XMS-888 - Mpeg4 - Firmware?

[skaman]

I've been working to get our main patching utility, Patcher, compatible with these DivX ROMs and I think the current version 2.0.8 should work okay. Otherwise, you can edit the data/code using a hex editor and recompress the blocks using GZIP.


Sorry, the latest Patcher 2.0.8 doesn't work on the XMS firmware. I've asked the guy currently working on the utility to look into resolving problem.

Late!

[The Man]

I have tried using this DVD player at my brothers place with his TV (Panasonic TC-51S15A) and have to put it to Multi System for it to play my movies in colour. Why would it be doing this? PAL displays black and white. The player and cd's works perfectly fine on my Sharp TV in PAL. Any ideas??? :confused:

[andw]

Could be... Press the 'Video' button on the remote. It has 3 modes.
On my PAL / NTSC compatible TV, when the xms is in 'RGB' mode it comes out black & White. 'SVHS' mode and 'YPBr whatever' mode are colour.

[jokiin]

I have tried using this DVD player at my brothers place with his TV (Panasonic TC-51S15A) and have to put it to Multi System for it to play my movies in colour. Why would it be doing this? PAL displays black and white. The player and cd's works perfectly fine on my Sharp TV in PAL. Any ideas??? :confused:


What colour system is his TV set to?

[andw]

What colour system is his TV set to?
I think jok11n's guess is better, if the TV itself is set to NTSC, then a PAL image sent to it will come out B&W

[Pocket]

Sorry, the latest Patcher 2.0.8 doesn't work on the XMS firmware. I've asked the guy currently working on the utility to look into resolving problem.

Late!

Great work Skaman~!
thanks for the info

Pocket

[skaman]

Sorry, the latest Patcher 2.0.8 doesn't work on the XMS firmware. I've asked the guy currently working on the utility to look into resolving problem.


Problem resolved. Thanks to sdetoni, Patcher 2.0.9 now successfully decodes the Loader table for the XMS ROM. The memory mapping should now work properly and allow code/data patching. I've only tested the Loader Decoding function so be careful to check your output before you flash update. I'm sorry but I'm too swamped to do more extensive testing at this time.

Get Patcher from the MIPSX SRC Yahoo Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mipsx_src

Late!

[jokiin]

Problem resolved. Thanks to sdetoni, Patcher 2.0.9 now successfully decodes the Loader table for the XMS ROM. The memory mapping should now work properly and allow code/data patching. I've only tested the Loader Decoding function so be careful to check your output before you flash update. I'm sorry but I'm too swamped to do more extensive testing at this time.

Get Patcher from the MIPSX SRC Yahoo Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mipsx_src

Late!

While I appreciate your effort and I can see that being able to customise your own firmware is desirable I think that if it is available to everyone that there is a potential for problems. If the rom is not correct it will leave the player inoperative, this is NOT covered under warranty.

I don't want to sound anti-mod at all, but I think that a better approach might be to have a colaborative effort with a few people from here or the yahoo groups or whatever and work toward a common modded firmware that can be evaluated, trialed or whatever and then made available for all rather than there ending up being multiple firmwares and the potential for people to kill there own players and end up losing by having a dead player and no warranty. I'm all for having a firmware that can do everything that the chipset is capable of, but I don't want to see people killing players due to inexperience either.

In the right hands I think that it would be possible to get a better firmware, sometimes it's so hard to get the factory to get it right as they just don't understand what is wanted (the language barrier is a problem, some things just don't translate well).

Any thoughts on this are appreciated.

[skaman]

While I appreciate your effort and I can see that being able to customise your own firmware is desirable I think that if it is available to everyone that there is a potential for problems. If the rom is not correct it will leave the player inoperative, this is NOT covered under warranty.

I don't want to sound anti-mod at all, but I think that a better approach might be to have a colaborative effort with a few people from here or the yahoo groups or whatever and work toward a common modded firmware that can be evaluated, trialed or whatever and then made available for all rather than there ending up being multiple firmwares and the potential for people to kill there own players and end up losing by having a dead player and no warranty. I'm all for having a firmware that can do everything that the chipset is capable of, but I don't want to see people killing players due to inexperience either.


I agree 100%. Firmware modding is not for novice users. Back in the good ol' days of socketed chips, recovering from a bad flash was relatively easy - pull the chip, reprogram, insert chip back into socket. The migration to surface-mounted PSOP/TSOP has been a great deterrent to firmware experimentation.

Since some members expressed interest, I wanted to provide them with a start and point them to the already developed utilities/resources. I'd hate to see someone start from scratch and spend tons of time trying to break apart the ROM. Then again, maybe I should've made it sound more difficult to discourage newbies from attempting patches.

Here's my warning:
Don't attempt to patch your firmware if you do not understand the ESS code. A bad patch will kill your unit. In the event of a bad flash, you'lll need to desolder your Flash chip and manually reprogram. Unless you have expertise in handling surface-mounted PSOP/TSOP chips (or willing to spend $$$ to have someone do the work), don't do it!

Considering the number of ESS DivX units on the market and the immature code, I think pressuring ESS through the OEMs to develop updated code is the best option at this time. Maybe once the core code has matured an updated "OneFirmwareForAll" project for ESS-6xx8 units becomes viable.

BTW, jok11n - if you manage to get your hands on any of the Vibratto-S/II documentation (aside from the Press Releases), I'd love to see it.

Late!

[The Man]

I will have to get him to check it Monday when he gets back home. Thanks fellas, will update when he has checked.

[andw]

Here's my warning:
Don't attempt to patch your firmware if you do not understand the ESS code. A bad patch will kill your unit. In the event of a bad flash, you'lll need to desolder your Flash chip and manually reprogram. Unless you have expertise in handling surface-mounted PSOP/TSOP chips (or willing to spend $$$ to have someone do the work), don't do it!

Considering the number of ESS DivX units on the market and the immature code, I think pressuring ESS through the OEMs to develop updated code is the best option at this time. Maybe once the core code has matured an updated "OneFirmwareForAll" project for ESS-6xx8 units becomes viable.

BTW, jok11n - if you manage to get your hands on any of the Vibratto-S/II documentation (aside from the Press Releases), I'd love to see it.

Late!
1 Agreed
2 Agreed
3 Me too...

Especially the part about the OEM's pressuring ESS, as I've said before, it would appear from the info on sites with ESS based DivX players, all of the same issues keep coming up...
It would appear that the base firmware delivered to the manufacturers is extremely raw, and lacking in a lot of stuff that the chip supports.
Take the XMS-888 for example, it would appear that the manufacturers expected this to be like any other DVD player that they sold...
1. take the firmware provided by the chip manufacturer
2. change the splash screen for each individual wholesaler
3. send it out the door.
If this is the case, and ESS have sent out extremely raw firmwares, it would explain why all the manufacturers early firmwares were besetted with problems. OSD issues that are in all the early releases etc.
I think firmware for DivX players should be thought of more as firmware for a PC. There are dedicated BIOS producers like Award etc. Sometimes, big name PC makers will make their own BIOS, but most of the clones use Award or similar.
Now in the case of the ESS based DivX players, they should be shipping firmware to the manufacturers that is more complete... Sure let them change the splash screens, but most of these manufacturers would be just that, manufacturers, not firmware writers.
ESS are the best ones to know how to write code for their chips.
On the aspect ratio issue with .avi's (16:9 image not right on wide screen) that seems to be an issue for other ESS based players, it is obvious that the chip is capable of doing Y-axis manipulation, as every DVD player does this when it is required to display an animorphic wide screen DVD disc as letterbox on a 4:3 screen. (plus it has to add the black bars in at the top and bottom).
If I were one of the multiple manufacturers, I would be hammering at ESS right now, as it is reflects badly on the manufacturer(s), not ESS when there are firmware issues.
It would seem that Forums worldwide are showing up that the issue is more with ESS, not the manufacturer.

[andw]

If you were to continue the analogy with the PC BIOS, Award do not supply a very buggy firmware to the PC manufacturers and then say to them 'You fix it'.
Imagine how long a company like Award would last if the BIOS didn't support the Hard Disk interface on every motherboard, and they left each individual manufacturer to sort it out seperatley.
The PC manufacturers would fast be looking for someone else to write and supply their firmware.

[malcez]

We have been told not to experiment with our firmware and leave it to the manufacturers. I agree - we don't want to fry our players.

The unacceptable waiting time for firmware 1.2 to come out has led to some people here wanting to proceed by themselves.

As far as I can see, if the XMS-888 is going to survival market pressures, it will require:

A NEW FIRMWARE EVERY TWO WEEKS

We should be up to firmware 1.9 by now.

If the manufacturers only speak Chinese, find someone who is conversant in both English/Chinese to mediate!

Whilst I understand that the firmware 1.2 is to have as many of the "wishlist" items as possible, there are some very urgent items such as low audio bitrate compatibility which must be addressed immediately.

I suggest that many of the XMS-888 owners would be happy to update to a firmware 1.2 as soon as possible to make the unit "roadworthy" rather than continue to wait weeks and weeks for something which is "all-encompassing".

Any thoughts?

[Wazza886]

im thinking of getting the XMS-888 2morrow and I wanted to know what was the zooming problem ppl were having and would it effect my normal TV 51cm Flatscreen.

If possible plz post some pics on what this player looks like on your TV playing a DivX or Xvid file and even a DVD.

thanks guys.

[andw]

im thinking of getting the XMS-888 2morrow and I wanted to know what was the zooming problem ppl were having and would it effect my normal TV 51cm Flatscreen.
If possible plz post some pics on what this player looks like on your TV playing a DivX or Xvid file and even a DVD.
thanks guys.
I don't think you will have a problem with a 'normal' 4:3 screen, here is a 640x352 Xvid on a 34cm 4:3 screen.
http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~wweb/DSC00829.JPG (that's not a particularly good photo, just done quick, so the aspect ratio on a 4:3 could be seen)
As you can see, it is letterboxed.
I do most of mine at 576x432, this gives a nice crisp image, and fills the screen (original starting as animorphic widescreen)
The problem comes with 16:9 widescreen tv's, as the player outputs the image exactly the same as if it was on a 4:3 screen, resulting in images that are stretched out. (this affects avi files, not DVD's).
So, bottom line, with a standard screen, you should not have a problem.
(someone on Whirlpool posted that the player was no longer on special, and back up to $249 - you'll have to see if you can talk the sales guy down)

[Wazza886]

the picture in that link doesnt look right the left side of the picture is higher is that your TV or the player ?

[jokiin]

We have been told not to experiment with our firmware and leave it to the manufacturers. I agree - we don't want to fry our players.

The unacceptable waiting time for firmware 1.2 to come out has led to some people here wanting to proceed by themselves.

As far as I can see, if the XMS-888 is going to survival market pressures, it will require:

A NEW FIRMWARE EVERY TWO WEEKS

We should be up to firmware 1.9 by now.

If the manufacturers only speak Chinese, find someone who is conversant in both English/Chinese to mediate!

Whilst I understand that the firmware 1.2 is to have as many of the "wishlist" items as possible, there are some very urgent items such as low audio bitrate compatibility which must be addressed immediately.

I suggest that many of the XMS-888 owners would be happy to update to a firmware 1.2 as soon as possible to make the unit "roadworthy" rather than continue to wait weeks and weeks for something which is "all-encompassing".

Any thoughts?

I don't really see that the waiting time has been unacceptable, there has been a small amount of time increase due to some outside influences (various people on annual leave, trade show, ESS input and Chinese New Year) but the factory is working on it and that's what matters, the pressure was put on the factory for the first firmware updates as quickly as possible as there was a number of issues that needed addressing immediately (player lockup etc), the goal in getting this right is that further shipments of these players will have updated firmware before they are shipped. It may be that plenty of the people that frequent these forums are tech savvy and would have no objection to installing new firmware every two weeks but to the 90% of customers that buy these players that aren't so savvy, updating more than once is not desirable. I personally don't want to see too many more firmwares done before it is considered to be finished, hopefully that will be no more than two firmwares away. At the moment I see the main issues being low bitrate audio and zooming of non standard sizes to fit the generic 16:9 and 4:3 formats correctly, anything else that can be sorted beyond this I would consider a bonus. Keep in mind that the factory that produces this player has been quite supportive of the firmware issues and genuinely wants to resolve them, some players I have had that have had issues have been from factories that offered no support and did nothing to rectify things (needless to say they aren't around anymore)

I have 12 DVD players from various manufacturers ranging from a $99 Omni to a $2200 Sony and have owned quite a few more also and each one has something about it that you wish was different but each one also has it's merits, trouble is they can never be all things to all people. I think if you expect it to be perfect in every way you will be dissapointed, I've learnt over the years that no player is perfect and it has nothing to do with price either.

[jokiin]

(someone on Whirlpool posted that the player was no longer on special, and back up to $249 - you'll have to see if you can talk the sales guy down)

$249 is rrp, the player is still listed at $188, this may change at some time but for now at least it's still at the old price

[davidf]

AndW,
That wouldn't be a frame from a season 3 episode of 24 per chance.

You should of put up and image from something like Tru Calling then we could all look at Eliza :)

[LastActionZero]

Hi all.

My first post was about a problem playing a DVD that appeared to be damaged well inside the start of the track (between hole and start of track).
It was almost as if the player was trying to 'read' the damaged section near hole, then giving up with "no disk" message.

I coloured in the inner section of the disc and it played.
I figured this confirmed my theory that the player was trying to check for a start very close to the hole.

But since then I have found that there are other discs that it is having problems with.
A rental that I tried had problems, and that appeared to be somewhat scratched inside the track. It played fine on the PC.

Now I'm trying other discs that are failing, though to look at them they all look in great condition (no scratches or damage to speak of).

This is the second player that I have tried (returned the first one because of this) but it is giving me similar results.

I can't beleive I'm so unlucky as to get two 'dodgy' players, when everyone else is not finding any problems.

All my burnt DVDs and CDs have worked without a hitch.
It is only with commercial DVDs that I'm having problems.

Anyone else experienced this?

Cheers,
Laz.