What the manufacture needs is a potential market backed by commitment and input from knowledgeable and reliable individuals. If they invest R&D to develop features for a specific market, there needs to be a guaranteed return.
That's a nice thought Brian, but not really practical. It becomes the chicken/egg thing. No one is going to guarantee they will lay out a hefty fee for a box full of promises. If the Uberbox is already built to the consumer input recomendations, the R&D will have already been done.
Development outside the Manufacture: Firmware is compiled, so it is highly unlikely that the firmware can be modified outside of the inhouse firmware development team. Firmware development kits are available from chipset manufactures, but the programmer would start from a very basic GUI and will need to design and refine most components of the firmware. Many units are incapable of Blind Scan on either the chipset level or the choice of the tuner. It isn't necessarily a firmware coding solution. Blind Scan and channel sorting is one of the largest development challenges.
As has been noted, RE'ing compiled FW is virtually out of the question. Without source code, or a good memory dump of the FW, not many would even attempt to tackle minor mods, much less feature additions/enhancements. Current production FTA FW is also encrypted in it distrubuted state, and is only decrypted internally when written to the chip. The mfgrs have the (justifiable) need to protect their product design from being copied. Since most of the desireable boxes are not JTAG compliant, a dump of the 'running FW' would be the first challenge.
The comments about blind scan compliant confuse me. I could see that a chip could be made to be more 'friendly' to blind scan, and do the lions share of the work as a dedicated hardware/emmbeded FW blind scan, [aka hardware based blindscan] removing the inherient overhead of the main uP loop from the equation. This is what the VS Extreme is *supposed* to have. It would be slower than a dedicated ASIC type system, but a blind scan based on scanning all freq/sr combos within a given range from a main FW [flash] sub routine should be achievable. After all, the tuner accept the same commands and parameters when tuning thru the pre-programmed set of freq/sr combos.
There is supposed to be a bind scan difference between a VS 2K Plat and a VS Extreme. I have both and I see no difference, speed or accuracy. The CS 6K accuracy is on average the same as the Viewsats and it runs circles around them in speed. I mean c'mon, after all, if a lowly Panny 2500 can do it [blind scan], it cant be that hard to implement.
How to be Involved: Contact a manufacturer and volunteer to provide wish lists, perform tests and provide detailed reports on firmware operation. Receiver testing can be very frustrating as a simple change in on function may degrade an unrelated function, but it can be very rewarding when introducing a success! Don't be surprised if you do not initially receive a response. Often you will become a valuable development resource just by providing consistent debugging testing and results. A single request for a feature probably will not produce the feature, but repeated request from a diverse community might catch the developer's attention.
That would be great. It would likely be a much better received proposal if there was some grass roots organization and structure to the contact. Who would spearhead such a venture? The site here? Your company? I had hoped that Sonicview would have gotton off their DA's and developed a true S2 compliant revision of their Turbo board. All I've read, the 8000 is a well stable, peforming and reliable box, with functional PVR FW now, not "we are working on it". Some one here on the board contacted them last year regarding true S2 and they were advised the R&D group was looking into it and they expected something by years end. I havent heard anything else on the subject.
I think if we had to pitch a new kid our love and support, I'd look at the Vantage line. They may well want a foothold in the Western market and could be open to some Western FTA users expertise input. Since it is a void the rank and file Asian boxes builders are apparently not interested in, the Vantage has a shot IMHO. I still see it is a bit buggy on a few things but as you pointed out, a group (potential new customers) that shows an interest in the product may well have some ability to steer and encourage fine tuning at the mgfr level.
What a world, we are already headed for the Arabs having to eat their oil and when N2 comes down, the Asians will have to eat those millions of lost sales STBs. Breaks my heart...............
