Re: "Radio figures soar as nation goes digital": part 1 .. OTA firmware upgrades

Kristoff Bonne wrote:
Steve,


This discussion is getting pretty long. To keep the discussion
focused, I'll divide it into a number of different parts.


Part 1: OTA firmware upgrades


DAB sounds worse than FM schreef:
Rule number 1: don't make 5,000,000 receivers obsolete due to
incompetent technical decision-making.
Great, I'll remember that the next time you come up with your idea
of "OTA upgrading of codecs".
Yes, the 5m to-be-obsolete radios are an excellent example of why
OTA upgrading of codecs is a good idea......
Sure, especially when the upgrade fails. :-)

I've never heard of any Freeview set-top boxes having an over-the-air
software upgrade failing due to the upgrade. ...

Have you actually ever done this yourself?


My Freeview receiver succcessfully updated itself with an OTA software
download, but it performed the update automatically, because it switches
itself on at 2.30am ever day to check whether there's any new channels or
whether there's a new version of software to download.


My former satellite receiver (a humax F1-5000) suddenly had a problem
after an upgrade that it forze when you pushed the "subtitle" button
on the remote control when you where tuned to S4C (the welch language
channel at 28.8).
It also had a problem that it stopped responding when tuned to "sky
news" op 28.2 east (strangely enough not on the Irish version of sky
news, and not on the channel on 19.2).

Humax haven't done any firmware-upgrade afterwards.


They still do over-the-air downloads for their Freeview boxes:

http://techdigest.tv/2007/08/humax_first_to.html


Also on the receiver I use now (a dreambox DM500-S), I have done
multiple upgrades, and also overthere I have had problems.
E.g. As of the last gemini firmware, I have problems with NFS which
now seams to work very slowly. I did not have this problem before.


Have you thought that the software downloaded could be the problem rather
than the OTA download procedure??

Basically, the OTA download procedure is: download until the whole file has
been downloaded (presumably once it's passed a CRC check), the commit the
file to memory. The procedure presumably worked, so I think it's the
software that's at fault.


... Perhaps it's actually a lot
easier to do than you seem to think it is?

Well, we do software-upgrades on devices on our network on almost
weekly basis and it's not uncommon to have a procedure which works
without any problems on 20 other boxes fail on one box, althou there
is no clear technical difference between that box and all other in
the network.

"Fail" can vary from having to do "shut / no shut" of an interface,
over having to do a reload of a card or the box, upto doing a complete
remote "reanimation" over serial modem-link because it has completely
lost its system config.
(which is very nice if that box is the last one you had to upgrade
that night, so by then it's 4 o-clock in the morning :-) )



And of course, there is the issue of not being able to do the upgrade
due to memory of CPU-limits of the boxes.


The module manufacturers, which are the people who would write the software
updates, will know their *own* CPU/memory limits of their receivers.


On routers, you can usually replace the CPU-boards and add memory, but
that would be "a bit hard to do" on boxes intended for the residential
market.


See above.


... Certainly all of the Wi-Fi
Internet radios I've used so far (3 of them so far) have performed an
over-the-Internet software upgrade without any problems, and the only
difference is that it's wireless and not wired.

No, the main difference is that wifi internet-radios have a
return-channel while most broadcasting-devices do not.


Irrelevant. If the file isn't downloaded corrrectly and completely the
receiver won't commit the new file to memory.


With a return-channel, at least, you have an idea of how many of the
boxes have actually upgraded, have done so correctly and how much are
not reachable anymore.


The manufacturers would soon find out if there were problems due to the
number of complaints....


It also gives information on how many boxes in the field run what
version of software; which is very important to know before you start
implementing new features on the "transmission"-side.



... The Internet radios first
download the upgrade file, then once that's finished they upgrade the
firmware. It's easy to check with a CRC check that the file has been
downloaded and is correct. So the only tricky bit is the actual
upgrading of the firmware, but is that really so difficult?

Well, the problems we have are in most cases related to hardware:


The module manufacturers will know their own hardware very well, because
they designed it. This is very different to someone like yourself trying to
update someone else's product.


- memory issues (the new software uses more memory or uses it
differently)
- heating issues (the new software uses more CPU and this poses
problems on heating)
- battery issues

There can be problem with software, usually plain bugs which only pop
up under certain conditions (e.g. the subtitle-issue on S4C on my
humax or the NFS-issue on my dreambox).

Other possibilities can be interoperability issues on connections to
other boxes which freeze because of the soft-upgrade.
(usually a shut/no shut of the interfaces or a second reboot of the
box fixes this but in some cases we needed to reset the interface on
the box on the other side of the link to get it back running).


None of this is relevant to a module manufacturer writing its own code to
upgrade the modules it designed.


So what do you do if 10 % of the receivers out there cannot be
upgrade because -say- the manufacter does not exist anymore.

10% is ridiculously exaggerating it. We're probably talking about
less than 1%.


Not really,
Look at the devices now in the analog broadcasting-world. How many
radios are there which are older then (say) 5 to 10 years.

Take a box of (say) the year 2000; it will be difficult enough to
find
a working firmware image for it, let alone one which isn't older
then 3 to 4 years.



In short, OTA codec-upgrades are nonsence in the broadcasting-world.


No, you're implying that OTA codec upgrades can't work based mainly on your
own experience of upgrading equipment that you didn't design yourself, and
the example of satellite receivers or whatever, they're still functioning,
which meant that the upgrade was successful, and you're inferring that
because they don't work as well as they used to that's because of the OTA
upgrade, whereas it is far more likely to be the *software itself*.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info


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