die gegenüber HDP keine offenen Verbindlichkeiten haben.
• Nicht teilnahmeberechtigt hingegen sind Nutzer, die den HD+ Service während des Aktionszeitraumes bereits freigeschaltet haben, sei es im Rahmen einer kostenlosen Freischaltung im Zusammenhang mit dem Kauf von HD+ Hardware oder im Rahmen einer Freischaltung gegen Zahlung eines Serviceentgeltes.

Hello visitors!

I reactivated forum again, maybe it will be useful again in the future. I bet that the most visited section will be IPTV one.

Enjoy!

I recently acquired top of the line Vu+ satellite receiver. Before that I was struggling with Duo2 which was partly damaged, it was also randomly freezing which indicated motherboard problem.

I then decided for Duo4k which has ARM type of CPU and should have superior media support. I was wrong. There is not much info on English forums (more info available on German ones – here for example) because receiver is quite new and also not cheap. Not a popular choice by SAT and IPTV enthusiasts.

Here is table from vuplus-support.org forum which indicates what was changed between BCM chipsets regarding video codec support (ARM64 is the one which is used by Duo4k):

As you can see, latest BCM chipset used in Duo4k does not support old codecs. More information about these codecs:

• VC1: Designed for Windows Media Video 9 from Microsoft 2003
  
• WMV and WMA are Microsoft implementations of VC1
  
• MPEG-4 Part 2: developed from 1999, used in DIVX, XVID, QuickTime and others, h263 compatible.
  
• VP6: developed in 2003, is mainly used in Flash video.
  
• VP8: developed around 2008 as successor of VP7.
  
• SPARK: h263 implementation, developed around 2002.

The most problematic is lack of old DIVX/XVID support, because there are many older movies and especially series which are only available in this format (.avi container). Avi container can still work fine, but it depends on codec used. You can also have .mkv files that wont work properly!

What about audio support? Well, even here there are problems. DTS downmix for example doesnt work. I do not know about DTS passthrough because I only use stereo speakers. This is the biggest problem regarding audio support, because DTS is widely available. There might be other not supported audio codecs.

What is the conclusion? Price cutting of Broadcom sadly affected our newest ARM based Vu+ receivers. At the end of the day, these receivers are really only STBs and not media players. It is just a bonus and for better support you need to use dedicated media player.