Sharp blu-ray player

[admin_exported]

Hi folks,I know this has been covered before but I still hear the Sharp bdhp20 can be upgraded via a usb port on the back.People on this forum have said it can`t but I`ve heard elsewhere it can.Finally spoke to a person at Sharp with half a brain and they say this is true.Don`t know what to believe.Can Andrew or the delightful Clare please give me an answer as you reviewed this player recently and looking at the picture it does look like a usb port but is it for the user to use or,as has been suggested here before,for use by Sharp`s service department.Would really appreciate the help as I should be recieving my player in about a week.Also,is there a firmware updste available for it,I read somewhere there is.Cheers.

 

[professorhat]

This is purely conjecture, but I'd be very surprised if it can't. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it's meant for the general public to use to update their firmware. The reason I think that is, hardware suppliers must allow for the lowest common denominator in their design. Working in IT, I know the pitfalls of upgrading firmware (i.e. stopping halfway through can brick your machine), and therefore, my thought is, they've said "Let's make the public update their firmware using CD / DVD, where very little can go wrong as (a) it's in a read only format on a CD / DVD and (b) the CD / DVD can't be ripped out halfway through the update by a child, or just an idiot". The USB port on the other hand can be used easily by their engineers to update the firmware on a player as (a) all their engineers can keep lots of versions of the firmware on a USB stick rather than carrying around several CDs / DVDs for different issues and (b) their engineers know not to pull out a firmware update halfway through and bricking the machine.

As I say, pure conjecture on my part, but it wouldn't surprise me.