{"id":358,"date":"2009-02-12T10:14:41","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T23:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=358"},"modified":"2010-01-28T15:30:08","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T04:30:08","slug":"finding-firmware-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=358","title":{"rendered":"Finding Firmware Information"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my previous post<\/a> I explained why it is important for me to report what firmware version is installed in some of the devices which I am reviewing. It occurs to me that consumer electronics manufacturers will need to come to terms with this as well.<\/p>\n

At the moment, some still make it hard to find out what firmware version their products are using. For example, for the LG BD300 Blu-ray player you have to load a firmware update onto a memory stick and plug it in, whereupon the unit will inform you which firmware it is currently running. For the Panasonic DMP-BD35 you have to navigate to an unconnected setup menu item and then press the blue key on the remote control.<\/p>\n

It perhaps isn’t surprising. The culture of consumer electronics has been that a company designs and builds a product to do a particular job. Its failure to do the designed job comes about through the product breaking down. In other words, not doing the job is a failure.<\/p>\n

They will have to accustom themselves to the information technology view, where software finalisation is an ongoing process. I downloaded a firmware for a Blu-ray player the other day and it was 95MB in size. That’s about ten times the size, from memory, of the Beta versions of Windows 95 I used to download (via a horrid 28.8K dial-up).<\/p>\n

I suspect that the coding of the firmware wasn’t particularly efficient. Still, 95MB is a large program, and it’s unrealistic to think that it will have no errors, nor room for improvement, at all.<\/p>\n

So a plea: please put the firmware identifiers in a straightforward information panel. No need to be ashamed that this is an admission of imperfection. That’s the way of the world now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my previous post I explained why it is important for me to report what firmware version is installed in some of the devices which I am reviewing. It occurs to me that consumer electronics manufacturers will need to come … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}