XMS989 Firmware status

[jokiin]

For anyone that has an XMS989 and is wondering about the current state of play for a firmware update I have started this thread. The thread will be closed and will only be re-opened anytime I have any info on what is happening, and then closed again. If you would like to kept in the loop on what is happening subscribe to this thread (remember that email address you used when you signed up?) and anytime the thread is updated you will get an email telling you that the thread has been updated. Sorry guys but I don't have the time to respond everytime someone asks what's happening with the firmware, subscribe to the thread and you won't need to ask, you'll get notified, how good is that?

The current status is as follows,

I have supplied the factory 6 cd's worth of test files, these have been passed to their engineers.

I have notified them that the OSD is an absolute priority and should be the first thing that is rectified.

They have a list of the other things that have been requested over the months, no need to ask if your whim will be attended to, whatever I can get them to fix, I will.

I phoned Hong Kong tonight and spoke with the overseas sales manager (he is the guy I have to deal with) and he indicated that the hold up is with his own engineer who has not been replying to his email requests.

I enquired if the hold up was with MediaTek engineers or his own and he confirmed that is their own engineers that are the holdup.

He has indicated that he wants to have a firmware update to me by the end of this month.

He stated that if the firmware was not done by then he would escalate the problem and request a fix from MediaTek, this costs them money so it is treated as a last resort.

If the firmware does turn up in time as promised it will still need to be beta tested to make sure that they don't break something else in the process before it is released.

There is no need to offer to beta test, I have others that can do this and there is no fear of them ending up with a broken player if things go south.

If it checks out ok after testing it will be made available within 12 hours.

I hope this thread works to everyones advantage, I believe that it will, but am open to suggestions if it doesn't seem to work, you won't be able to post here of course as the thread will be locked.


I'll update whenever there is any news.

[jokiin]

Ok a small update, I just recieved an email which was sent from the engineer to my guy, my guy has forwarded this onto me. Not fixed yet but we have some acknowledgment of actual progress for a change. The technicians update was as follows,

Gordon,蠟疑ㄐ

I have tested your discs,and the Divx 5.02 ,Xvid 1.02 can be playback normally!

and I have a new software, but it still has some problems,so I'm keeping testing!

Next week I will send you a new software!!

Best Regards!!

[jokiin]

Ok, time for an update. I recieved a new firmware at about 2am this morning, a number of things fixed but DVD playback got screwed up in the process. I have been back in touch with Hong Kong this morning and let them know what happened and it is back with their engineers. I have also provided them with the relevent information re firmware version info of our player in case there is some hardware mis match with their test rig that they are using, I have also provided a copy of the original firmware from our version as a reference. Hopefully it won't be much longer and I will have a finished version available for all. Once I do I will open this thread for comment as I will need feedback on any problems discovered, anything broken etc with the firmware update. I will need feedback pretty quickly if anything else is wrong to get it rectified, I will also make the original firmware available on request if needed by anyone, hopefully nothing will go backwards from where we are though.

[jokiin]

Not much of an update as such but I have received confirmation from my contact in Hong Kong that their engineer is looking at the bugs that we identified with the firmware that they supplied and they are working on it as a priority, they have indicated that it shouldn't take them as long this time to get it sorted. Of course that will need to be tested and confirmed before release. I will keep the thread updated with any info as I get it.

[jokiin]

Just spoke with my rep Gordon in Hong Kong to get an update, their own engineer could not rectify the fault with DVD playback and the player has been sent to MediaTek to get the firmware sorted, this means a slightly slower process but should ultimately lead to a better result. I'll post back in the new year when I get an update on the progress.

[jokiin]

Quick update, not good news though. I received a new firmware but it still has problems with DVD playback and is back with the engineers again, no update as yet on how long before they get this rectified, when more details come to hand I'll update the thread again.

[jokiin]

Ok, another small update. Turns out the problem the factory has been having is that the sample unit that they had been testing on is not identical, they have requested a sample back so that they can test on our exact hardware. I have arranged to have one sent to them already and will advise once I have some more info on the progress.

[jokiin]

Ok, another update on how things stand at the moment and what has been happening in the mean time. A fresh XMS989 has been sent to Hong Kong so that the engineer has the exact player that we have so that the firmware can be tested and confirmed to be working before they send it to us, they had been testing on what they believed was the same player but it turned out to have some minor hardware differences which were enough to break DVD playback, that’s the bad news. The good news though is that the improvements that had been made to AVI, Xvid, Mpeg4, DivX etc playback are good and will be worth the wait.

Further good news is that in the interim while all this frustration has been happening with the factory in getting this firmware sorted there has been some work going on locally to provide a modded firmware based on the original version to work around the biggest single complaint, the OSD during playback. Several weeks of hacking, tinkering, learning has gone into this and there is now available a firmware based on the original shipping version that has no OSD counter and also has the added benefit of long file name support. This for want of a better term is an authorised unofficial firmware, installing this firmware will not void your warranty, not following the directions and breaking your player due to incorrect procedure will though. Read the update instructions, re read them and if you are unsure about anything, ask.

Thanks go to Andw for spending many hours on this (feel free to start an Andw praise thread :D ) There is also some other things that are being worked on in the firmware and when closer to being completed they will be announced, be patient, remember good things come to those who wait.

Once we get the completed firmware from the factory and it is tested there are plans to do an authorised unofficial version of it also, with the long file name support and a few other nice features (particularly for you subtitle fans ;) ), more details will be made available once it’s done, but that still may be a few weeks away.

Please be aware that modding firmware is not for the uninitiated, it’s time consuming tedious work and has a very real chance of breaking a player permanently and also voids the warranty, I don’t want to encourage anyone to go messing with the firmware, just be thankful that Andw has had the time and the inclination to do this, I supplied an XMS989 to Andw as a donor so that he didn’t have to risk breaking his own player, before anyone asks to have firmware modded for other MediaTek based players, be prepared to buy him a player before you even ask if he will do it.

Details of this release, the modded and original firmware can be found over at www.ausdivx.tk

A seperate feedback thread will be started for the firmware if anyone wants to post feedback.

Edit: feedback can be posted here http://forums.eyo.com.au/showthread.php?t=90972

[jokiin]

Ok, time for another update, I received yet another firmware last week and DVD playback was working again but we lost all the improvements that had previously been gained with AVI, MPEG4, XVID etc, frustrating to say the least :mad: Since then I have been back on the phone to Hong Kong several times trying to get some clarity on the situation, what I’m asking of course is to get the improved playback that they provided without breaking anything else in the process. I have provided some detailed info along with some screen shots, sample firmwares and a bunch of other stuff and have had the whole lot translated into Chinese so that there is no communication problems between my contact and the engineer that is working on this. Getting this translated so that it is grammatically correct and the message is not lost during the translation takes hours but hopefully it will do the trick, I had to do this once before with another manufacturer and it turned out to be the only way to get the right result, hopefully it will do the trick this time also.

I’ve asked for them to indicate their expected progress during the next week once the engineer has read my notes, I’m back in Hong Kong in two weeks time and will meet with them while I am there regardless of whether they have fixed it by then or not. Once I have more info of any kind I will update the thread accordingly.

[jokiin]

Ok, update time again, I have had a few meetings with Gordon, his line manager and their engineer over the last 3 days in Hong Kong and I seem to be getting through to them at last, at the first meeting with Gordon and his engineer we discussed the issues and got some understanding from the engineer as to what was going wrong and what we have achieved to date, more importantly though at the second meeting with Gordon and his line manager I got what I felt was some commitment to get this sorted once and for all. In between the first and second meeting their engineer had been working on the firmware and has finally identified an error in the source code that had broken DVD playback in the first firmware that that they supplied, this is the one that I want them to get working properly as they had made a lot of improvements to the AVI, DivX, MPEG4 playback performance, Gordon seemed to believe that they would have it sorted within the next week, as we are in the middle of trade shows at the moment and its very chaotic I said I would be happy to have a working firmware in the next 2 weeks, after waiting this long I really wanted to emphasize the fact that I want a good result, not a rushed one. I’m currently traveling to mainland China to attend another trade show so I won’t have much info for the next week or so anyway, but hopefully I’m getting somewhere with all of this. As usual I’ll update the thread when I have any news on the progress.

[jokiin]

It has been quite some time between updates, that’s not to say there hasn’t been things happening, but there hasn’t been much in the way of positive progress unfortunately. Over the last few months I’ve had a few more firmware versions, a lot of correspondence back and forth and a lot of frustration. Each new firmware version I have had has had some level of improvement but has also failed in some other way and has not been suitable for release. Amongst all the issues the guy I was dealing with has left the company and I am now dealing with someone else, that’s not all bad though as the last guy was notoriously slow at responding to emails and his follow up was generally terrible. The guy I’m dealing with now is his old boss, besides holding a more senior position he is a lot better at actually following up and seems genuinely interested in getting us a firmware that can at least do the basics correctly and add any other functionality that the chipset is capable of. There are limitations to what the chipset will be able to do as this is one of the earliest versions of the 1389 series chips but it should be able to better than what they have provided so far. Now a lot of the problem has been a communication issue, not just a language barrier but the fact that they were not able to see exactly what problems we were having meant that they had trouble replicating some of the faults.

Now to the news, I emailed the guy I’m dealing with earlier this week and got no reply, tried calling him again no reply, I’m starting to think ‘here we go again’ I was on the phone talking to the importer that looks after these and he gets interrupted by his mobile, excuses himself while he finds out who is on the phone and it turns out it’s my missing guy from Hong Kong, he’s in Australia, anyway to the point, I met with him last night and discussed the issues, he came to my office this morning and I was able to demonstrate the problems, I loaded each firmware version one by one and was able to show him exactly what the problem was with each version and what was right about each version that we need to keep. He got photos of what was happening on screen, took a lot of notes, called the engineer in China and had several discussions about what was happening and I sent him on his way with another 10 discs of software, test material etc that clearly demonstrated what was happening. He has just left for Hong Kong this afternoon, I’m sure with a much clearer understanding of the problem and I feel we have a better commitment from them to get it sorted now that he has seen for himself how wrong they had been getting it. I will be back in touch with him next week after he has met with his engineer to get some kind of an update, we’ll see how they go from there, but at this stage it at least seemed more positive than anything I have had in recent months

[jokiin]

Not an update as such, but I recieved this email from the guy in Hong Kong (only the names have been changed to protect the innocent:D ) At least it signifies that they are working on it.

Dear ****,

Thank you for your warmest reception
to me. Regarding the XMS DVD problem.
I already pass your disc and the MPEG
board to our engineer yesterday.
Hopefully, we can give you some
feedback next week.

Thank you for your support.

Best regards,
****