Posted by Jay G. on 06/12/06 11:51

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 09:39:55 GMT, Roy L. Fuchs wrote:

> On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 21:51:20 -0500, "Jay G." <Jay@tmbg.org> Gave us:
>
>>On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 19:08:19 GMT, Roy L. Fuchs wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 13:11:02 -0500, "Jay G." <Jay@tmbg.org> Gave us:
>>>
>>>> Firmware upgrades are nice, but that's something people are used
>>>> to doing for PCs, not consumer electronics. not consumer electronics.
>>>>
>>> That's because until now, consumer electronics didn't have internet
>>> connectivity.
>>
>>Tell me why internet connectivity requires firmware upgrades.
>
> You're lost. Products back then were not as complicated. Modern
> products CONSTANTLY have the need to be updated/upgraded.

Really? I've owned several DVD players, and *none* of them needed to be
upgraded in order to play DVDs correctly.

Likewise my TV, my receiver, my DVD recorder, alarm clock, A/C, watch,
fridge, keyboard... etc. all worked fine out of the box with no needs for
firmware updates or the like. The only products in my household that ever
needed updates to it just to get it to work were PC related.

And with good reason. A PC can be any of several thousand combinations of
devices and software. A consumer product, on the other hand, has maybe one
or two variations, and within a single model, zero variations. It's not
hard to quality test something like that, although Toshiba seems to have
had problems.

> Any given CD-R drive or DVD-R drive proves that. I have had several
> that gained compatibilities with new standards after a firmware
> upgrade.

Gaining new features after an upgrade is far different than upgrading just
so it will play what it was *supposed* to play in the first place. One is
enhanced capabilites, the other is fixing something that was broken. Guess
which upgrade Toshiba had to do.

-Jay

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