FreeAgent Theater and GoFlexTV

[littlebluebro]

Just turned on my theater+ this morning to discover my first firmware update since owning it. It's only been just over a week! A friendly message displayed on the bottom of the screen informing me of the update. I searched online to see if there was any info about this on either the forums or Seagate's own website and couldn't find anything so I dived into uncharted waters! I've noticed the system is a bit more responsive and when I opened up the Internet section I found 3 new blocky icons! Yes, Youtube has made it! It's a very rough and ugly interface but it works and gives it the first internet service I would occasionally use. Now if they could only add internet radio and hulu support. 

That said, other than the UI issues and the god awful design that will hopefully be fixed in some future update. I want a way to access my streamed content directly through the movies and shows sections instead of having to drill through several layers in my network devices/my shortcuts/ etc..

Has anyone else found anything new and exciting in this update? Or what do you want to see Seagate add in future updates? 

[panther71]

My system says theres not an update whats the link to the update the only one is the non hd one and if you use it on the hd version it makes it unusable

[Charlie37]

I recieved and applied the udpate as well.  While the addition of Youtube might excite my kids, I'm not sure the interface is usable enough yet to get me to spend much time there.

The only other thing I noticed is that when the FAT+ is turned on, it presents a basic web server to the local network. As far as I can tell, it's only serving up a basic CGI example, but the fact that it's reachable is prommising.  (I hadn't tried this previously, so I don't know if it's a new feature or not).  I have a GB of storage attached and it would be nice to be able to manage the files without having to move equipment around.  Perhaps WEBDAV is on it's way?

[tomwwolf]

After the update i did a quick looksee for what may be updated...

a) Youtube support

b) Video / Text RSS feeds. Both appear to direct to some rss aggregator, but it does not appear configurable.

c) It now supports network Media Servers - In other words thinks like DLNA or PNP media services (eg ushare). 

d) Network streaming performance seems slightly improved. An MKV container on Planet Earth BluRay failed over the network (as it did last week), but the MPEG of the same track now worked over the network (and it had failed last week). So - slight improvement, but it still has issues with the MKV container.

e) open network ports remain the same - TCP ports 23, 80 and 8082, and a http server on port 80, a telnet server on port 23 and unknown on port 8082. Still don't have root password for the telnet server.

So overall it is an incremental upgrade that adds at least two significant features, and possibly some minor performance improvements. 

The GNU source package is still busted and non-extractable.

tom w wolf

[rondo3757]

I Got the update last night also. All my thumbnails for music are now scrambled. I havn't had a chance to check other problems. Just got off tech support and they don't even have any info on the update. Seagate chose not to tell anybody they where going to make this change. This Theater is what I was looking for but there has to be more communication.

[littlebluebro]

yeah panther71, that's the update for the older theater model. As far as I can tell there is no downloads section for the Theater+ model. All Seagate has on their website is the product manuals and fact sheets for the Theater+

[littlebluebro]

Tom,

What does the GNU source package mean? I'm not too familiar with the ways of open source programming. Would it allow for customization of the software or expand codec support? 

[bigfattwin]

Can someone post the model number that got the update ?  I

 just got one of these thing last saturday along with the Iomega product.  One of them is going back and this update might just determin which one.

Appreciate it.

BFT

[tomwwolf]

Regarding GPL code....

When a vendor uses GPL code, most of it is licensed under GPL v2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html), but the general gist of it is:

a) The vendor does not have to pay fees to use the code;

b) If the vendor distributes a product in any manner that uses GPL code, the vendor must:

b.1) provide the complete modified GPL source code to all users

b.2) provide the means to build the binaries from the modified GPL source code.

The bottom line is that if a product (like the FAT+) uses GPL code, Seagate is legally required to provide the modified source code and the means to build the code. This means can be a build environment, or a procedure to create a build environment.  In theory this means that end users have the capability to build their own firmware without resorting to reverse engineering or hacking the Seagate Firmware. 

Generally the only place this gets muddy is when the vendor licenses specific non-GPL code and integrates it into the firmware. In those cases, the vendor can only distributed the GPL elements excluding the non-GPL licensed code. Examples include specific licensable codecs. 

I don't know if the FAT+ firmware has any non-GPL licensed code, but i expect we may find out soon.

Generally if a vendor doesn't comply within a reasonable amount of time, they become part of http://gpl-violations.org/ and some pressure gets applied to the violating vendor.

This has happened with the Linksys routers, and the end result is that the community developed firmware for the linksys router is one of the best developed in the world, and Linksys gets it for free. 

So yes - my intention is to help develop an opensource firmware for the FAT+, because it is our right to do so.

tom w wolf

[dcatcha]

Any luck with getting the source code?