A USA Feature For A Europe-Market Sony Receiver

August 16, 2024 by Jenny List 23 Comments

A feature of many modern network-connected entertainment devices is that they will play streamed music while on standby mode. This so-called “network standby”is very useful if you fancy some gentle music but don’t want the Christmas lights or the TV. It was a feature [Caramelfur] missed on their Sony AV receiver, something especially annoying because it’s present on the US-market equivalent of their European model. Some gentle hackery ensued, and now the rece3iver follows its American cousin.

A first examination of the firmware found the two downloads to be identical, so whatever differences had to be in some form of configuration. Investigating what it exposed to the network led to a web server with device configuration parameters. Some probing behind the scenes and a bit of lucky guesswork identified the endpoint to turn on network standby, and there it was, the same as the US market model. Should you need it, the tooling is in a GitHub repository.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen identical hardware being shipped with different firmwares in Europe from that in the USA, perhaps our most egregious example was a Motorola phone with a much earlier Android version for Europeans. We don’t understand why manufacturers do it, in particular with such an innocuous feature as network standby. If you have a Sony receiver you can now fix it, but you shouldn’t have to.

RJ45, Devcore, CC0.

Hackaday Links: June 30, 2024

June 30, 2024 by Dan Maloney 14 Comments

A couple of weeks back we featured a story (third item) about a chunk of space jetsam that tried to peacefully return to Earth, only to find a Florida family’s roof rudely in the way. The 700-gram cylinder of Inconel was all that was left of a 2,360-kg battery pack that was tossed overboard from the ISS back in 2021, the rest presumably turning into air pollution just as NASA had planned. But the surviving bit was a “Golden BB” that managed to slam through the roof and do a fair amount of damage. At the time it happened, the Otero family was just looking for NASA to cover the cost of repairs, but now they’re looking for a little more consideration. A lawsuit filed by their attorney seeks $80,000 to cover the cost of repairs as well as compensation for the “stress and impact” of the event. This also seems to be about setting a precedent, since the Space Liability Convention, an agreement to which the USA is party, would require the space agency to cover damages if the debris had done damage in another country. The Oteros think the SLC should apply to US properties as well, and while we can see their point, we’d advise them not to hold their breath. We suppose something like this had to happen eventually, and somehow we’re not surprised to see “Florida Man” in the headlines.

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Hacker Heroism: Building Your Way Out Of AV Hell

September 6, 2017 by Lewin Day 46 Comments

Many years ago, in a rainy concrete jungle on the west coast of Australia, I worked for a medium-sized enterprise doing a variety of office-based tasks. Somehow, I found myself caught up in planning a product launch event outside the official remit of my position. We got through it, but not before the audiovisual (AV) setup of the event turned into one giant hack.

The initial planning stages went remarkably smoothly until less than a month out from the big day when three weeks of frantic changes and revisions to the presentation rained down. These were some of the hardest days of my working life to date, as it seemed that we would lock in a new arrangement, only to tear it up days later as some new vital criteria came to light, throwing everything back into disarray.

Things came to a head on the night before the event. Working with two different AV teams we had planned for four projection screens and five flat screen televisions spread throughout the venue and controlled from the central AV desk. But somewhere in all those changes the televisions were set up to all display a still image, or nothing at all. I needed to show different videos on each and have the ability to black them all out.

It was at this point I realized we were screwed. The production team simply didn’t have the hardware to drive another five screens, but they could source it — for the sum of $5000. Management were furious, and were under the impression, like myself that this was what we had asked and paid for already. I was at an impasse, and beginning to wonder if I’d have a job come Monday. I wandered off to a corner to curse, and more importantly, think. After all, I’m a hacker — I can get through this.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A Modular Open-Source AV Receiver

May 30, 2017 by Jenny List 24 Comments

Hi-Fi hasn’t changed much in decades. OK, we’ll concede that’s something of a controversial statement to make in that of course your home hi-fi has changed immensely over the years. Where once you might have had a turntable and a cassette deck you probably now have a streaming media player, and a surround sound processor, for example.

But it’s still safe to say that hi-fi reproduction hasn’t changed much in decades. You can still hook up the latest audio source to an amplifier and speakers made decades ago, and you’ll still enjoy great sound.

Not so though, if instead of a traditional amplifier you bought an AV receiver with built-in amplifier and processing. This is a fast-moving corner of the consumer electronics world, and the lifetime of a device before its interfaces and functionality becomes obsolete can often be measured in only a few years.

To [Andrew Bolin], this makes little sense. His solution has some merit, he’s produced a modular open-source AV processor in which the emphasis is on upgradeability to keep up with future developments rather than on presenting a black box to the user which will one day be rendered useless by the passage of time.

His design revolves around a backplane which accepts daughter cards for individual functions, and a Raspberry Pi to do the computational heavy lifting. So far he has made a proof-of-concept which takes in HDMI audio and outputs S/PDIF audio to his DAC, but plans are in hand for further modules. We can see that this could become the hub of a very useful open-source home entertainment system.

If you make one, please remember to enhance it with our own sound-improving accessory.

AV Test Box Meets The Incredible Shrink Ray

March 17, 2011 by Mike Nathan 7 Comments

mini_avtester

[Chris] recently finished building a miniscule AV Test Box, capable of fitting inside a standard Altoids tin. It is a revision of a project he constructed a few years ago. His previous test box worked well, but was large and cumbersome – definitely not something you would want to carry around from place to place with any frequency.

The new test box does everything its predecessor is capable of, which includes displaying an 800×600 VGA test pattern as well as generating sound signals for testing audio systems. He updated the circuit design a bit, employing a newer PIC processor to run the show, otherwise most of the design details have remained the same, form factor aside.

His build log is full to the brim with details as usual. You will find thorough descriptions of all the components he used, schematics, source code, as well as the theory behind the build.

Be sure to check out the video embedded below of his new AV tester in action.

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Smartphone Anti-virus Software

August 1, 2009 by Zach Banks 37 Comments

cracked

With DEFCON and Black Hat going on, a lot of security issues are being made public. This year, cellphones have been a larger target than before. More and more people are carrying complex smartphones that have more ways to go wrong. Even worse, since phones are tied to a billed account, it is possible for malicious software to charge phones discreetly. However, Flexilis promises to keep your phone safe. It’s a free mobile anti-virus that works on most smartphones and PDAs with more clients in the works. It also provides easy backup and recovery options, as well as the ability to wipe the phone if it’s lost. The phone makers really need to fix the probelms, but in the meantime Flexilis can provide a quick response.

[via WSJ Digits]