I don't really get your point here. Do you expect each of us to find the root cause ourselves for all the "potential" bugs for you?
I have worked as a programmer myself, and whenever a customer reports a bug (whether a real bug or not, nobody knows yet at this point), it s me who should help the customer to root cause it, not just sit there and say "I don't believe you until you have given me a root cause"!

So, in my opinion, it s fine that the users posted their "observation" here so other users can confirm if they also see it or not, and if more than one user experience that, then YOU should begin to help us find the root cause, not just keep silence.

But again, this is my opnion, and as I said, I don't quite understand your point here.

Hello Ray,

We have already reported and asked for this option to be an option in the 'Setup' menu as a development feature from Realtek, as we are not able to touch this part of the code/SDK, so we agree with you, and would like to have this solution, but for now we have enabled this as 'forced enabled' due to popular request based on overall demand and our general experience regarding this question.

Until this is available as an option, some will be unhappy, and some will be happy.

Br,

Mikael,

In a world where hardware has become increasingly a commodity item and is based on common chipsets from vendors such as Realtek and is generally more reliable than years ago, the main way to differentiate yourself from competitors is on the software feature set and user interface. It strikes me that ACRyan has either minimal software development capability or has "outsourced" a large part of its development to the manufacturer/supplier of the chipset SDK. This may have been done for cost reasons or may even be a prime strategy of the company, but it tends to result in a bland, standardised product set. Realtek may make excellent chipsets, but their grasp of good UI design and "real world" needs of users seems to be limited. Can you indicate just how much of this software is dependent on Realtek development and how much is in your own control. A lot of the peripheral software utilities like busybox, the FTP, samba, www server code is in public domain, but the core dvdplayer code is proprietary to ACRyan presumably, and should be leveraged to provide a unique user interface experience for your customers, with a rich set of features and as bug-free as possible. Where you are dependant on a third-party (Realtek) to provide basic menu navigation and user settings code you will always be behind the curve of customer demand and satisfaction because you cannot control the product yourselves. Just my two cents!

Hello Tony,

Realtek is our hardware and also our supplier when it comes to the SDK. We have our own development team in both coding and designing when it comes to the product it self. We can do a lot without the help of Realtek, and have done so as well in the past. The biggest change any Realtek based player has made must be our GUI2.0, just as an example.

There are unfortunately things we cannot touch/change in the SDK, so if there would be a bug present, or a feature that we would like to implement, then that is not always possible without changing something in the SDK. For those situations we of course communicate this directly with Realtek.

I'm not a coders myself, so I will not go into exactly what we can or can't change, as I would not have proper insight for this, and it's probably not that easy to note down in easy terms logic, again not sure about details.

Br,

I hear you Mikael, it's just that I don't understand how the SDK could be restricting coding options so much. The SDK should be an abstraction layer between the hardware and the programmer's code and shouldn't place restrictions like "you may only display today's EPG". I accept that you are not technical, but a statement from your technical people with a timeline for what is possible to fix would be welcomed. Similarly, if certain features are just not possible and never will, then the company should clarify this also. People are just looking for information on which to base their purchasing decisions.

Don't take me wrong, I consider myself technical, just not into programming in this case

If there are any specifics, regarding what you would like to ask when it comes to issues or something regarding our products you can always ask me or any of the staff. Statements about timelines and such that we previously also did, is something we have decided not to provide in official statements/news for now, as we have done this previously and noticed it did not have a positive effect.

Regarding the change of the EPG (related to the ACR-PV76120 of course, we are going a bit off topic), that is not related to coding, that is related to the fact that Realtek does not have the license for this in the new SDK platform, just as mentioned in the correct thread.

Br,

I don't mean to drag this further off topic, but I have replied about the EPG issue in the correct thread and - Realtek does not need a licence to display EPG information for more than one day - there are hundreds of standard DVB-T boxes on sale which display 7 or 8 day EPG. Someone, somewhere in the development chain is confused about this licence issue!

Thanks for the prompt reply Mikael.

The thing I don't really get is how you could adequately judge this demand. Whilst I wouldn't pretend to have seen every make and model of media, DVD, or Blu-Ray player in the market, every one I have seen defaults to subtitles "off", perhaps with the facility to set them on permanently. That being the norm, it seems logical that people who wanted to be able to set them to be permanently "on" would be the most vocal in requesting the feature, it wouldn't mean they were in the majority. After all, there must be a reason why the default for all those other players is to have subtitles "off", and from what I've seen from the forums (next to the way shortcuts work) subtitles being on by default is one of the most complained-about issues here.

On a more critical issue, would you have any response to my request above to publish the bugtracker list here in the forums? As well as allowing your customers to track progress, it would also save you and us time in duplicating the reporting of bugs which are already on your radar.

Thanks, and all the best.

Ray Von

Although i'm still baffled by the constraints Realtek puts on this SDK (putting subtitles under an option...come on), i'm very happy to see the ACR people here (Arne/Mikael) actually replying now on our requests and giving some info about WHY you do or don't do things.

Maybe it's (for us outsiders) not all logical or about great results, but I applaud you guys for being here to lighten our burden while we wait for root-screen-shortcuts and optional subtitles

Hello,

I have a "ACR-PV73800 - Playon!HD Mini 2". The following issue stay the same from the firmware v9.5.5.r2988:

->> No Sound, with S/PDIF passthrough, with file with AAC sound (MKV file H264/AAC).


And with file with "DTS-Master", only stereo is played (I posted this issue).


Have a nice day!


Peter - Switzerland