Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Sixth beta seems to be as good as the fifth one
Yes, another week, another beta - this time the 6th consecutive beta has turned up with a version number of 4.8.04-11. As ever, the installation instructions are on the Latest Firmware page and it seems to be another good release on a par with the 5th beta. I can still see an old bug of dropping live TV frames when early-exiting playing back a recording (I just had it when playing back tonight's Tour De France highlights recording - I used the stop button because I'd caught up live via skipping the ad breaks). Rumour has it that it fixes the Sky Go On Demand crashes that Sky subscribers had been seeing with the 5th beta, but since I don't have a Sky sub, I can't confirm or deny that.
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After finally installing this 5th beta late last night, I was almost "shocked" that it actually seemed to work quite well. Maybe Netgem have hired some decent programmers at last or perhaps they've actually started to QA the firmware prior to beta release (which they don't seem to do at all for beta or stable releases usually!)? I'll keep this beta on for a while and see how things go - it's the first time in a long time that I've started to have some hope that a stable release will actually be that!
ReplyDelete16 July 2011 13:53
Hi I cant get any of these to work I put the auto run and bin file on to a formatted USB stick (tried several sticks) the box says upgrading and the data light flashes. The screen says the current stable and shows that its upgrading to the beta version (tried them all) the "please wait upgrading" but no data light flashing. I then get failed on a "time out something went wrong". As I said I have used different USB sticks, I have reset the box, also formatted its hard drive and did a factory reset still same problem can you help me resolve this please?
ReplyDeleteNot sure why you posted my previous beta comment up first, Lifttech, but I did the upgrade (between the 4.8.04-10 and 4.8.04-11 betas), although I did decided to do a low power sleep and then I brought it out of the sleep with the remote power button. The 4.8.04-10 release I was running didn't seem to properly recognise the USB stick until the sleep/wake finally detected it.
ReplyDeleteMy USB stick was formatted as FAT32 (or "vfat" in Linux-speak) and I unzip'ed the two files to the top level and put the USB stick in the front USB port.
You do know you can upgrade via the Media Centre (navigate to the stick and click on autorun.html) and you may even be able to put the two files on a PC and upgrade them via DLNA (I haven't dared try that one though!).
Latest beta firmware still has the occasional issue of dropping live TV frames immediately after exiting playing the middle of a recording via the stop button - that's been in a quite a few firmware releases including the last stable one.
Well, at least Netgem or whoever makes the software for these boxes seems to be stepping up their game a little - five firmware updates in a month! I wonder why the sudden burst of support? Could it be related to a new box being released that uses the same firmware? I wonder how this effects the new UI release? The one thing that would really make the box more appealing to me is a HD UI.
ReplyDeleteThe current UI is a bit clunky in places and it's also a shame that two remote buttons I use often for the list of what I've recorded and what I'm about to record were an afterthought in later firmware releases - assigned to the cryptic light blue symboled buttons at the bottom of the remote.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few places in the current UI where I scratch my head - such as the bizarre "TODO LIST" that misses out about half the programmes you've set in the next 7 days and also Diagnostics -> USB, which seems to do nothing other than tell you there's some USB devices attached with their USB IDs - hardly a "diagnostic".
The new UI does look interesting, but I'd rather have some more fixes for the current UI first. The big question is - will some of the lingering bugs in the current firmware be carried across to the new UI firmware too? It would be pretty galling if that happened!