Out-of-warranty repairs for IMS2000 and ShowVault/IMB discontinued

[Leo Enticknap]

no_more_dolremi_support.png

My worry about this is that these are precisely the models that need the certificate update patching done, and so if one is accidentally bricked while applying the updates (and we all know that however careful you are, this occasionally happens, especially with media block firmware updating), you're dead in the water until you can buy and install a new server. I would have hoped that they would at least of given, say, three months' notice for users to do this final round of updating, and get their equipment repaired if something went wrong.

[Steve Guttag]

Heck, even changing the battery on a Doremi can be a nail-biter.

[Leo Enticknap]

Good point. Every time we do a routine battery change on a Doremi IMB from now on, we risk bringing the guillotine down on the whole system. That having been said, the Doremi IMB is literally the only one I have never lost during a battery change (GDCs with the Tadiran TL-2450 battery = lose about one in 20; Alchemies = one in 7 or 8; cat745s = at least half), but there are a huge number of Doremi IMBs still in service, and after 3-4 years, we'll be in a position with customers whereby we have to advise that if they do nothing, it's just a matter of time before it dies, but if we attempt the battery swapout, they're rolling the dice: either they get another 3-4 years (assuming nothing else fails), or sudden death.

This is now the second time that Dolby have ended repair support for a media block with zero notice (the cat745 during covid being the first). Actually interacting with their technical support guys is always a pleasure: they are extremely helpful and always go the extra mile. But it's really hard to defend Dolby to customers when you have to deliver news like this. Even having to tell them that we have until September (let's say) to do the certificate update and one more battery swapout, knowing that we can send the IMB in for repair if something goes wrong, would be vastly preferable to suddenly finding ourselves in this situation.

[Steve Guttag]

I tend to agree. The lack of support for a bricked mediablock that is relatively young is pretty sucky. I understood the CP750 MB issue...what are you going to do when the place that made the chips burned to the ground? Redesign a MB (and get in line behind billions of other orders) for a discontinued product? I also understood the similar issue with the CAT745, plus they had a pretty aggressive deal to replace its battery with a 10-year version and at a very low-cost. But the IMS2000 and the various DCP and IMB variants seems like a rather short notice and support should have been longer. Then again, I was non-jazzed that GDC charged for certificate extensions (and nags you for warranty extensions on servers long out of production and no hardware warranty anymore).

[Marco Giustini]

If I look it from a "planetary resources" point of view, it's shocking that we're forced to dispose of perfectly working equipment because there is no way to restore the certificates - which is a 100% software process if not mistaken.

I understand the logistic reasons behind that but it's just plain wrong. Hardware repairs (such as actually swap the hardware or replacing components) is more understandable: the industry is moving forward and those ICs are simply not available anymore.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Then again, I was non-jazzed that GDC charged for certificate extensions (and nags you for warranty extensions on servers long out of production and no hardware warranty anymore).

Steve, I have never had one customer nagged about anything by GDC. And it is not a warranty extension on a server long out of production they are offering. It's a support service...

[Elia Orselli]

Dolby is now taking steps to consolidate its product line and simplify ordering by announcing the withdrawal from sale of the IMS2000. These products will be withdrawn from sale on January 31, 2020, and end of support is planned for January 31, 2025. Orders will continue to be accepted until the date above or until the existing inventory is depleted. And while Dolby intends to continue providing repair services and support for IMS2000 through January 31, 2025, this announcement does not modify or guarantee repair services beyond existing warranties and terms and conditions.

When the IMS2000 was discontinued this was the paragraph about repair service. I am afraid that "intends to" was the appropriate formula to describe what is happening in legal terms.

[Frank Cox]

Mark, have you never seen a GDC server that's near or past the end of its "warranty period"? They all bring up a window on boot-up saying, "This server is X days past warranty". Every time. There's no way to disable that nag window unless you pay them the money for the next warranty.

[Bruce Cloutier]

I could rant but won't (or at least will try to not). These things push me to the edge.

1) We manufacture more and more stuff and force it on people and meanwhile it and what it replaces is relegated to a landfill way before it should be. Now they don't want us cooking with gas!? We need to replace the stoves. So where do they plan to locate gas stove mountain? Should be on Key West because that place will at some point not too long from now cease to exist on maps. (17 feet over sea level I think is the high point)

2) Forcing credentials to be stored in battery backed RAM and not Flash!? You know, they knew batteries would need to be replaced and, well, more money for them. F the inconvenience!

Meanwhile, and this pains me to say, technology is rapidly becoming more of a pain in the ass than a benefit.

Just saying. Sorry. Ignore me.

[Paul H. Rayton]

No, Bruce (↑), I don't think we should ignore you! You make good points, worth considering (and acting on.)

In my own personal case, I have a Kindle Fire reader, from Amazon. It's about 5 years old and serves my limited needs quite well. The battery is getting older now, and the present duty cycle from a charge to "full" is about 25% of the duty time I originally got. Can one change the battery? To all intents and purposes, one can NOT, it seems to be a sealed unit. But wait a minute -- on YouTube, it turns out that resourceful people can actually change the battery. However, to do so does entail physically forcing open the seal around the perimeter of the device, which will probably leave rough edges and some cosmetic flaws. Additionally, one do-it-yourselfer pointed out that there are issues in actually removing the original battery: it is glued in place with enough glue to hold an entire automobile together, plus there is a "minor" risk of an electrical flare-up (or explosion!), if the old battery becomes ruptured in the removal process (due to the excessive glue). So, I'm debating whether to bother with the replacement or not -- but that is precisely the case: it was manufactured to be non-repairable, in other words to be a throwaway, and I should go buy another one, when (other than the battery) the original was just fine. IMHO that's a bit of a scandalous (not to mention outrageously wasteful) way to construct a device (or an economy.) And don't even get me started about the various reported issues on doing repairs to Mac and Apple computer devices ... !

So, if we "ignore" you, we collectively do it all at our own risk. These DCI servers being forced to die, thanks to premeditated decisions by the manufacturers ...? I hope there might be a few venues that might get together and possibly consider seeking legal recompense.

[Bruce Cloutier]

Paul, I can relate.

Still relative to me though, those of you who have decommissioned Series 3 JNIORs (and there is definitely an advantage in doing so) what are you doing with the old hardware? I don't know what "recycle" means in this case. Should I expect you on your dime to ship that junk back to us? Then what do I do with it? Those end up in a landfill and I am in pain over that. Sell it on eBay. we still support those when they resurface. Dead batteries and faulty flash and all.

I have thought about how I might get JANOS to run on that hardware. It would be slow but it could work. It is just not feasible,

We need to recycle as is implied in the Star Trek universe. Break all this crap down into constituent components and supply those to the next generation of things (replicators). We do not do that now. We can't. But we waste time trying to get poorly programmed (MS) hardware to drive vehicles. Are any of us asking for that?

Really it is almost more of an embarrassing situation than climate change.

Add to this the disaster in communications that is email (and phones) and... well what can we possibly do?

So I rant... Can't do much else... Can I? Can any of us?

It is tough when keeping things going becomes a focus.

[Harold Hallikainen]

There are various "right to repair" laws. Also, when I lived in San Luis Obispo, a neighboring company was iFixIt. They do a great job providing repair guides, tools, and parts for consumer electronics. For example, the Kindle 3 battery replacement guide is at https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Kindle_3 . The daughter of one of my coworkers was a technical writer for them.

At USL, we provided support for everything ever sold. Sometimes, though, that support becomes offering a more modern replacement because parts for the original product are no longer available.

On holding private keys in battery backed RAM instead of flash, that is, of course, so the keys can be deleted should there be a tamper detection. That would not be possible with flash.

On consumer product repairs, automated manufacturing has lowered the production cost of a new item to less than the cost of making a repair for many products. Still, if you'd like to make a repair, it would be helpful if the manufacturer could make parts available. We had a switch fail in a toaster oven. It was a rotary switch that was being hot switched, so the contacts would burn up pretty quickly. There is a lot online with people complaining about the failure and the unavailability of a replacement part. I talked to the manufacturer. No replacement switch was available. Instead, they sent a new oven after I sent them a photo of the old one with the cord cut off.

A similar repair situation occurred with a friend's ice maker that I repaired. The manufacturer wanted a video of the symptoms, then sent a part that would not fix the product, even if it was a part for this model. My adventures in getting it working are at https://hallikainen.org/hzb-12b/ .

However, a friend recently had the rotary encoder on his Yaesu transceiver go bad. Yaesu sold him a replacement encoder for less than $2.

Harold

[Marcel Birgelen]

2) Forcing credentials to be stored in battery backed RAM and not Flash!? You know, they knew batteries would need to be replaced and, well, more money for them. F the inconvenience!

Keep in mind that the sole reason why we had to design those things with all those little booby traps included, is because some Hollywood execs, receiving 7 or 8 figure paychecks and benefit packages, are afraid their holy IP will leak out to the masses. Meanwhile, they're giving this same IP away for almost nothing to the streaming services, costing them BILLIONS every year in lost revenue.

The fact that you often need to replace an entire board or device and pay thousands of dollars for a new item, just because a string of a mere bytes has vanished from volatile RAM, because the battery ran dry is mind-numbing and such practices should be considered illegal.

Like we could all see coming from afar: Digital Cinema has become a digital minefield, where otherwise perfectly fine equipment that used to cost more than a luxury car ten years ago has to be abandoned, because some random timer expired and those who made it either vanished from the scene or don't longer bother, since there is little to no business in selling spare parts. And heck, due to that pandemic thingy, they now have the perfect excuse.

On holding private keys in battery backed RAM instead of flash, that is, of course, so the keys can be deleted should there be a tamper detection. That would not be possible with flash.

Meanwhile, the likes of Apple have implemented secure storage solutions in "permanent RAM" that even all the three-letter services in the U.S. seem to have a hard time getting access to. I guess such a solution should also keep the evil pirates away and allow for a somewhat less rickety design...

[Leo Enticknap]

The right to repair issue for consumer tech and what we are faced with in terms of DCI compliant hardware are related, but not identical ones. As far as the former goes, this article makes for an interesting read - it looks like the French government is going to try to kick Apple's ass over their various tactics for impeding and frustrating aftermarket parts and repair vendors. I've had two experiences with that to validate Paul's comment. About five years ago, my already pretty old iPad's battery deteriorated to the point of being effectively useless. As I only really used it as a Kindle reader, I thought I'd try a DIY battery replacement, courtesy of a $35 kit from Ebay and a YouTube self help video. I managed to do it, but just as Paul noted, I made the old battery smolder and stink quite impressively in the process of breaking it free of the glue holding it to the back cover, and scratched up the exterior side of the outer cover a bit in the processes of removing it and replacing it. I got another 18 months or so out of the iPad before software updates for that hardware revision ceased and Kindle would no longer work, but the swapout process was difficult enough that only a committed geek would attempt it.

Then, earlier this year, I took my work iPhone to a local MacGuyz to have its battery swapped out (same reason: it's three years old, been used intensively throughout that time, and the battery could barely hold a charge anymore). They did so and the new battery works fine, apart from constant nag messages telling me that I have unauthorized hardware in the phone. A web search revealed that the only way I could make those messages go away would be to take it to a Crapple store and have an OEM battery installed, at over double the price I paid MacGuyz to put an aftermarket one in. I'm guessing that this tactic is on the extreme boundary of what the law lets them do, and that if they could stop the phone from working at all with an aftermarket battery in it, they would have done so.

As for Dolby pulling out-of-warranty repair service on SV/IMBs and IMS2000s, as an employee of a Dolby dealer, I don't feel it would be appropriate to state any opinions on a public forum, beyond noting that I'm not looking forward to having to tell customers who haven't had the cert extensions done, and/or have a Doremi IMB battery swapout due, that there is now significant risk involved in attempting these procedures, but a guaranteed negative outcome by not doing so. I suppose that Doremi IMB users could just leave their projectors powered up 24/7 until they are able to replace the server/IMB in order to avoid having to swap out the battery; but if the IMB firmware and SM are still on older versions, they're going to have to take the risk of updating them in order to install the certificate patch.

[James Gardiner]

I'm not sure it will play out as Dolby has indicated. Depending on where you are, consumer law issues may exist with Dolby and its stance here. They may have to backtrack a little.
I don't see how they can refuse to re-arm a board due to a battery issue. It does not need any "parts" in stock, just, an engineer's time with access to info and tools to do the process (your costs are only freight and the engineer's time). I can see a major chain getting very agitated about this stance and using some common laws to change Dolby's stance on this. I am personally very surprised Dolby has taken this stance, they are known for having more lawyers than engineers.