Home media electronics not working properly? Check the firmware.

Having a lot of electronics around can be bliss until they stop working the way that they are supposed to. I have noticed that the media equipment that own and have at the house sometimes like to misbehave. I have a 37" Philips plasma television at the house and it started to do some strange things like just turn itself off in the middle of watching a program. This started to happen more frequently as the days went by. I went to the manufacturers website and did some research into the problems that these devices encounter. It turns out that there was a firmware fix for this issue. It was as easy as taking a thumb drive and putting the firmware on it. I followed the instructions given with the program and it was fixed before I knew that it was over.

This made me think that maybe I should check the firmware for all of the other devices that I have in the media center. It turns out that the DVD player, MP3 players as well as the cable box all had software updates that were available. Updating the firmware can be risky sometimes because if it fails you might have an expensive paper weight afterwards. Check the manufacturer's website for the updates and read what it was released to fix. If the fix doesn't pertain to you then skip it. Software updates for DVD players are more common lately because of the advanced types of players being in the market. When I say advanced, I mean up converting DVD players as well as Blu-Ray players. There are already DVD and Blu-Ray players that have RJ45 ports to have a dedicated network connection and receive updates as well as additional content for the media that is inserted. Pretty soon your DVD player will be part of Skynet and the terminators will make you watch "The sound of music" in 1080P. Until then, just check your firmware.