Just a quick editorial. I currently own a Samsung BDP-1590 Blu-ray player, and a Vizio XVT553SV Television. When I boot these devices up, just like all modern home theater electronics with Internet access, they check to ensure I am running the latest firmware. If I am not currently running the latest firmware they will 1) Ask if I would like to upgrade (Samsung) or 2) will upgrade immediately (Vizio) without a choice. While I will 99.999% of the time allow the upgrade I do like Samsung's request to upgrade better than Vizio's. But, this is not the core of my editorial.
Everytime one of these firmware upgrades is done I wonder, "What is being changed?" I work for a major Networking company, and anytime we release a new version of code we also put out release-notes. I wonder where these release-notes/changelogs are with regards to the Samsung's, Vizio's, Sony's, Panasonic's...etc is. It would be nice to know what the upgrade will do, and what if any new features I should test after the upgrade.
Major electronics manufacturers, can we please get a publicly reviewable list of the changes in each firmware? It would be very nice, for those of us who care about out products, to know exactly what bugs should be fixed and what new features are introduced. If we know what was changed we can better understand our products and should be able to get the most out of our investment. This shadowy upgrade process that is currently used does not instill confidence in the products or your company. I for one would hold you in even higher esteme if I could point to these changelog documents and say, yes they found the issue I notice and fixed it...or just to say, hey look a new feature, I wonder what that does.
Just my thoughts as a technical expert in computers and home theater electronics enthusiast.
