Barco Series 4 software update release thread

[Leo Enticknap]

They really should have ironed out bugs like that before releasing the product for sale.

[Marin Zorica]

They really should have ironed out bugs like that before releasing the product for sale.

True! But relly, is it possible that you do all that based on lab and some beta testing, without real conditions......? For example, at festival we had a lot of manual work, which is quite opposite to normal day to day operation in cinema......so we had a lot of manual cue tiggering, rewinding forward and back on test projections, a lot of channels and macros etc etc.......so that's quite intensive for web gui plus, ICMP-XS does not have separate player and communicator interface, but now they are all in one

[Steve Guttag]

Leo, I think you have other aspects to it too. They tied the XS version to projector functionality. So, once they do that, they are stuck needing to supply it. Personally, I think the way Barco has handled the whole ICMP versus ICP-D to not be in the spirit of DCI and allowing the exhibitor to choose what projector/server combos that they want. Yeah, you CAN do it...but they really tilt the playing field in their favor, cost wise. The whole having to get a license to use a 3rd party server is total BS that shouldn't pass DCI muster.

In truth, I think that the amount of bug fixes on this one is about par for the course on new equipment. Most every piece of equipment is buggy in its first year of actual release. I also think you are seeing an elevated number of bug fixes because they are introducing new features along the way...each with their own set of bugs too. I'll also remind you that the ICMP itself was rather buggy when new (to the point that I wouldn't use it after having nearly 100% failure). That, eventually, as we progressed up to the ICMP-X, subsided. Doremi/Dolby and GDC have, essentially, evolved their product such that it stands on the previous one, a lot (particularly the Doremi evolution), for better or worse. Shoot, GDC's SR-1000 has multiple firmware trees on the same basic model there isn't an obvious linage (do I use 17.3 or 17.5 branch, and why?).

So, for the ICMP-XS, their initial release is 1.3.6 that showed up in S4 version 1.9.15.

Overall, I'm okay with the rapid release schedule of the unit. It tells me that if a bug is reported, it is likely to be fixed relatively soon. With the practice of only releasing updates a couple times a year...problems will be present for that period of time. Depending on the problem, that would really suck. I'm sure that part of the sales pitch on the XS is that one need not worry about its newness since any problem will be addressed immediately.