UPDATE: Originally posted in the Saloon on March 29, 2003, the link below to the update instructions are also being posted here for the convenience of our customers. Note that customers who placed their 950 orders March 14 or later are NOT affected.
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We are pleased to let you know that everything is now in place to enable you to correct any Model 950 unit that exhibits the "No LFE output on DTS-ES" bug. Please follow this
link for further instructions.
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Fellow Outlaws:
When we first addressed this issue a week ago, we promised you that we’d keep you up to date on our progress and have an answer for you as soon as possible. In order to keep the lines of communication open, we would like to take this opportunity to bring you up to date on where things stand.
Thanks to exhaustive work by engineering teams in Asia and the US, we have been able to locate the source of the “No LFE on DTS-ES” issue. As it turns out, some incorrect software provided to us by an outside source as part of the product development, but otherwise verified as correct, turned out to be the root cause.
We have received corrected software and it is currently undergoing one more round of compliance testing and verification. The good news is that the bug was isolated to one specific module, so completion of the testing should only take a few more days.
Even better news is the fact that the software that needs correction is located in a replaceable E-PROM chip on the Model 950’s digital board. Those of you with long memories will recall that at one point in the early product descriptions we did say that some software was upgradeable. Fortunately, this issue falls into that category.
What that means to Model 950 owners is that anyone with a unit exhibiting this issue will NOT have to return the unit to us for repair. Instead, we are now assembling a kit that will contain all parts and information required for the E-PROM to be replaced. We’re putting some final touches on the procedure by which this will happen, and you’ll see that in just a few more days once the final testing is complete and we have the replacement chips and some other needed items in hand. We think you’ll be pleased with the process since it will not require your unit to be swapped or out of service for more than the time it takes to have the chip replaced.
Of course, going forward, we will make certain that the correct code is in all new units when they ship.
We apologize to the relatively small number of customers that have been impacted by this issue, and we thank all those that participated in bringing this to our attention.
Thanks and regards
The Outlaws
[This message has been edited by admin (edited April 03, 2003).]