firmware updates

Stoke

I'm afraid this is no different to buying a mobile phone and it's murky water. When Ice Cream Sandwich (the Android version) was released, phone manufacturers were still selling obsolete devices with 2.3 Gingerbread on for well over 12 months. Fact is, without (at least) Ice Cream Sandwich or better, many apps are totally incompatible and Google has slowly phased out Gingerbread rightly so...

My point is, it didn't stop manufacturers releasing devices with 2.3 while 4.04 was available, and very few have actually updated them to the software available at the time of the device release.

Yet I don't know of anyone who was able to get a refund, or replacement on that excuse.

kwikbreaks

It was mostly cheap phones with low grade hardware that were on back releases once ICS was established. There were Chinese tablets being sold on 1.6 too. I suspect most were bought for children and will be busted by now anyway.

That said I still have a pretty old HTC Desire on 2.3 and don't feel especially cheated as there are still plenty of current release apps it can run. If the Bluray player I bought a couple of years back packs up during the next year for this reason I will feel cheated.

Nilrem

HoofeHearted wrote: »

I recall, some years ago, when "The Matrix" was released on DVD. It was using DVD technology that showed up problems in lots of players.

Can't remember if the manufacturers provided firmware updates to resolve this. Does anyone else remember this?

In some cases firmware was released that fixed it, in other not.

Both the DVD and Blu-ray spec whilst in theory were largely laid out in advance (well apart from the whole nonsense over profile 1 and profile 2 players), is hard to test for and work with as there are so many different models using different chipsets, different amounts of ram, and so many different programmes to author discs.
I know of publishers who ran into issues with such simple things as the subtitle tracks on their DVD's because they tried to push near the limit of the spec, only to find out that many models based on a particular chipset didn't like the subtitles changing that fast (or the number of onscreen subs the basic spec called for).


One of the problems with modern tech is that no one wants to pay the cost of long term support (and everyone seems to want the latest model at the lowest price).
When a device is sold for £50-100 it's not surprising the manufacturer might only support it for a couple of years after release.
Especially when (as is the case with blu-ray players) the cost of buying a new encryption key for them is, from memory very expensive for the manufacturer, and I'm not 100% certain a new one can easily be applied via a firmware update, as the organisation that runs the encryption system for the blu-ray spec is very tight with it* (I've got a feeling the firmware update might only be able to activate an alternate key already in the players bios).

In the ops case the player does what it was designed to do, with stuff that was around when he bought the player.
That means it's fit for purpose imo.
That it doesn't do one or two new titles doesn't override the fact that it does work with (presumably) everything from when he bought it, and will probably continue to work with most newer titles.



*Right down to apparently requiring all commercially produced discs have the encryption key in use, even if the publisher doesn't want to use encryption on their disc.

spannerzone

Stoke wrote: »

I'm afraid this is no different to buying a mobile phone and it's murky water. When Ice Cream Sandwich (the Android version) was released, phone manufacturers were still selling obsolete devices with 2.3 Gingerbread on for well over 12 months. Fact is, without (at least) Ice Cream Sandwich or better, many apps are totally incompatible and Google has slowly phased out Gingerbread rightly so...

My point is, it didn't stop manufacturers releasing devices with 2.3 while 4.04 was available, and very few have actually updated them to the software available at the time of the device release.

Yet I don't know of anyone who was able to get a refund, or replacement on that excuse.

I have to disagree there, not wishing to add fuel to this fire but with an older version of an Android phone it still does the most fundamental features that is expected of a phone, ie make phone calls / texts. I can see why the OP is annoyed that his blu ray player won't do the primary function that it was designed for, ie playing blu ray discs.

I am fully aware that technology moves on very quickly and so these things happen, time and time again, but I can understand the frustration. It does seem unfair that a relatively recent player won't play certain discs, i mean blu ray standard2 was finalised some years back and I don't ever recall seeing any player advertised as only compatible with current release discs.

I also got one of the early generation blu ray players that soon become obsolete as newer blu ray discs came out but luckily Sony did release a few upgrades atlthough the player was still a pile of poop in most respects.... I sold it on Ebay and got a much newer model and got on with my life.

spannerzone

HoofeHearted wrote: »

I recall, some years ago, when "The Matrix" was released on DVD. It was using DVD technology that showed up problems in lots of players.

Can't remember if the manufacturers provided firmware updates to resolve this. Does anyone else remember this?

Yes the Matrix DVD did cause issues for various DVD players and generally speaking all the manufacturers released firmware upgrades to cope. the matrix had some extra features that pushed the (then) interactive capabilities of each player to their limits (or put another way, it didn't quite adhere to the DVD standard)

The same thing happened with blu ray first generation players that soon struggled with interactive blu ray discs. This was due to the rushed release of Blu Ray by Sony to try and beat HD-DVD which was already released. Sony & the blu ray group released an unfinished blu ray specification that was update to v2 a year or so later. Gen1 players wouldn't be able to display the interactive content on newer blu ray titles.

Luckily blu ray players are dirt cheap so you have to consider them as 2 yearly chuck away item if you want to keep up to date and especially if you use the online features that most now offer like iplayer, netflix etc.

Quiet_Spark

spannerzone wrote: »

Yes the Matrix DVD did cause issues for various DVD players and generally speaking all the manufacturers released firmware upgrades to cope.

The Matrix was one of a few movies that was responsible for DVD Jon writing and releasing a program called DeCSS, without it we wouldn't be able to copy movie DVD's today.


Quite ironic that a movie about a computer hacker actually inspired someone to hack the DVD encryption system.