Re: HDHomeRun firmware downgrades

[ddl@danlan.*com (Dan Lanciani)]

In article <Q_2dnYZauKzHXmbbnZ2dnUVZ_rqlnZ2d@xxxxxxx>, ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx (Robert Green) writes:
| "Dan Lanciani" <ddl@danlan.*com> wrote in message
| news:1341975@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| > Sometime after the version of firmware that I'm currently running
| > (20070131) SiliconDust has apparently added a lock to the HDHomeRun
| > to prevent the loading of firmware older than the current version.
| > Can anyone who has been following the versions tell me the latest
| > version I can load without being locked in?  SiliconDust won't say.
| > This lock makes it impossible to back out an upgrade if there are
| > application compatibility problems.
|
| Why would they do something that idiotic?

I don't know.  They have now responded with two different explanations
(one about different "factory calibration" and another about a new
firmware format that has the property that if you were to be able to
downgrade to the previous version it could "damage" the hardware).  They
also said that there are two classes and it's just that you can't downgrade
between classes.  But that doesn't seem to agree with a message from a user
who couldn't downgrade from a beta to the previous real release, both
well into the second "class."  The user is unable to make recordings longer
than 38-40 minutes.

|Are the DRM police after them?

I asked that and they said no.  They have been adding various phone-home
"features" which are supposed to be off unless explicitly turned on, but
one user reported that the device was hitting his firewall with outgoing
requests 300(?) times per day even though he had never enabled it to phone
home.  The firmware also got a lot bigger recently with no obvious significant
increase in user-visible functionality.

I find it hard to believe that they do not understand the debugging 101
rule that says that if a change breaks something the first thing you test
is undoing the change.  They claim that all firmware releases are completely
backwards-compatible so you never need to back out an upgrade, but this was
certainly not true in the past.  I think they must have a really good (for
them) reason for doing this and I'm concerned that it will turn out to be
a bad reason for users (beyond the debugging issue).

I was never really comfortable with the encrypted firmware (preventing a
quick "strings" from showing the latest command changes) but I understood
they want to protect their intellectual property from reverse engineering.
Taking that in combination with this new change, though, I must regretfully
withdraw my recommendation of the product...

				Dan Lanciani
				ddl@danlan.*com