I finally got my hands on the O!Play just to be disappointed again. True, it does play back DVD Menus and idx/sub subtitles properly and even completely turns off my attached WD passport drive including LED, something WD seems to be incapable of doing with their WD TV. However, it’s design is a bit too clunky for taking it with you on a video night over at friends.
O!Play vs WDTV: can you say clunky?
Judging from the looks of the (pretty slow) GUI, it uses a similar chip to Antarius and Auvisio and although it’s possible to turn off the annoying video preview, because of the empty preview window
file names still cannot use the whole width of the screen.
That’s something the Xtreamer apparently is capable of, I really need to get me one of those. Next!
Since the WD TV most likely won’t ever support idx/subs properly and Asus does have no clue when the O!Play HDP-R1 will be available in Germany, I’m still checking out other devices despite their quite ugly (apparantly generic) design.
From the looks of GUI and menus (a puny 16 chars max, why don’t they do it like Xtreamer?) it would appear the Auvisio is equipped with the same (Realtek 128X?) chip as the Antarius, with no DTS downmix but quite an impressive feature list given it’s price tag of 99,- Euros:
LAN support (no WLAN)
full DVD menu support (ISOs/VOBs)
USB hub support
HDD support > 1 TB (1.5 TB Maxtor drive worked flawlessly)
pretty much every HD trailer I’ve tried played back fine
However, contrary to the Antarius there’s no setting to turn off the annoying video preview. So I mailed Pearl, the mail-order company that sells Auvisio, to ask about any upcoming firmware updates that might fix this flaw but apparently the manufactury does offer
no end user customer support!
As confirmed by the Pearl hotline, the Asian manufacturer does not deal with end users ever. So if you’ve got any problems with/suggestions about their product you can mail the retailer who will pass them on eventually but you won’t get any feedback. If it’s commercially viable the manufacturer might release an update but don’t count on it.
Sorry, but I won’t support any company that out of touch with it’s customers. Next!
I’ve just read these interesting examples of flawed tech over at Technologizer.com who ask the very same question I keep asking myself whenever I come across unexpected and pointless flaws in consumer electronics devices: “What were they thinking?” Sadly, it would appear that common sense and best practice are still unheard of in 2009 in certain design/engineer circles.
Just popping in for a brief review of the Trekstor Antarius I’ve borrowed from a friend for a couple of days. Similar to the WD TV DVD menus are ignored but as it recognizes VOBs < 30 mins and ISOs < 40 mins and allows the user to select each title of these files via the remote, watching episodic shows and music DVDs is possible. Although it’s still gonna take me some time to jump on the HD bandwagon my next mediaplayer is bound to have HD support, however despite being advertized as such, the Antarius falls short of that category cause as of firmware 1.26 there’s
no H.264 support.
When pressing play on some trailers resulted in “invalid file” I re-checked homepage and manual and indeed, somewhere in the fineprint it says that MPEG-4 Part 2 ASP (xvid/divx) is supported up to 1080p but not MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC (H.264) which means that pretty much every mkv out there won’t play back. Epic fail.
OTOH I don’t feel to bad about skipping this device cause I think both design and UI suck and it comes with further flaws (YMMV), some of which might get fixed by an upcoming firmware:
due to a pointless preview window on the right side of the screen the file browser is limited to a puny 16 (!) chars with painfully slow scrolling (yes, it’s even slower than my old Panasonic’s display)
file browser: 16 chars max
the remote’s NEXT does not skip to the next song but goes PAGE DOWN (thanks for breaking usability)
no shuffle play (and as a matter of fact even no continuous play in folders unless you switch to music mode and select “repeat all”)
m3u playlist selection
some ID3 v2.3 tags don’t work (no time for further testing)
after file copy is done (you can’t write on FAT32 but only NTFS drives!) you’ll end up at root dir instead of the dirs you were in
on -> standby -> no power -> power -> on (instead of standby)
with some idx/sub only every other item is shown
no srt font size selection so word wrap does not work properly with some subs
Next up for testing are EGreat EG-M34A, Xtreamer and Asus O!Play HDP-R1 (I’m not kidding, that’s the name!), whichever is available in Germany first.
Currently I have all my original DVDs stuffed away in the basement and ripped to my Mediacenter PC in the living room which keeps me from playing DJ. But I’m still looking for a smaller device for bedroom and at my girlfriend’s. Since Philips does not seem to be interested in fixing bugs but rather releases new hardware I’ve started checking out other products, this time Western Digital’s WD TV.
You see, in Germany you can return products purchased over the internet for a complete refund within two weeks no questions asked. Some local retailers try to keep up offering the same return policy which means I can test the player for 14 days and give it back and buy it elsewhere again, repeat. Of course device and packaging have to be in mint condition which is why I carefully open it, don’t remove foil and use my own cables and batteries. Unfortunately the device is flawed as well:
No DVD menu support.
I know, it’s meant to be a HD player and therefore SD material is hardly prioritized, still I don’t get why one of the oldest formats around that any cheapo standalone can playback is not supported. I usually don’t care about menus but having to fast forward through the first three eps of a DVD to watch the last ep is a PITA. Sometimes even this won’t work as VOBs < 30 mins and ISOs < 40 are not recognized (for no technical reason). Apparently I’m not the only one who expected their media center to support old formats as well.
Although 4 months for the first firmware update with so few features seemed like a bad joke, a huge community evolved around the WD TV, just check out AVS Forums, english and german Wiki, modded firmware (with nice extra features like network support). WD is doing the right thing by listening to the community and trying to make the WD TV a better product. Way to go.
However, the current 1.02.07 firmware still has some serious bugs some of which affect my personal viewing habits like messed up idx/sub subtitle display due to weird palette interpretation. I’ve upped a rar file with some screenshots to demonstrate this effect (right-click, save as, rename to .rar). During my tests I’ve corrected some serious issues in the german UI which I’ve mailed to WD and b-rad.cc who said to implement them. If you don’t want to wait or feel uncomfortable to install B-rad’s modded firmware just to have some proper translations on your screen you can patch the official 1.02.07 firmware like this:
download my corrected UI translation of 1.02.07 final or 1.02.08 pre (right-click, save as, rename to .rar)
rename the official wdtv.bin to wdtv.old.bin
open a dos prompt in windows: START > RUN > cmd [ENTER]
apply the patch by typing: xdelta -d -s wdtv.old.bin wdtv.xdelta wdtv.bin
open wdtv.ver in notepad and change version to 1.02.08
copy wdtv.bin and wdtv.ver to an USB stick’s root dir and flash the device
I’ve only corrected the german UI files (ge.po, ge.mo) and adjusted their MD5s, other than that your new wdtv.bin will be identical to the official firmware. It goes without saying that I don’t take any responsibility in case you brick your WD TV. Done properly you can always flash over the original fimware by adding a higher version number to wdtv.ver.
I really hope WD is gonna put some more effort into this device and not just it’s already planned successor. Until then I’m gonna return my device and wait for positive rewiews on the next firmware update.
Just popping in cause I’m quite busy with real life. I’d planned to overhaul the Philips FAQ for today but since their support still hasn’t gotten back to me after I’d send some files they requested at the beginning of February (!) I’ve put it on hold. This kinda business conduct also made me look for alternatives.
So I’ve been testing the WD TV in the meantime which looks quite promising but has lots of bugs which may be fixed by the upcoming firmware update (just checked, still not out as of writing this). I won’t hold my breath though, since WD seems to have strange priorities (new thumbnail support instead of fixing bugs, wtf?) but we’ll see. I’m currently waiting for the Egreat NMT to be available in Germany, which also features network connectivity. More on this as it unravels.
Thanks for tuning in this last year, a 100+ hits a day make me feel like I’m not the only one out there unhappy with flawed devices.
Die Menschen sind immer wieder darüber erstaunt, dass unsere Infrastruktur gegen uns verwendet werden kann. Als Folge von (geplanten) Terroranschlägen werden aus Angst immer wieder Rufe laut, diese Infrastruktur zu verbieten, einzuschränken oder zu überwachen. Nach Angaben der Beamten, die den Anschlag von Mumbai untersuchen, haben die Terroristen Bilder von Google Earth zur Orientierung vor Ort verwendet. Das ist nicht das erste Mal, dass Google Earth vorgeworfen wird, Terroristen nützlich zu sein; 2007 wurden bei aufständischen Irakern Google Earth-Bilder britischer Militärbasen gefunden. Vorfälle wie diese haben viele Regierungen dazu veranlasst, von Google das Löschen oder Unscharfmachen von Bildern gefährdeter Einrichtungen zu fordern: Militärbasen, Kernkraftwerke, Regierungsgebäude, etc. Ein indisches Gericht wurde angerufen, Google Earth komplett zu verbieten.
Informationstechnologie kann Terroristen noch auf andere Art nützlich sein. Letztes Jahr wurde in einem Geheimdienstbericht der US Armee die Sorge geäußert, Terroristen könnten Twitter zur Planung ihrer Anschläge verwenden. Zudem gibt es unbestätigte Berichte, denen zufolge die Terroristen von Mumbai die Beiträge auf Twitter über den Anschlag verfolgten, um in Echtzeit Informationen für ihr weiteres Vorgehen zu erhalten. Der britische Geheimdienst ist in Sorge darüber, dass Terroristen VoIP-Dienste wie Skype zur Kommunikation verwenden könnten. Terroristen könnten in Second Life oder World of Warcraft trainieren. Wir wissen bereits, dass Websites zur Verbreitung von Propaganda und wahrscheinlich sogar zur Rekrutierung genutzt werden.
Dies alles wird natürlich noch vom Zugriff auf offene Funknetze übertroffen, die wiederholt als Terroristenwerkzeug gebrandmarkt wurden und Versuchen, sie zu verbieten ausgesetzt waren.
Mobilfunknetzwerke sind auch nützlich für Terroristen. Die Terroristen von Mumbai telefonierten darüber miteinander. Daraufhin wurde in einigen Städten, darunter London, vorgeschlagen, die Netzabdeckung im Falle eines Anschlags abzuschalten.
Nun lassen Sie uns kurz inne halten und tief durchatmen. Naturgemäß ist eine Kommunikationsinfrastruktur universell. Man kann sie dazu verwenden, legale als auch illegale Vorhaben zu planen, und es ist normalerweise unmöglich zu sagen, was davon was ist. Versand und Empfang meiner Mails unterscheiden sich in nichts von dem eines Terroristen. Für das Mobilfunknetz sieht der Anruf eines Terroristen genauso aus wie der zwischen zwei Opfern. Jeder Versuch, die Infrastruktur zu verbieten oder einzuschränken betrifft alle. Sollte Indien Google Earth verbieten, könnte ein Terrorist nicht mehr damit planen, aber auch sonst niemand. OffeneFunknetzwerke sind aus vielen Gründen nützlich, die meisten davon sind positiv und sie abzuschalten beeinträchtigt alle dieser Gründe. Terroranschläge sind ziemlich selten und es ist fast immer ein schlechter Kompromiss, wenn der Gesellschaft die Vorteile der Kommunikationstechnologie verweigert werden, nur weil die schlimmen Jungs sie auch nutzen könnten.
Während eines Terroranschlags ist die Kommunikationsinfrastruktur besonders wertvoll. Twitter war am besten dazu geeignet, die Menschen in Echtzeit mit Infos über die Anschläge von Mumbai zu versorgen. Würde während eines Terroranschlags die indische Regierung Twitter – oder London die Netzabdeckung des Mobilfunks – abschalten, würde der Mangel an Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten für alle, nicht nur die Terroristen, den Terror noch verstärken und evtl. sogar die Anzahl der Opfer erhöhen. Informationen verringern die Angst und geben den Menschen mehr Sicherheit.
Nichts davon ist neu. Kriminelle haben Telefon und Handy seit deren Erfindung eingesetzt. Drogenschmuggler nutzen Flugzeuge und Boote, Funkgeräte und Satellitentelefone. Bankräuber haben schon immer Autos und Motorräder als Fluchtfahrzeuge benutzt, und davor Pferde. Ich habe darüber bisher nichts gelesen, aber die Attentäter von Mumbai haben auch Boote benutzt. Sie trugen zudem Stiefel. Sie aßen in Restaurants zu Mittag, tranken abgefülltes Wasser und atmeten Luft. Die Gesellschaft übersteht dies alles, weil die Möglichkeiten, die Infrastruktur zu guten Zwecken einzusetzen die schlechten bei weitem überwiegen, und das, obwohl erstere klein und häufig und letztere selten und spektakulär sind. Und obwohl der Terrorismus die Infrastruktur der Gesellschaft gegen sie selbst einsetzt, schaden wir uns nur selbst, indem wir sie als Reaktion darauf beschneiden; genau so, als würden Autos verboten, nur weil auch Bankräuber sie benutzen.
As you’ve propably read in my About section, Tech Flaws isn’t just about bitching about inapt engineers & designers but also about finding userfriendly devices that are designed with some common sense. That’s why – despite my previous bad experience with Philips – I’ve tested both 5990 and 3260 and decided to compile a FAQ from various forum entries. This is due to the player’s potential as well as to find people willing to donate so further features can be added by firmware modders (please check out this thread). I’m also gonna break blogging procedure by updating this post instead of adding new blog entries whenever this FAQ gets updated.
What USB devices are supported?
You can attach pretty much any device with an USB slot like USB sticks, card readers (in case your pics are stored on SD card) and USB HDDs albeit the latter aren’t officially supported. That is because Philips can’t guarantee compatibility since some of the 2.5″ drives need more power on startup than the 500mA defined in the USB specification. Also there’s been some concern that attaching USB-powered drives for extended periods of time might put too much strain on the Philips’ power supply and fry it eventually. Since some enclosure manufacturers do sell different HDD brands with their label one can’t know in advance what drive will work which means you gotta try or be on the safe side by using 3.5″ HDDs with external power instead. You are welcome to share your experiences in the comment section below.
What file systems are supported?
Unfortunately FAT32 is the lowest common denominator since it is supported by almost any OS out there so we’re stuck with it on standalone devices for the time being. If your external drive has several partitions with other filesystems like NTFS, you’ll only get to see those that are formatted to FAT32 (no matter if they are primary or extended partitions).
What partition/folder/file/filename sizes are supported?
According to the manual the DVP can handle 300 folders with 648 files each. FAT32 supports up to 8 TB for partitions (1 TB drives have been reported to work fine so far) and 4 GB for files as well as Long filenames of which the Philips filebrowser displays only a puny 14 chars.
Micros~1 limited FAT32 partition creation on Windows 2000 and newer to 32 GB. To create larger partitions on these systems use “fat32format.exe” (Google) under Start > Run > cmd [ENTER].
What media/file types/formats/codecs are supported?
As mentioned in the manuals (also downloadable as pdf from Philips) the players can handle avi, mpg, vob (also with AC3 sound), mp3, wma (no DRM), jpg from USB as well as CD-R(W) and DVD±R(W) DL. The 5990 additionally plays: mp4 (Nero Digital, xvid/mp3), wmv, ogm and transmits DTS audio via digital output to a receiver and handles GMC and QPel on xvid/divx. Please bear in mind that avi/wmv are containers that can hold a lot of different streams as well as codecs which are not necessarily supported. The player can handle divx 3, 4, 5, 6 (5990: + divx ultra) and xvid but only up to the max standard resolution of 720×576p i.e. no High Defintion. Subtitles must be srt or idx/sub (not compressed with rar) and should be named according to the video file since they’re not listed in the filebrowser, e.g.
my.favourite.show.1×01.avi or my.favourite.show.1×01.idx
The Philips does not display IFOs so if you do have a DVD-Video ripped to HDD you can only playback VOBs. This means you’ll have short but noticeable breaks between VOBs, messed up subtitles and no correct aspect ratio, menus nor chapters. You also have to manually adjust audio streams whenever a new VOB is started automatically if you’re not listening to the first stream in the file.
Contrary to some Multimedia-HDDs there’s currently no standalone out there that does playback DVDs properly from USB. There’s no official confirmation on this but there may be several reasons, a) legal: the DVD-Forum license does not permit it; b) technical: ifo files on DVDs address titles by sectors which are not present on a HDD filesystem so at least mapping sectors would be required. According to New_Age (one of the best MTK firmware modders) one would need to get their hands on ARM source code to add such a feature which is not likely to happen.
What about file order in the file browser?
Due to limitations of the FAT32 file system standalones as well as car radios and mp3 players that don’t have a database suffer from the same problem: files are displayed in the very order they’ve been written to the FAT which even gets more messy in case you deleted some files from in between before copying over new files. Cause if the new files/entries are larger than the previous ones copying over files numbered from 1 to 20 might get them listed in a different order. So your best bet to get files sorted in alphabetical order is using DriveSort.
Avis over 2 GB take forever to load, what do I do?
You need to remux them with AvimuxGUI which is done in a few minutes without re-encoding as explained by Squash on the Videohelp forums.
Some files are displayed with a wrong aspect ratio, what do I do?
First of all you should stop downloading crappy encodes from the net and/or use AutoGK for encoding your originals to xvid. If avis just weren’t encoded properly you can try rewriting headers with MPEG4Modifier from moitah.net or use DVDpatcher for setting the correct DAR in mpegs.
During playback of some avis video stops for a few seconds while audio continues, what do I do?
The Philips seems to have trouble with packed bitstream files. You can recode them on the fly with MPEG4Modifier from moitah.net.
What is the front display used for, ID3 tags?
You wish! Unfortunately the display only shows elapsed time with 5 digits (h:mm:ss) and the track number on start of a track for 1 (MP3) and 5 (Audio CD) seconds. Pressing ‘display’ on the remote doesn’t change that and of course there’s no button to switch folders on MP3 discs nor a ‘play all’-mode so that the player would start playback of the next album folder automatically.
How do I set the player to Region Free?
Goto Setup > Preferences and press 138931 on your remote. Press up to select “0″ and hit setup to exit.
Is there a firmware mod available?
Fortunately yes! Vb6rocod has done a marvelous job modding them with great new features like:
new skins, OSD font (text and graphic) and filebrowser (with scrollbars, outlined font, new icons)
Read more about it on his homepage and blog, you can also use his forum to request new features/bug fixes or ask about what firmware to use for your player in case you’re not sure. Other firmware modders might start adding further features but this might require donations to enable them to purchase the player(s) first. Please read more about it.
How do I flash the player with new firmware?
First of all open the tray and press ‘55′ on your remote to see what player version you have, e.g. 12 is the european model and 37 the US model, you must not flash your player with the firmware from another model or you will brick it! Then check your current firmware by selecting Setup > General. Press 1379 on your remote to check the last two digits of the version number.
Download the latest original firmware from Philips and follow this procedure:
extract the bin file from the donwloaded archive to the root of an USB stick
remove any disc from the unit
reset your player to default settings so it is in a defined state and set to english language
attach the stick and switch to USB if the unit doesn’t do so automatically
press play when advised to do so on the screen
WAIT until the tray opens and the LED on your USB stick stops blinking
plug off the stick
WAIT till the player closes the tray automatically and reboots
do another reset to default settings for good measure.
Remember to delete the bin file from the USB stick before you plug it in next time to playback media so you don’t accidentally flash the player again. Download vb6rocod’s latest firmware mod (be sure to use the same version number as Philips’ original firmware) and extract the bin file with the corresponding codepage, e.g.:
1250 — East European Latin
1251 — Cyrillic
1252 — West European Latin
1253 — Greek
1254 — Turkish
and repeat above procedure. Note that you can also revert to the original firmware applying the very same steps. Of course any problems resulting from flashing are your responsibility. In case you bricked your player you may be able to revive it using this cable.
How do I change volume with the remote?
The 5990 remote cannot change analogue volume except on a Philips TV. That is because you are supposed to connect the player via HDMI to your AVR or TV which in turn will decode the digital signal and only then adjust volume. The 3260 remote lacks volume keys completely but you can change analogue volume by mapping them to less used keys like Repeat/Repeat A-B easily with this tool: Remote Philips 3260.
What chipset is used?
Both players are equipped with Mediatek chipsets, the 3260 uses a MT1389DE, the 5990 a MT1389DXE (picture thanks to Huey) as shown below:
Click on a thumbnail to get a larger image and then again on the larger image to get the original size.
Londons Oyster Card wurde gehackt und die letzen Details dazu werden im Oktober veröffentlicht. NXP Semiconductors, eine Tochterfirma von Philips, die das System herstellt, hat den Kampf vor Gericht verloren, der die Veröffentlichung verhindern sollte. Es könnte sein, dass jemand diese Info dafür nutzt, Verkehrsmittel ohne Bezahlung zu nutzen, untergehen wird die Welt davon jedoch nicht. Es ist sogar so, dass die Veröffentlichung dieser schweren Sicherheitslücke uns allen künftig zu Gute kommt.
Darum geht es: jede Oyster Card hat einen RFID-Chip der mit Lesegeräten an den Drehkreuzen kommuniziert. Dieser Chip, der “Mifare Classic”, wird auch in Hunderten anderer Verkehrsbetriebe – z.B. in Boston, Los Angeles, Brisbane, Amsterdam, Taipei, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro – eingesetzt und zudem als Zugangskarte in Tausenden von Firmen, Schulen, Krankenhäusern und Regierungsgebäuden in England und auf der ganzen Welt.
Die Mifare Classic ist total unsicher. Das ist keine Übertreibung, es handelt sich um Kryptographie auf Kindergartenniveau. Jedem mit Erfahrung im Sicherheitsbereich wäre es peinlich, seinen Namen mit diesem Design in Verbindung zu bringen. Um nicht bloßgestellt zu werden, wollte NXP dieses Design geheim halten.
Ein Team der Radboud University Nijmegen, Holland hat die Mifare Classic geknackt. Sie demonstrierten ihren Angriff duch kostenloses U-Bahn-Fahren und den Einbruch in ein Gebäude. Ihre beiden Aufsätze zu dem Thema (einer ist schon online) werden diesen Herbst auf zwei Konferenzen vorgestellt.
Um den zweiten Aufsatz ging es bei der Klage von NXP. Sie bezeichneten die Enthüllung als “unverantwortlich”, warnten vor “immensen Schäden” und behaupteten, sie würde “die Sicherheit von Objekten, zu deren Sicherung die Mifare IC eingesetzt wird, gefährden”. Das holländische Gericht ließ keins der Argumente gelten: “Der Schaden für NXP resultiert nicht aus der Veröffentlichung der Artikel sondern aus Herstellung und Vertrieb eines Chips, der mangelhalft zu sein scheint.”
Genauso ist es. Allgemeiner gesagt ist die Idee, das Geheimhaltung der Sicherheit dient, in sich falsch.
Wann immer eine Firma behauptet, dass die Geheimhaltung des Designs ihrer Produkte nötig für deren Sicherheit ist – z.B. bei Zugangskarten, Wahlmaschinen, Flughafensicherheit – bedeutet dies stets, dass die Sicherheit mangelhaft ist, und sie keine andere Wahl haben, als diese Tatsache zu verschleiern. Jeder fähige Kryptograph hätte das Sicherheitskonzept der Mifare nicht proprietär sondern öffentlich angelegt.
Geheimhaltung ist nicht dauerhaft. Das Sicherheitheitskonzept der Mifare basierte auf der Annahme, dass niemand herausfinden würde, wie sie funktioniert. Daher musste NXP den holländischen Forschern einen Maulkorb verpassen. Das ist aber schlicht falsch, Reverse Engineering ist nicht schwierig. Die schlechte Sicherheit des Mifare Designs wurde bereits von anderen Forschern aufgedeckt. Eine chinesische Firma vertreibt sogar einen kompatiblen Chip. Hat da noch irgendwer Zweifel, dass die bad guys schon oder bald genug davon wissen?
Die Veröffentlichung dieses Angriffs mag NXP und deren Kunden teuer zu stehen kommen, aber sie ist gut für die Sicherheit an sich. Firmen designen Sicherheit immer nur so gut, wie die Kunden sie fordern können. Bei NXP war sie so schlecht, weil die Kunden keine Ahnung davon hatten, wie sie zu bewerten sei: entweder wissen sie nicht, welche Fragen sie stellen müssen oder haben nicht genug Hintergrundwissen um den Marketingantworten zu misstrauen, die man ihnen gibt. Die Entscheidung des Gerichts wird sie anspornen, ein vernünftiges Konzept zu entwerfen statt sich auf grottiges Design und Geheimhaltung zu verlassen und zudem davon abhalten, Sicherheit lediglich auf Basis der Einschüchterung von Forschern zu versprechen.
Es ist unklar, wie der Hack die Londoner Verkehrsbetriebe (TfL) beeinflussen wird. Eine Karte zu klonen dauert nur ein paar Sekunden, und der Dieb muß dazu lediglich jemanden anrempeln, der eine echte Oyster card bei sich hat. Man benötigt allerdings ein RFID-Lesegerät und etwas Software, die zwar für einen Techie kein Problem darstellen, wohl aber für den durchschnittlichen Schwarzfahrer. Die Polizei dürfte Verkäufer von geklonten Karten, gleich welcher Anzahl, umgehend dingfest machen. TfL verspricht, geklonte Karten innerhalb von 24 Stunden abzuschalten, was dem unschuldigen Opfer, dessen Karte geklont wurde, wohl mehr schaden dürfte als dem Dieb.
Das Schadpotential ist weit höher für Firmen, die die Mifare Classic als Zugangskarte verwenden. Es wäre sehr interessant zu erfahren, wie NXP diesen die Sicherheit ihres Systems präsentiert hat.
Und obwohl sich diese Attacke nur auf den Mifare Classic-Chip abzielte, bin ich der gesamten Produktlinie gegenüber misstrauisch. NXP verkauft einen Chip, der sicherer ist und hat bereits einen weiteren in der Pipeline. Führt man sich aber die Menge grundlegender kryptographischer Fehler vor Augen, die NXP mit dem Mifare Classic gemacht hat, fragt man sich unweigerlich ob die “sicherere” Version das wirklich ist.
Despite all SMART values being way above thresholds my internal 500 GB Samsung was giving up on me which I realized when I suddenly couldn’t copy over a file to my external Samsung Spinpoint F DT USB backup disc. A deep scan with Samsung’s ES Tool revealed several defective LBAs so I cloned the entire disc to said external to swap them. When I booted up my machine the new disc wasn’t detected by my board’s VIA 8237 RAID controller revealing the flaw I’d overlooked so far:
SATA interface speed cannot be switched to 1.5 Gb/s!
Apart from SATA’s touted backwards and forwards compatibility which should ensure operating a 3.0 drive on a 1.5 connector the manual on Samsung’s product page explicitely mentions a SATA 1.5 Gb/s Speed Limit Jumper setting to avoid speed negotiation issues on older motherboards. The manual however depicts 8 jumper pins whereas the HD753LJ has only 4 (!) none combination of which does any good.
So I tried both patch downloads mentioned in the FAQ to set the speed via software on a friend’s PC whose motherboard can stomach 3.0 devices attached to it. Curiously enough both tools do not show the current setting so to verify patch results you gotta boot ES Tool again. 3 boot CDs, how’s that for convience?
Of course applying the patches did not work as confirmed by Samsung support the next day. I’d tried to contact them by mail but their German support form did not list my drive model so I had to call the hotline which failed to call me back. When I called again the next day the droid on the phone had no explanation on why manual and support form where out of date nor what the 4 jumper pins are supposedly used for (since they are not used for master/slave or 32 GB clip settings anymore).
Samsung – what’s the (Spin)point?
Update, August 6th
I’ve just read on a german forum that only after using the second tool on Samsung’s FAQ page ES-Tool 2.11 would get a new option ‘Set Max UDMA’ which at last would allow adjusting interface speed (‘process’ ). Can anyone please confirm that with a comment. I’ve already sold my Samsung and got a WD but I’d really like to know if Samsung tried to fix this flaw.
Update, November 4th
Since I’d sold my drive to a friend I was able to test it again yesterday at his computer and now it worked for me too! I was able to switch SATA speed setting by doing it as Ken Cowin suggested: set to 3.0 GB in SSpeed instead of 1.5! It appears whoever coded the tool accidentally labeled the routines the wrong way cause after using SSpeed I could verify (and even change) speed with ES Tools and option ‘Set Max UDMA’.
O!Play vs WDTV: can you say clunky?
Posted by Marvin 
Posted by Marvin 
Posted by Marvin 
