HD-DVD Player Returns (1 Viewer)

[David Allen]

I worked for a company that bought a lot of BD/HD-DVD players of various makes and models. I was in charge of doing all the firmware updates. Let me just say this- anyone on HTF should have the savvy to be able to do these. Some of you guys are real fear-mongers. Burning discs seems very low-tech, and will confuse and annoy average-Joe's, as well as geeks. Downloaded straight to the player is nice, but still kludgy. PS3/Wii firmware is a breeze, like doing Macintosh updates is. When all consumer electronics devices are that easy, people will be more than happy to do it. That being said, there should be a provision in all warranties to fix bricks at no charge.

 

[Gaurang]

Back to the thread: I just bought mine Toshiba A30 HD DVD Player!!! I figure, if nothing, it will be a great upconverting DVD player and plus I can always grab the HD DVDs at low price whenever available.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

I almost bought an A3 today. It was the only one in sight in Future Shop, and an open box item. I decided against it just in case it was bricked.

 

[RickER]

Hell, i bought mine for the $499 it came out at. Yes, it was a touch buggy when i got it. But after my first firmware its a champ. I love it. I think its had 3 updates since i got it. I just go to the Sony site, and they send me a disc. I even had to ask for one two times. It came broken. It only takes 3 or 4 days to get it in the mail, and about 15 minutes to run it. Easy as could be, and the machine works great!

But i do agree, common folks would say whats a firmware?

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Sounds downright un-American.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Wow. I'm glad I did the firmware upgrade to my Panny DMP-BD10 BEFORE I read this thread!

Those are some pretty scare thoughts!

I doubt I would have gone ahead and done it--even with a disc supplied by the manufacturer!

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I only used the mfr-supplied firmware updates for my HD DVD player; there are just too damn many things that can go wrong with online downloads or ISO burns. The benefit is that I ended up skipping some firmware updates that had bugs because they didn't send out the CDs until after the firmware got finalized....thanks to the ISO burners who acted as beta testers for me.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Update: bought an A30, but haven't done the firmware update on it yet. My one ISO burning app was destroying CD-Rs faster than I can spit, so I may give it a shot with ImgBurn before giving up. I don't have an ethernet connection in the basement, which rules out firmware that way, and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your POV) my current network is wireless and Toshis don't support wireless. In any event, I sent off the card in the box for regular firmware updates by CD, so I'm not overly worried.