Originally Posted By: EricTheBlue
As previously stated, I agree that USB makes more sense if an Ethernet jack is not co-located with the equipment to be updated. As for downloading files to USB at work, how convenient that is will depend on two things: Does the individual have their own desktop PC? Despite this being the 21st century, plenty of workers don't. Even if the worker does have his/her own PC, are downloads for personal purposes allowed by IT policy? I was a IT security auditor in a past life and can tell you for a fact the some organizations (especially ones dealing with sensitive technology or operations) do not allow file downloads from "unauthorized" websites for personal purposes. As you said, downloading at a friend's house will be an option for many people, but at this point is doesn't sound very convenient to me. Having said all this, my view is that someone who orders a 978 from a web-based site will likely have access to firmware files from the same location.

I hadn't taken it to that extreme a position since, as you note, if downloading a file onto a USB stick somewhere in a person's daily routine is that challenging, how likely are they to even know that Outlaw exists?

Originally Posted By: EricTheBlue
For home use, establishing a wired network should be pretty straight forward and again, if someone ordered a component via the web in the first place (increasingly common), odds are the network is already established.

I've known a lot of people for whom having a wired connection to their home network available at the entertainment center is exceedingly difficult. I was just at a friend's house this weekend - a database admin who is an extremely sophisticated user - and he was talking about how hard it was to get a wire to his living room in his older home. His Mac Mini HTPC and Wii have wireless so he hadn't worried about it in the past, but he was streaming a race from ESPN and couldn't get reliable video without a wired connection. After hours spent trying to fish a Cat5e through some abandoned radiator piping to his basement where he could get into an abandoned electrical conduit, he gave up and ran the network cable down the stairs and behind the couch. He could always do a wireless bridge if he had a device without built-in wifi, but I've known several other people (including two Model 990 owners in the Memphis area) who can't get Ethernet to their entertainment centers and probably wouldn't want to invest in the gear to create a wireless bridge unless there was a huge benefit to it.

It's a very real problem for a lot of people. The minute you add Ethernet to a product, you can expect people to start asking why it isn't wireless because they can't get a cable from their home's router to the equipment rack. I've seen it with OPPO's Blu-ray players. And wireless, while potentially not that big a deal to get working, creates a whole new universe of tech support challenges for a company like Outlaw that provides their own customer support. They wouldn't have to worry about you or me, certainly, but there are a lot of current and potential Outlaw owners that I've talked with over the years who would have a problem getting Ethernet to their gear and would need help getting a wifi-capable unit connected to their home network.

Originally Posted By: EricTheBlue
Of course, this is all moot since the 978 will not have a Ethernet connection.

smile - That's true. Still, I've been persisting because I think it's an interesting and useful dialog, seeing different sides of the issue.
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gonk
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