Bwahahah
Bwahahah
Posted Oct 31, 2011 15:50 UTC (Mon) by aginnes (subscriber, #81011)In reply to: Bwahahah by khim
Parent article: The embedded long-term support initiative
It's a lot easier for the set-top box software to be tested before it is downloaded, plus they own the broadcast bandwidth, so they can use as much as they want. The cable (or satellite, or IPTV) company is operating in a highly constrained environment, they control what devices are connected to their network, they know exactly what hardware is out there. So they can test the software on every different type of hardware that they have deployed before it goes out. This may take them a couple of months. Of course they have a big incentive to make sure their updates don't break the box as every call to their customer support call centre costs money, and if they brick the box, a truck roll costs an arm and a leg!
So updating set-top boxes in a closed environment is a significantly different (and easier) problem to a general "update Linux on any embedded device".
Posted Oct 31, 2011 16:21 UTC (Mon)
by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 31, 2011 20:15 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link]
Even older boxes had customization capabilities (for example you had the ability to select few "favorite" channels). Newer ones often include DVR capabilities and video rent capabilities so personal information is most definitely there. What you probably meant is "they contain no unclassified personal data in there"... but is a good thing to have on your embedded device? We are entering era of parental computing - and set-top boxes show that people are quite willing to accept it if it means hassle-free gadgets.
Posted Oct 31, 2011 16:58 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link]
Sure. But my point still stands: Sure, but this is the same approach ChromeOS is using. This is mereluy detail of upgrade mechanism implementation which makes it more robust. I've never seen a set top box which allowed you to arbitrarily select one of two version of software to boot. Sometimes it can be accomplished using some combinations of knobs, but it's usually part of "recovery procedure", not something end-user is supposed to do. When (and if) btrfs will be mature enough snapshots can do the same with smaller overhead.
Bwahahah
Of course they do!
Sure...
So updating set-top boxes in a closed environment is a significantly different (and easier) problem to a general "update Linux on any embedded device".
1. It's possible to safely upgrade software in a device.
2. People tolerate updates just fine as long as they "just work".
3. Reversions, bandwidth requirements and changelogs don't affect acceptance at all.
3a. As you've noted people rarely care about bandwidth, but they do care about money spent on bandwidth. This is different - and solveable - problem.Some set-top boxes have an architecture where they keep two copies of the system software so they can revert to the previous version if it all goes wrong.