The "Official" Pioneer Elite SC-55/SC-57 Owners Thread - Page 122

so I should expect my cell phone manufacturer to immediately update me to the latest version of Android if their next model supports it? Owners of the original I Phone should sue to get Siri?

IMO you misapprehend the concept of backward compatibility. Yes, if I install a new OS on my existing computer, I need it to be (and the writers attemtpt to make sure it is) backward compatible with programs written for prior versions of the OS. I suspect the driver for that is purely marketing. If installing a new OS renders every program I've purchased inoperable, so I would need new versions of all my programs, they are not selling me the OS. But that's about changing the OS on an existing system, and the decision to do so is mine, not theirs. The fact that next year's model of my computer may come with the newer OS installed, but the manufacturer doesn't owe me a duty to update my last year's model . . . and I can keep my outmoded system as long as I want to as long as it meets my needs with no upgrade needed. And if I upgrade my OS, I pay for the new OS. Even worse if a new version of a word processor or spreadwheet cannot read and maniulate all my existing work product. I'd never buy it. Presumably if Pioneer and other manufacturers saw a potentially profitable market for upgrading existing receivers, they'd pursue it. Even if they incorrectly conclude there is not such a market, the remedy is not to sue them to change their minds, it's for somebody to figure out how to capitalize on that market. It's the way things work.

And BTW "winning" a lawsuit because the cost of losing is less than the cost of filing an answer is not proof of great litigationistic perspicacity. IMO.

@zoet...

trust me, i understand backwards compatibility... and i agree with jhaz, you are misapprehending the concept... it doesn't apply in this case, no matter how much you attempt to stretch the concept...

furthermore, unless you have a contractual obligation to support prior platforms with a client, you do not "have to" ensure compatibility... you "choose to"... big difference there...

basically, this comes down to "someone wanting something they can't have, and ranting about it"...

If Pioneer is on the verge of bankruptcy, quite frankly, that's not my problem. I didn't buy the receiver at bankruptcy prices - I paid full price. And this wasn't a low-end receiver for $200-$300 that's priced way below any level that we have a right to expect, just because Chinese manufacturing has driven down costs.

Maybe if Pioneer treated their customers better, they'd have more of them. Or maybe there would be more who would be willing to upgrade on a more regular schedule, although in the past, I tended to keep my equipment for long periods of time. I had a Fisher receiver that I used for 14 years and I had an Apt-Holman preamp/Crown poweramp combo that I used for over 25 years. For stereo listening that Apt/Crown combo sounded better than my SC55 in spite of all the technological innovations in the intervening years.

I never threatened to sue anybody - I just wrote that I understood why one would want to do so. (It's been decades since I sued anybody). All I said is that Pioneer's lack of support (as well as other factors about the SC55) would make me think twice before buying again. And if Pioneer doesn't want to create apps because they don't feel there's an ROI on them, all they have to do is make their interface specs public and others will fill the gap. I'm well aware that there are alternatives. I use one of them: L5, but it doesn't have all the functionality that the Pioneer app does because it can only learn functions that the physical remote accommodates.

Frankly, I don't see Pioneer improving their receivers. Tell me what's improved in the SC65 over the SC55 (or the SC67 over the SC57) of any real importance. I actually see more functions or inputs/outputs being removed than being added (although I actually support the removal of legacy ins/outs when there's more than one.) And one might make the case that the SC35 was superior to what they're producing now.

As for receiver manufacturers specifically and electronics manufacturers in general doing badly, it's largely their own fault for many reasons:
1. Like many industries, they lowered the price so much on the lower line of equipment that they reduced the perceived value of what receivers are worth across the entire line. The fact that one can buy a multichannel digital receiver with tons of processing modes (whether useful or not) for $300 is completely absurd. No wonder they're not making money.

2. As they pursued less expensive manufacturing, they let third parties not only manufacture, but actually design their receivers (some are basically OEMs). That's why MCAC vs. Audyssey aside, most receivers are pretty much alike.

3. They made the installation and operation of these receivers so damned complicated, even techies have problems. The thousands of pages of postings in the receiver/pre-pro section of this site proves that. I'm an ex-recording engineer and even I have trouble on-occassion figuring the damned thing out or what impact some setting has on my listening. As another example, Sony's user guides and the syntax used in menu functions frequently makes no sense whatsoever.

4. The larger companies, like Sony and Panasonic, have way too many products and there is no real focus. And too much of the product line is junk. While manufacturers do want to have products at every price point, when the product line is too large, it causes customer confusion because they can't understand the differences between models. Customer confusion causes delay in purchases (or in the worst case, no purchase at all).

5. In recent decades, they have never marketed well to the public on exactly what the benefits are of multi-channel reproduction in the home. Instead, they're trying to sell 9.x or 11.x channels to people who don't even understand why they need 5.1 (or even 3.1). Displays in retail are a disaster when they should be the primary way to get people excited about high-quality multichannel audio. As a result, iPod docks are taking over the audio industry. There's no one out there telling people that an iPod dock is not the way music is supposed to sound and that when you watch a movie in mono or out of stereo tiny TV speakers, that they're missing at least half of the experience.

6. They've made no attempt to appeal to women and women are the gatekeepers of the living room. The products need to be more elegantly designed and they need to be demonstrated in a way that even blows women away. There's not enough of a rich guy dedicated home-theatre market and there's not enough of geeks living with their parents who want multichannel in their rooms. They have to appeal to working couples. One way to do that is get the receiver out of sight (unless it's elegant). With networks, remotes and apps today, you don't really need the receiver accessible anymore.

7. When there was a U.S. hi-fi industry, each product line reflected the design philosophy of the owner of the company, who was almost always an engineer. You could listen to amplifiers or receivers and speakers and know who made them. So we had people like Saul Marantz, Edgar Vilchur, Henry Kloss, Avery Fisher, H.H. Scott and later people like Tom Holman, etc. Except in the area of esoteric audio, this doesn't exist today.

8. The large Japanese electronic companies have (IMO) never recovered from the days when they could promote their products in consumer magazines. They no longer know how to market and the demise of independent retailers (except for esoteric audio) hasn't helped things. Having a dusty receiver on a banged up shelf in Best Buy is not going to sell much of anything. And getting someone in BB to properly demonstrate something is like pulling teeth.

9. There's no receiver out there today that truly appeals to my sensibilities, AFAIK (not that the electronics companies should be designing something specifically for me). I'd love to see OPPO do a receiver. I have a feeling they would get it right.

and I paid $5700 for the SC-09; the cost of your SC-57 PALES by comparison, you are not even in the same ballpark as what susano owners paid across the globe & didn't get upgrades for features that were introduced 6 mo later! If anyone had a reason to complain, it was us!

and you're bitching about a free phone app that isn't needed for the functioning of the receiver you bought & somehow that's egregious lack of customer service?

please...give me a break!

let me ask you something...you said you're a software developer.

do you work for free?
does you or your company provide free updates every year? not even Microsoft does that; want a new windows OS? you pay!!

the last time I checked, Symantics, McAfee, TrendMicro, even companies like E-set, CHARGE EVERY YEAR to renew their antivirus software just so it can updated with new definition files. No pay, no updates. Why do you feel you are entitled to free updates on a one-time purchase? I remember the days where you bought an anti-virus program ONCE, then got "free" updates...those days are long gone, like back in the late 90's. It's been paid for use for a very long time.

I repeat, instead of taking 10-15 min each post to bitch about Pioneer, which accomplished NOTHING, why don't you try to do something business-like, professional, and contact Walkamo by PM or by email with your issues, give him ammunition so he can try to convince Japan, just like all Japanese CE US marketing divisions have to do. Instead of feeling ENTITLED to free app upgrades for as long as you own the receiver, offer to PAY Pioneer an annual upgrade fee IF they would offer app updates on each model. Give a business reason for Pioneer to consider it and he has something concrete to take to Japan to look at the feasibility.

Plus you have ignored the hardware-software interface issue. Pioneer doesn't make their DSP's, no CE company does. They have to buy pre-encoded processors with embedded software already on them. The only thing truly proprietary is 1 of the 3 DSP's has the code for MCACC. The others are standard off-the-shelf processors or modded variations thereof. The cost to write customized code for a new app may be cost prohibitive with the thin profits these companies make on receivers, even at MSRP.

You strike me as someone who feels entitled as a consumer, and I appreciate that, believe me. But you seem to want to ignore the economic side of the equation, just because you think Pioneer or (fill in the blank company) owes you something.

Chris Walker (Walkamo) has already said on this forum, in this thread I think, that the version of phone apps is tied to a specific hardware platform (DSP code). That may seem unbelievable to you, being a developer in the PC world, where the CPU does the work for an unlimited number of applications, but in the receiver world, these are NOT COMPUTERS, no matter how you want them to be. They are computer-like, yes, but they do not have CPU's and software per se. They use firmware/software embedded by the DSP manufacturer on prefabricated, preprogrammed chips and Pioneer is probably not free to customize the code beyond a certain point. And it's very likely that the DSP's are pretty well used up running existing processes, formats, and supporting existing apps.If you think the CE companies write their own code for Dolby, dts, THX, etc you are very wrong! They do not, it's all on the chip, from the mfg. All the CE company does is activate or de-activate specific code depending on the licenses they pay for to the companies providing the code for decoders & processing. The same chip may be used by Denon & Pioneer, Pioneer pays THX a license fee, and they can activate the code that adds THX processing. Denon may choose not to pay THX so they have to de-activate the code.

IF you and like-minded owners ask Pioneer in a professional manner to look at feasibility of app upgrades if you are willing to pay for them, that will give them more incentive to look into it.

How many other receiver companies are upgrading their phone apps for free? If Denon, Onkyo, Yamaha are doing it, and Pioneer isn't, then you have a legit point. If they are not, then you are asking the company to provide and pay for this at their own expense when none of their competition is doing it either. In that case, you just want something for nothing.

Unless you can provide hard evidence that Pioneer's competition is keeping old models current with the latest phones for free for longer than 1 year, my opinion of your position & both of you is unchanged

If you can provide that evidence, please post it here, links and/or posts. If that's the case, prove it and I'll be happy to say you guys have a legit issue. Otherwise, stop complaining.

The difference between you guys wanting app upgrades and our complaints with the Susano SC-09 situation is -

- we were asking for something that Denon was doing for the owners of their ultra-expensive AVR & prepro and we told Pioneer we were willing to PAY $1000-1200 FOR IT, similar to what Denon was charging for their upgrade.

While you guys want Pioneer to kick in free upgrades for an un-specified number of years just because you think you're entitled to it

Big difference...

you are hard to please

and I have a feeling that if Oppo varies significantly from what they do best, they & their customers could learn a hard lesson - that the vast majority of boutique companies that have tried, have failed, either with the gear or managing to keep the platform updated & current year after year, with ever-changing standards, feature sets and compatibility issues with other gear.

my gut feeling is that Oppo has avoided doing it so far because they have smarter business sense than most of the others

Of all the previous SOTA industry leaders in HT/audio processors: Lexicon, Theta, Meredian, TAG McClaren, Krell, Parasound, Anthem, Halcro, ATI, Aragon, and outsourced platforms from companies like Sherwood Newcastle, Outlaw, etc. the only ones managing to stay viable & current are Anthem, and the uber-expensive ADA, Datasat, etc. Theta has been so far behind the tech curve, even their supporters are giving up. Lexicon? They haven't updated the MC12 in years and what used to cost $12000 new is going for $2000-3000 used...they can't hardly give them away! Cary Audio? their $9000 prepro doesn't do room EQ at all! and they struggled for several years to include a video processor solution with the audio side. It ain't as EZ as you make it seem, 'cause if it was, there'd be a whole lot more competition than there is. Your statement strikes me as somewhat naive in thinking Oppo could pull off a home-run like that with zero previous experience in the complex HT AVR field. Pretty optimistic thinking on your part, considering all the failed & stagnated attempts by very respected companies

I was asked, half-jokingly, at a CEDIA show, at the Denon booth, if I would like to buy one of the Denon reps Lex MC12HD...he said he'd make me a killer deal. When I said no, he said he was having a hard time selling it.

Oppo is wise to stay with what they excel at, making the best BD players in the marketplace, the gold standard, the one to beat.

Why would they want to pay the huge development, technology & ongoing support costs to even try to market a receiver or prepro in the cut-thoat CE world with razor thin profits? Answer - they are too smart to try.

Chinese-made gear, marketed by budget US companies? Ask Emotiva prepro owners how successful that has been
Edited by ss9001 - 12/9/12 at 5:02pm

now THAT is the steve that i know...

just so not everything you said I'm disagreeing with....

I can relate to your experience with owning audio gear for a long time. I've been in this "hobby" since 1972 and owned gear for long periods of time before I bought new.

speaking of legacy gear - I still own & occasionally use a '79 Sansui full bore quadraphonic receiver - what was the king of the hill in quad receivers plus a super-SQ quad decoder using the Fosgate-Tate chip, the best SQ decoder made. So I can relate to how long gear could be used

and I agree, it's frustrating & maddening that today's receivers, even the flagships, are close to being throwaways every few years. Not because it wears out, but because of neverending changes in digital connectivity, formats, apps, interfaces, and networked media. Companies have a built-in revenue stream just from upgrading...it can piss you off if you think how much money we spend and lose nowadays just because the player or the TV doesn't support the connection anymore, etc etc.

but I still encourage you to PM "Walkamo" and make well-reasoned points on the issue...that helps him be an advocate for the US market. he is head of marketing for the Home Audio div of Pioneer US.
Edited by ss9001 - 12/9/12 at 5:01pm

yup

ah, your follow up post just shows how soft you are getting in your old age...

maybe
I had to give him something

I still think this is a way overblown issue & not worthy of all this supposed "outrage" it's just an app for a phone! did the receiver stop working? or not do something it was advertised to do? no...

the app that came with the receiver still works, and even if new phones come out, the app is replaceable by programmable remotes & other apps available for iphone & droid. of course they'd have to pay for the alternatives so Pioneer should support them for free forever can't make it 2 years because some will think it should be for 3, or 5 or 10. the illogic & impracticality of their position is pretty obvious.

in their world, I suppose Pioneer owes all owners new hardware every time the HDMI spec changes or a new format comes out, because that's the logical endpoint of their demand. which is utter nonsense.

the law suit poster...me thinks someone has taken too many swigs of Self-Importance kool-aid

I'll be surprised if either one takes the advice to communicate professionally with the appropriate person at Pioneer about it.

there...hard-as* steve is back again

and it only took you a few more posts to starting whining about your Sc-09 again........

man you go out and get a life and all hell breaks out in the forum

the issue I HAVE with the apps is it was a major reason to buy it in the first place

now I can't speak to the android side, but on the IOS side, pioneer looks to have actually gone out of their way to insure the iControlAV2012 app would not work with the SC55

as far as i can tell, 99% of the IP commands used by the new app are the same

in fact you can use the iControlAV version one app to turn on the SC55 but you can't use the iControlAV2 app to turn on a SC-35. Why is that? Because the app checks to see what receiver you are using and says, no can do. When in actuality it would work without that code.

now i could see if this was a $200 receiver but this was the top of the line $1500 receiver (SC-55) and it was released in August and by March, when iControl2012 was released, that was it, app support was over

now the big name Japanes electronics companies maybe struggling but they need look no farther than in a mirror to figure out why that is.

I certainly have no intent to sue Pioneer. I simply won't buy anything from them ever again.

seriously, no one is expecting 10 years, that is just stupid to even say that

but you do expect more than 8 months - again, support for iControlAV2 ended with the release of iControl2012, only 8 months after the top of the line SC-57/55 were out

I do not expect to see any changes in the SC-57/55 firmwares

there are a lot of things now with 3 and 5 year warranties and i think it reasonable they should support the firmware on the receivers for 3 years and the apps for 5

and yes, it did stop doing something that it was advertised to do, work with android

heck, pioneer could even charge $.99 for a new app, but they don't even offer that option

i don't expect pioner to change, i expect they will simply continue to lose money and go bankrupt

for both of those reasons, i will not buy anymore pioneer gear

yeah, I know I wasn't going to but ccotenj kept giving me hints to chime in

I've been pretty happy with the SC-68 so have nothing to complain about. And still using the 09, too. most of the time, I try to answer questions to help someone, believe it or not

it's been pretty quiet in this thread anyway - it needed livened up

I admit Pioneer does tend to have a more short-term view of support but each brand has its shortcomings. Just have to hold your nose & pick the best of the lot for your own needs. and if someone decides to not buy the brand again, that's fair.

They all are leaving their customers in the lurch for one thing or another. Onkyo can't seem to make consistently reliable, long-lived receivers...HDMI boards die from heat. Not many seem to complain about Yamaha but they don't seem to be pushing the ball forward either. Denon obsoleted all existing BD/DVD players' DenonLink function by changing the connection in the new models. H-K has had reliability problems over the years plus isn't on the forefront technically; they don't seem to be a "player" anymore. Sony? they've not been a hard-core receiver "player" for years. Arcam, hi-priced UK brand for what you get, highly respected for audio & sound quality but certainly not SOTA on anything else. Rotel - no room EQ, and limited digital features, they don't even try. Marantz are mostly Denon clones & they never tried to put in a HDMI jitter control solution, whether its audible or not NAD could be a toprated desireable choice, and they have tried, twice, to make their receivers on a modular, upgradeable platform, but they haven't seen fit to pay Audyssey for Multi32XT, staying with MultiXT, no doubt to save money on license fees

I really hope to see Pioneer come out with sub EQ in next year's model but not 100% sure it's going to happen. If it does, that'd be wonderful news to Pioneer fans. But even if we do, by the end of '13 or early '14, at least one MDA (3D multidimensional audio) format will start to show up. So that's another gear swap to get the latest & most promising surround technology to come along in a long time. receivers are becoming an annual upgrade event

hope all is well with you. see ya later
Edited by ss9001 - 12/10/12 at 4:38am

Ok, I am new here as I just picked up a 57 and most of you here seem to know eachother and I get the feeling I am missing something. Is this phone app thing just a big joke from time past or is this a serious discussion? The vehemence seems to indicate the latter but the content would tell me it couldn't be anything but the former.

Hello, Ive had my SC-57 for 1 year now and havent had any problems with it. Today I was just watching some TV and the input just changed to H.M.G. The remote was on its charging stand inside the arm rest and the factory remote is put away with no batteries.

So has anyone ever had the input changed by itself?

sure, blame me...

for some of us, they've been an annual upgrade event for awhile... wanna play, gotta pay...

well, that's rather interesting...

no other universal remotes in the house? anyone possibly initiating a stream to the avr without your knowledge?

There are other universals but my theater is a closed room.

Ive got an IR repeater mounted on top of my screen and the receiver is connected through wifi.

I dont know of anything else that could initiate a stream to the avr.

^^^

any handheld devices in the household?

i forget, does pio use hmg as their "airplay input"?

blueskying a bit here, because as noted, that's odd behaviour... there was an issue with onkyo's magically changing inputs on some of their previous models, but i can't recall this coming up with a pio avr...

Yes, there are a few smartphones, but none of them have the iControlAV2 app until just now.

I got a new phone a month ago and forgot to install the app because it didnt display correctly on my old phone.

When it connected to H.M.G. it started to play some music all by itself.

hmmm...

sure sounds like a stream was initiated from somewhere... anyone using itunes (or similar) in your house?

I would have paid $100 for a new app that works. I bought this receiver to use in multiple rooms and relied on using wifi remotes (my android phones and tablets) as the primary controllers...not to mention the features that can only be accessed through the app. Pioneer advertised this as a major feature in their literature, on their website, and it was pushed by sales people at authorized Pioneer retailers.

"iControlAV2 App - Placing even more home entertainment control in the hands of enthusiasts, our iControlAV2 App, available free from the App store, lets you control volume, bass, balance and room settings. Formatted for iPhone, iPad and Android devices, it gives you complete control of your network connected receiver and compatible Pioneer Blu-ray Disc Disc® players through an easy-to-use, powerful interface."

The bottom line is Pioneer is an old company like Big Oil. They're dinosaurs and they don't know how to adapt the changing market. You think this is griping? Most phone and tablet owners are pissed when they get a new phone and their apps don't work even when they get updated within a few days or weeks. App devs get ripped a new one when their app isn't already updated by the time the new phone hits the market. I do think that's a little extreme, but the reality most apps are updated by the time new phones come out which is why the devs that lag behind because they can't score an early release dev phone get torn to shreds in the reviews when they take a week to update their app.

Pioneer has done the first thing I've ever seen an android dev do. They just don't give a damn and have stated they will never update the app. So my receiver is now a lot less functional that it used to be. For the first 3 or 4 months, whenever anyone would come over, I'd show them cool multiroom control over android phones and tablets. Now I just badmouth the brand to the same people exclaiming how I will never buy another Pioneer product.

Pioneer's days are numbered because some modern company with Agile development will come along and offer a truly connected product with awsome hardware and they will maintain their apps.

Pioneer has posted the firmware update for Pandora on their website, btw.
Edited by sorka - 12/10/12 at 5:49pm

My Onkyo TX-SR806 died the HDMI board death last year. Thank goodness I didn't spend a lot on it. I took advantage of Circuit City's stackable loophole and bought it for $400 which was about half of everyone else s price and a third of MSRP.

oh well... they are your problem now steve...

You are right on both accounts.

Wait till they obsolete your icontrol2012 app, then you will be crying, 2013 is almost upon us!

Doing well thank you.

I think what is strange is that the ip commands that are used are virtually the same from year to year so.

Another option would be to upgrade the command capability in the previous years receivers.

It would seem pioneer sees no return in this investment either way.

Guess we will see where this goes. Things are changing in the world.

Thanks for tip on the pandora firmware update

No itunes or anyth8ng similar.

Any chance someone here could post the output of their description.xml?

I've got a raspberryPI that I have has exposed the serial of my sc-05 to the lan, so would like to try and fool iControlAV2 into controlling it
So far I've only been able to find the xml for a SC-LX82 and that is not supported by this app, I think the uuid is used to identify the model

If you have a unix box it is easy , windows needs the telnet client enabled

All you need to do is open up a window and type then paste the output as code here.

telnet a.b.c.d 8080
GET /description.xml

ie
telnet 10.1.0.11 8080
Trying 10.1.0.11...
Connected to 10.1.0.11.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /description.xml

^^^^

as far as I can tell, the GET command is not suported through the IP commands. it doesn't work with my SC55

I guess the thing to do would be to put a packet sniffer on a simple hub and see what is exchanged

I suspect you are right, there is some descriptor in the xml exchanged during a upnp data exchange that convinces the app that the receiver is a SC55 or something else

good luck!