Firmware upgrades?

[cemeteryman69]

Is there anywhere to get firmware upgrades besides the manufacturer?? I have a Memorex, and they never update the firmware or answer emails. Anything less than a month or so old won't play.
Thanks for the help.

[Blu Titan]

Originally Posted by cemeteryman69

Is there anywhere to get firmware upgrades besides the manufacturer?? I have a Memorex, and they never update the firmware or answer emails. Anything less than a month or so old won't play.
Thanks for the help.

Negative on your question. All firmware updates for BD players come from the manufacturer. Why would anyone else bother to do it, since there's no money and considerable effort involved.

[cemeteryman69]

I had hoped that maybe the blu-ray disc manufacturers might have some help since it is their fault my player is now useless.

[crazyBLUE]

Originally Posted by cemeteryman69

I had hoped that maybe the blu-ray disc manufacturers might have some help since it is their fault my player is now useless.

I would press the issue every day by what ever means until Memorex came up with the firmware update !

[Blu Titan]

Originally Posted by cemeteryman69

I had hoped that maybe the blu-ray disc manufacturers might have some help since it is their fault my player is now useless.

I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, there're companies that do not provide good customer support.

[crazyBLUE]

One thing that bothers me is memorex new before they made A BDP that it would need to have Firmware updates

[solarrdadd]

im afraid that most machines today, that cost under 200, especially the ones under 100 are to be considered "throw-aways" given their cost you had to figure the company is making money somehow,well they are, in the form of little or no support. there are certain classes of all of our gear that are considered throw-aways. it's the compromise for getting something so cheap relative to other items that do the same job. i'm not saying it's right, i'm saying it's true. if you bought a throw-away, you've got to accept that if things go wrong with it, you might not be able to get much done about it in the way of tech support. companies that invest a lot in their product charge a larger dollar amount and some of the money from each unit sold covers tech support and R&D for the unit as well as future updates/firmware. that is the way i see things; again, i'm not saying it's the right way but it is the way.

[gonk]

Studios do need to do a better job of coordinating their disc authoring with manufacturers' hardware and with the BDA's standards for such, but it is impossible for anyone other than the manufacturer to address firmware problems in a player. No one else has the knowledge of the hardware and firmware, no one else has access to the source code for the firmware, and anyone else's version of the firmware would potentially invalidate a manufacturer's warranty as much as if you opened the case and swapped out the power supply for a home-made replacement. Blu-ray player manufacturers need to provide customer support that includes firmware updates to address newer titles that create compatibility problems.

Memorex is not developing these players on their own from a blank slate - they are working with a vendor (I'm pretty sure they're using Funai like a lot of others), so they should simply be leaning on their vendor to provide them with the same disc-related fixes that the vendor ought to already be providing to other customers who have built players on the same platform.

That being said, what matters at the end of the day is if Memorex is actually doing what they need to. You may be able to find some help by looking for a thread related to your specific model of player either here or at AVS Forum.

[Sherm]

Memorex firmware update is now available from the memorex site. July 2009 release

[cemeteryman69]

Yeah, I got that update, but I've already had 3 blu-rays released in late August/early September that won't play. Going through the board, I see several other people with the same issue.

My question now is, can any of these guys be trusted. At some point they will simply stop updating firmware so you will be forced to purchase a newer model. That never happened with VHS or DVD. Seems like kind of a ripoff.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by cemeteryman69

Yeah, I got that update, but I've already had 3 blu-rays released in late August/early September that won't play. Going through the board, I see several other people with the same issue.

My question now is, can any of these guys be trusted. At some point they will simply stop updating firmware so you will be forced to purchase a newer model. That never happened with VHS or DVD. Seems like kind of a ripoff.

Don't buy that Manufacturers' Products, look around for one that has the least amount of problems. Right now it looks like the Oppo has the big edge. Memorex is probably worse than Panasonic, but just stay away from those Players.

[syncguy]

Originally Posted by cemeteryman69

Yeah, I got that update, but I've already had 3 blu-rays released in late August/early September that won't play. Going through the board, I see several other people with the same issue.

My question now is, can any of these guys be trusted. At some point they will simply stop updating firmware so you will be forced to purchase a newer model. That never happened with VHS or DVD. Seems like kind of a ripoff.

This is possible. Can expect consistent support from large brand names than smaller players.

[Glassroots]

Does anyone upgrade their Firmware for the OPPO BDP-83 player using a USB flash drive? I just attempted to do this after following the instructions listed on OPPOs site and it says invalid firmware when I insert the flash drive into the bluray player. Upon looking at the data on the flash drive, everything seems correct the UPG folder is there along with the three bin files.
I unzipped the firmware file and everything but still the player doesn't accept it. Seems weird.
Any feedback would be great.

[tron3]

Complaints to the higher levels of the company sometimes produces results. It often goes ignored. You need to file with Consumer Affairs. Perhaps even the BBB.

When I have a problem with the phone company, I get responses when I file a complaint directly with the FCC. They don't ignore complaints providing they are legitiment enough to involve them.

[syncguy]

Originally Posted by tron3

Complaints to the higher levels of the company sometimes produces results. It often goes ignored. You need to file with Consumer Affairs. Perhaps even the BBB.

When I have a problem with the phone company, I get responses when I file a complaint directly with the FCC. They don't ignore complaints providing they are legitiment enough to involve them.

Large phone companies have different departments to deal with direct consumer complaints and FCC backed complaints. So most likely it would work when FCC backs the complaint. It is worth trying this as the last resort.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Glassroots

Does anyone upgrade their Firmware for the OPPO BDP-83 player using a USB flash drive? I just attempted to do this after following the instructions listed on OPPOs site and it says invalid firmware when I insert the flash drive into the bluray player. Upon looking at the data on the flash drive, everything seems correct the UPG folder is there along with the three bin files.
I unzipped the firmware file and everything but still the player doesn't accept it. Seems weird.
Any feedback would be great.

I haven't tried it on mine yet, but I did notice one difference with this release. All previous releases had the BDP-83.bin filename and this release uses BDP-83.BIN filename. The instructions also list the file as BDP-83.bin. This usually isn't a problem unless the OS is sensitive to upper/lower case for filenames. You may want to try renaming the extension for this one file to the lowercase variant to see it that solves the problem.

EDIT: Another possibility is that the player is sensitive to how your USB device is formatted.

UPDATE: The original file names worked just fine via a USB drive.

[prerich]

Originally Posted by tron3

Complaints to the higher levels of the company sometimes produces results. It often goes ignored. You need to file with Consumer Affairs. Perhaps even the BBB.

When I have a problem with the phone company, I get responses when I file a complaint directly with the FCC. They don't ignore complaints providing they are legitiment enough to involve them.

You are so correct Tron! I've been on board with BD since 2007, and since then the one constant that I've seen is the firmware issue. PS3 users are even having them now. I believe since BD is the HD standard - there should be a set standard within the BD to play the movie and the movie only - reguardless of the firmware update - You get your HD audio and your HD video. I believe the problem is the added "advanced" features that many people don't care about - they want to watch the movie! This is very much like PC's (that's why my first major platform for BD was a PC - if I'm going to upgrade I'd upgrade via a patch to a program on my PC - or buying the yearly program upgrade than having to chunk a $300.00 piece of equipment because the manufacutrer refuses to produce a firmware update forcing me to buy the latest and greatest piece of gear. I already do this with programs and Operating systems but I really don't have to - I usually get about 3 years + out of an OS)!
I think I might start a thread on movie playback standards - should there be a choice in the menus like
Movie - HD audio and HD video only
Movie - HD Audio/HD Video and whatever special features and so on.
The Movie - HD Audio/HD Video would be standard playback and skip all of the other fancy stuff.