COULD'NT A ex: SOFTWARE ENGINEER ADD FILES OR SUCH: TO A FIRMWARE UPDATE???

[duggy]

I wonder: Could'nt a software engineer,tech or someone with enough knowledge, add files or something (I'm illiterate in the lingo)to say a firmware update for a blu ray player,to add DVD AUDIO reading,playing capability?
I mean DVD Audio (advanced resolution type).
The software is available to purchase and download to a computer,to have dvd audio playback capability.

 

[ke5frf]

Well.

It would really depend (I imagine) on the configuration and capabilities of the hardware, first of all, knowledge of the firmware, proprietary and not...(or else better be a crack hacker)...and perhaps have the knowledge to modify or add any neccessary circuits or hardware to make it work.

In other words, it probably depends.

 

[duggy]

Ya,I hear ya.It sure would be cool.I

 

[Sceadwian]

It's been done before. One practical example is my Cannon A530 digitial camera. There's a modified firmware out there that will allow you to take raw image format pictures, and program scripts to do things like time lapse photography.

It's an extremely difficult process generally, because you won't find refrence material out there so you're going in blind from the start, you have to identify the hardware chips inside, and manually decode the .hex file determine I/O address and the like and try to hook into the existing firmware without disabling it or causing it to do something really bad.

 

[duggy]

Ya,that's what I figured.I mean extremly difficult.I mean also,something goes wrong with a blu ray player and ther,almost,no way to fix it at home.Can't replace the drive,cause tied to software,etc.
Wish I could build a DVD player,like a PC.

 

[Sceadwian]

You could. Use a single board computer (Google it) interface it to a DVD player, you'd just need to write the software on the PC side then. There's even plenty of open source software out there already for turning a PC into a multimedia appliance. Or you could just buy a PS3 and let it do all the work for you My brother in law has one and it seemlessly discovers all the media attached to it and will play back all major formats in HD.