Software Upgradeable - Your Opinion (1 Viewer)

[JohnSC]

I am in the process of deciding which A/V reciever to purchase. I like the idea of being upgrade the receiver for future formats etc. however am a little sceptical as I fear that manufacturer's would rather encourage customers to upgrade to their new model rather then keep their old one and upgrade. Has anyone had any experience in upgrading their receivers and should I place a high emphasis on software upgradability on my buying decision?

Your thoughts/experiences would be greatly appreciated.

 

[BillG]

In my opinion, the "upgradeable" claim is dubious at best. It costs very little to add the necessary circuitry and thus achieve one more check-off on the features list. The REAL test comes in seeing how many upgrades have been issued, what they do and how hard it is to apply one.
Two models of upgradeable units come to mind. The first is the B&K Ref20. Although billed as upgradeable, B&K has never issued a single upgrade for it. And they never will. They decided to do the Ref30 instead.
The Sony TA-ES9000 is a different example. Sony has issued a few upgrades, mostly to fix bugs. They have not done any feature enhancements such as HDCD support, DD-EX, DTS-ES etc.
Even Lexicon, the very embodiment of digital audio devices, has not issued much in the way of upgrades for their older equipment.
The problem of applying an upgrade is just as important. For users with Windows 9x computers, it is usually not all that difficult. Mac users often are left in the cold. And Linux users like me? Forget it! For me to apply an upgrade would require buying a whole new computer running one of those terrible Microsoft operating systems.

 

[Rick Radford]

>Two models of upgradeable units come to mind<

Add one or two more.. depending on how you count:

Onkyo 989/Integra 9.x.

 

[Legairre]

For bug fixes upgradable software is a big advantage over EPROM upgrades. I just wish more companies that have software upgradable gear would actually issue the upgrades. My next unit will probably be software upgradable, but will the manufacturer ever issue upgrades. Well that's anther issue.

 

[Jim_F]

The Sony TA-ES9000 is a different example. Sony has issued a few upgrades, mostly to fix bugs. They have not done any feature enhancements such as HDCD support, DD-EX, DTS-ES etc.

Maybe not those features exactly, but the 2.01 upgrade to the TA-E9000ES did add 6.1 Matrix, which sounds pretty good. There were other "EX" soundfields added which I dabble with from time to time. If I remember correctly, bass management was expanded as well.

I still don't think of software upgradability as a major selling point, though. The lifetime of most units seems to keep getting shorter no matter how upgradable they seem to be. I don't know how many times I've thought a piece would be with me for a long time, only to upgrade it within a year or so.