Ratatosk

As far i know the et5k and et6k boxes recent drivers do not have a check anymore... So at least the security issue for these boxes are irrilivant...

 
This, exactly, is how I thought it would work, when I first read about it. But apparently it doesn't. So why not?

Is there really a need to still protect against clones of the ET5000? Or is it that the designers didn't have the forethought to differentiate between models in their protection scheme? I.e. when the drivers are released that will unlock the ET5000, will they also simultaneously unlock the ET9500?

 

Here in Holland if a device has a (major) design flaw the manufacturer has to fix it under warranty even if the standard device warranty is gone.

 
Now checking the laws of my own country (Sweden), I cannot find anything to distinguish design flaws from other defects existing at the time of purchase. General consumer rights here are normally limited to three years after the purchase (exception for defects dangerous to life or health) and it's the seller's obligation to deal with it. Although, if he's out of business, that obligation can be transferred "up the chain" all the way to the manufacturer. (I am not a lawyer though.) I have no idea what Greek law says, of course.

Regardless of laws, though, I agree with malakudi. The manufacturer really should have come up with some kind of fix for him and everybody in his situation. (If, for whatever reason, they feel they cannot release drivers to unlock the 5000 and 6000, then they should have arranged for the defective security boards to be fixed, for free, or else indemnified the customers in some other way.)


This isn't about the anti-clone protection scheme as such, the way I see it. (Again, provided it works as it should, it doesn't seem that terribly big a deal to me. Battery life shouldn't reasonably be an issue, ever.) Rather it's about the manufacturer support and willingness to fulfill its (moral, if nothing else) obligations to the customer. And, yes, since the manufacturing defect (design flaw) was in a device of no direct value to the user, only to the manufacturer, I too would say it places an extra obligation on the manufacturer.

I've got the impression that the company behind Xtrend is relatively small. And, if so, I am willing to cut them some slack compared to what you'd expect from a market leader with nigh boundless resources. (In particular if they're otherwise playing well with the open-source community.) But there has to be limits to how much a customer should have to put up with, of course.


(Yes, I too am now speaking off my own topic, strictly speaking.   Sorry about that. But, from where I stand at least, soon buyer of one of these boxes, I don't think some general discussion also on the customer support policies of these manufacturers, or their distributors, will hurt — provided, of course, it can be kept fair and factual and my original topic(s) isn't forgotten.)

pop_eye, are you telling me to stay away from Xtrend, specifically? Or should I forget about buying any factory-made box at all, and instead build my own?
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gorski, I googled for the source of your article, and it appears it was all meant as a joke on hysterical conspiracy theories, written by signature nwind in the et-view-support forum.
 
Incidentally, I recently saw a very similar accusation being made against Vu+ (and that one seemingly seriously meant). But, regardless of brand name, I'd need some very substantial evidence before I believe it. If I buy an Xtrend (or Vu+) and it breaks down in say 2½ years, then, yes, it would force me to buy a new box, but would it be one from the same manufacturer? Not likely. I would do exactly what malakudi did, and buy another brand instead. And neither would it make me speak well to others of the brand that failed me.
 
Another thing entirely is that manufacturers sometimes can cut corners more than they should. (The way it seems Xtrend did with the card readers in their most recent models.) That doesn't strike me as devious cleverness, however, rather the opposite.
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malakudi, 3 boxes dead after 2½ years, that's horrible!    I can easily understand it if you now stay clear of Xtrend.
 
Even so, I am still not convinced that your problems with the ET-5000 and the ET-6000 are reason enough for me to also avoid the ET-9500 or ET-6500. It's yet another clear failure of Xtrend in the past, of course, and as such doesn't speak in their favor. But this one is presumably now corrected — well, in new boxes, that is. (And even if the earlier boxes had an undisputable design flaw, it seems to me you must have been extremely unlucky, or else the Xtrend brand would now surely be dead already, wouldn't it?)
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I had actually already noticed the matter of the battery-powered security board that comes with every Xtrend machine, even before I started this thread. (Found an earlier discussion in this forum here. There is also a more recent discussion in German in the xtrend-home forum.)
 
The way I understand it:

• The battery is calculated to hold for 10 years, even if the box is never powered on. (Should last even longer if it is.)
   
• The reason a significant number of problems, despite this, has been reported seems to be due to a bad battery holder for replaceable batteries in early models (with bad connection to the battery). That is, it wasn't that the battery was depleted faster than expected; it just wasn't reliably connected to the board. These holders supposedly are replaced, and the battery now firmly mounted to the board, in all recently sold Xtrend machines (since sometime 2012 at least). So shouldn't be a problem to me, if I now buy an ET-9500 or ET-6500.
   
• The European distributors furthermore appear (from what I understand) to have secured a promise from the Korean maker that, after a certain (non-disclosed) time, drivers are to be released that don't check the security board anymore.

To the user, the security board is dead weight, of course. And, yes, it's yet another thing in the box that could potentially break, one way or another (even with the battery now supposedly secured and well connected), and render the box useless (until those new drivers are released). So I do understand and share the discomfort of everybody with it at all being there. But, all in all, it seems at this point to be a relatively minor thing to me. (Like hounce, in the German discussion I linked to, is saying, there are so many other things to worry about in these boxes anyway, that could break or go wrong, regardless of brand.)
 
Now, the angle of pop_eye, in this thread, is it also goes against the concept of open source, and, strictly speaking, that's very obviously right, of course. Without closed-source drivers, anti-clone measures like these wouldn't at all be possible. But, as already said, closed-source drivers are everywhere (unfortunately) and other manufacturers apply such measures as well, and it isn't clear to me that the one chosen by Xtrend is worse really than those of their competitors.
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By the way, regarding the absence of Dreambox clones during the first carefree years, it is my understanding that it wasn't until about 2008 or so that Chinese hardware pirates started to organize themselves for large scale operations against this increasingly lucrative target. (When investigating the history of open DVD boxes I came across an account of Chinese pirate operations, written by what seemed to be a Chinese with inside knowledge. Unfortunately I cannot now find it.)
 
It would seem that open-source boxes are particularly easy prey to these predators. And now that there is blood in the water, I can't see that there is any going back. Anti-clone measures in one form or another, it seems to me, are here to stay, unfortunately.

Returning to the topic of Xtrend card readers, I have done some further googling. And the problems with cards of frequencies lower than 5 MHz seem to be remaining and real, unfortunately, if somewhat elusive.

In this thread, in the Xtrend-home forum, beginning of this year, 2013 (in German), the signature XtrendIM says the manufacturer is informed and is working on it (February 2013; so this is after whatever driver fix was applied last year). He also says, if ever there was an Achilles heel to Xtrend, this is it. It's apparently not relevant to the older 9000 or 9200, though, which had other card readers, only the 9500 is affected. I have seen similar problems reported with the card readers of the ET-4000, however, and, although I haven't so far seen the 6500 mentioned, I suspect it applies to all the most recent Xtrend models. (It would seem that Xtrend has simply decided to save money on the readers lately.)

More in a thread from April 2013 in the same forum, where the solution for the OP (again with a 9500) is to resort to an external USB card reader (Easymouse). I have seen the very same solution used or recommended in a couple of other cases as well.

The card reader hardware really being weak and unreliable seems to be confirmed also by cases like this, where the OP says his problems have become more frequent over time. At the end of a thread I previously linked to, there is a poster claiming (November 2013) a replacement of his box solved the problem for him.

It should be said that many users seem to be entirely unaffected, and even those who are not seem to have experienced at least some improvement (less frequent crashes) after the driver update last year. (Also, where there are problems, there's a bewildering range of conflicting reports as to which softcams work and which ones don't etc.) So, if I buy an ET-9500, it might be that I get card readers that actually work, I just won't know for sure, or for how long, it seems.

One possibility, I guess, would be, if I buy an Xtrend box, to order that Easymouse USB card reader also, as insurance. But seems so sad and unnecessary.

gorski, to avoid any misunderstandings, all my questions and comments on Neutrino (HD) have been meant to refer to the firmware delivered with Coolstream machines — the main and original branch of HD capable Neutrino, it seems, the one primarily documented by the Tuxbox people in their wiki, and often (also by mohousch in your quote) called the "official" Neutrino HD.

A number of secondary branches off of this Neutrino HD evidently also exist. The ones I now know of are Aztrino for AzBox (displayed in the YouTube video earlier linked to by pop_eye), Neutrino MP for "Multiple Platforms", and, thanks to your notice, the Neutrino HD2 of mohousch, which he seems to have originally developed for various SH4-based, otherwise closed, boxes, though he has now apparently also ported it to the open boxes supported by PLi. This is all definitely well worth investigating, not only for its historical interest. (And the pioneer work of mohousch in the area of Neutrino multi-tuner support seems to be beyond question.)

My focus, however, is to find hardware from brands/manufacturers committed to open source and who play well with the open-source community — not only to improve my chances of actually getting a well-working machine, but also because my money might then do some good beyond that.
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pop_eye, thanks for clearing that out. So it seems Coolstream is "still in the game" then.

Please, please, don't have my thread killed!    Please do as Frenske suggests.
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pop_eye,
 

NeutrinoHD (open source) as presumming from the original posting request has not such "open" support as enigma2 receivers.
When I posted about it was hinting that dual, twin, burger combo "open source" support is currently not available.
 
http://www.dbox2worl...n-tuner-source/
 
You will be paying for semi-closed source Neutrino supported zapper.

 
You have got it entirely right that open source is important to me. So if Neutrino HD (for Coolstream) really is semi-closed, as you suggest, that would disqualify it in my eyes.
 
However, from what I now understand, multi-tuner support is a late addition to Neutrino HD. The very first Coolstream box to have it, it seems, is precisely the one I have been considering: the Neo². And the official release date for that box was apparently as late as 16 April 2012 (according to the Tuxbox wiki for instance). So Coolstream would have been under no obligation (under GPL and copyright law) to start distributing multi-tuner source code before that date.
 
(This also, of course, would explain why the AzBox in the YouTube video, from 24th of May 2012, doesn't have the twin-tuner functionality of the Coolstream Neo². Aztrino would have branched from Coolstream Neutrino HD long before that and wouldn't have had time to pick up any Coolstream multi-tuner functionaly, whether or not it's public. Whatever twin-tuner support the AzBox had would have had to be entirely of their own design.)
 
The discussion you are linking to took place in March 2012, still a couple of weeks before the Neo² release date. So I don't find anything particularly remarkable about it.
 
If, on the other hand, they kept the multi-tuner source code closed after the release date (despite the promises posted in that very thread) then we decidedly have an ugly situation. Would that even be possible without breaking GPL and copyright law? But I haven't so far found any indications that they did, and I would have expected some commotion and public debate in that case. (What I have found is talk last year of a move of the Neutrino HD source code repository from SVN to GIT, the idea being that the new code for the Neo² would be made available in the new repository.)
 
One way to check this for sure, I guess, would be to look through the (new GIT) public source code repository for Neutrino HD. Unfortunately I fear I am not competent or clever enough to figure out if the multi-tuner support is really there. Another possibility might be to put the question directly to the Neutrino HD developers (in the DBox2World forum), but I, at least, hesitate to do that without firm indication of foul play.