So, Scott, will voom stb work after 3am 5/1?

[Stargazer]

I thought it was only MPEG-2 since they did not upgrade to MPEG-4 yet.

 

[miamicanes]

The big question is how many STBs CVC itself has sitting in its warehouses ready to sell at bargain-basement prices to E*. If there are at least 100,000 or so, it would probably be worth E*'s effort to reprogram them for their own use. As others have mentioned, there's a big gray area between "perfect" and "useless"... implementing E*'s protocols is critical; logo replacement is somewhere near the middle or end of the list (depending on whether you ask someone in Marketing/Management or in engineering... "suit" types tend to get really bent out of shape over symbolic things that engineering-types view as irrelevant until the management/marketing-types freak out and start making threats...)

The other obvious alternative would be for some liquidator to hire someone to do a hack job on the firmware and reflash them into grossly over-engineered ATSC OTA tuners.

The ultra-cool alternative would be for the same liquidator to sell 'em on eBay with the SDK on CD-rom so they could take on a post-voom life of their own as semi-HTPCs (running a hacked up version of Linux, perhaps... possibly with ATA drivers for the currently-ignored 1394 port and HD-DVR capabilities with an external drive). Unfortunately, I suspect Motorola regards the SDK and system docs for the box as trade secrets and would require an NDA and lots of ca$h from anyone hoping to ever see it).

 

[who_the]

We also know this: Dish wants to make a big push to MPEG-4, and they've also stated all boxes from here forward will be SD/HD. The 550 fits this bill perfectly, with its (alleged) pop-in upgrade to MPEG-4, although I'd bet the upgrade's far from ready.

I doubt this will happen though. My hope now is that the Voom originals will be mirrored to former Voomers while some transponders are beaming the same to E* subscribers. I've read more than once among the swirl today that Voom may stay on until the 5th or 6th. Maybe those rumors have merit...

 

[James Long]

The VOOM boxes would only be of lasting value if they were DVRs.

Take a look at the new 411 arriving in (rumor) August. It is a receiver the size of E*'s current 301/311 offering ... thinline and silver instead of black. It is a HD/SD MPEG4 receiver that can also tune ATSC. It has SD and HD outputs. The 411 makes the VOOM box look like the dinosaur it is. E* tried the plug in module approach with the 5000 and 6000 ... note that practice has ended.

The only reason to support the VOOM receiver would be to allow subscribers to watch on an interum basis. But they would have to give the boxes new software to handle E*'s galaxy of satellites. (Voom had two sat software ready for 72/61.5, but E* has many different locations to deal with.) They *MIGHT* patch the VOOM receivers so they won't have to give converting subscribers a new receiver and swap it out in four to five months when MPEG4 arrives, but a patch won't add a hard drive and DVR capability (and it won't change the hardware to be DISHPro compatable).

If the Voom boxes work in ~23 hours it will only be temporary.

JL

 

[James Long]

The VOOM boxes would only be of lasting value if they were DVRs.

Take a look at the new 411 arriving in (rumor) August. It is a receiver the size of E*'s current 301/311 offering ... thinline and silver instead of black. It is a HD/SD MPEG4 receiver that can also tune ATSC. It has SD and HD outputs. The 411 makes the VOOM box look like the dinosaur it is. E* tried the plug in module approach with the 5000 and 6000 ... note that practice has ended.

The only reason to support the VOOM receiver would be to allow subscribers to watch on an interum basis. But they would have to give the boxes new software to handle E*'s galaxy of satellites. (Voom had two sat software ready for 72/61.5, but E* has many different locations to deal with.) They *MIGHT* patch the VOOM receivers so they won't have to give converting subscribers a new receiver and swap it out in four to five months when MPEG4 arrives, but a patch won't add a hard drive and DVR capability (and it won't change the hardware to be DISHPro compatable).

If the Voom boxes work in ~23 hours it will only be temporary.

JL

 

[Dan Berndt]

Aren't software upgrades done on these STBs all the time anyway? I own my boxes. It sure would be nice to keep using them for while longer before I have to throw them in the dumpster.

 

[James Long]

Aren't software upgrades done on these STBs all the time anyway?

They are. But there comes a line when the cost of paying the developer to fix a few boxes is more than the cost of moving on to a new and easier supported box.

I suspect that if there are any software changes for E* to use the V* boxes they will be appearing soon. Perhaps in 9 hours?

JL