Firmware

There are four known firmware versions of the ScreenPlay Pro HD. You can get the latest firmware from iomega.

Firmware Updates
The firmware update CAN wipe out your entire drive. It is an option that is selected by default and it is what you are supposed to do according to their directions, which if your drive doesn't have the proper partitions on it, you will need to do. However, it is possible to preserve the NTFS/FAT 32 drive contents by changing the option during install to indicate that you only want to upgrade the firmware (keep multi-media data). Using this option will still result in the loss of network setup and scheduled recordings. You should still treat this as if it were going to delete all of your data and backup anything you wouldn't want to lose.

After extracting the files and running the executable, you will be instructed to remove the drive from the computer and power it back on. Once you do that, it will take about 5 minutes to apply the new firmware.

Occasionally, the update will display "Hard Drive Error check user manual" on the screen and flash the yellow light. This happened to me after trying to update to R1.8. I repeatedly reinstalled the R1.8 and R1.0 firmwares trying to get it to work but only got the error message instead of the upgrade message. I decided to leave it on after it displayed the hard drive error message and it did finally update (although I didn't come back to it until after about 30 minutes, so I don't know how long it actually took).

Complete firmware installation instructions are available here.

Be sure to disable any anti-virus program before running the firmware update program. It can interfere with the update and cause it to stop around 60%. If it is disabled and you continue to have trouble installing, make sure you are running the program with administrative privileges. You may also want to try using Windows XP to install rather than Vista or Windows 7, although it should run fine under those systems anyway.

Firmware 9/19/2008 R1.0
Note: If you try to install this version of the firmware, you must hook up the ScreenPlay PRO HD to a TV through the RCA jacks instead of the HDMI cable. It will still work with an HDMI cable, but you will not see the progress as it does the update and if you shut if off before it finishes, you may ruin the drive. You can still download the R1.0 version from iomega Change notes 2008/9/17 1. Fix: correctly display id3 information while play mp3(even in repeat mode). 2. Fix: don't show osx resource file(.xxx files) 3. Fix: delete file function is enable while browse HDD, disable on USB/Net 4. file transfer with samba server is 2MB/s.

2008/9/16 1. Restore brightness and Contrast setting.

2008/9/12 1. Bug fix: can not record after formating under Windows, fix it! 2. Remove brightness and Contrast setting

2008/9/11 1. Bug fix: better ntfs write support, chkdsk ok 2. Bug fix: fix 1080p lag while playing 3. Improve: while play mp3, the focus will change according to current play file

2008/8/28 1. Bug fix: m3u support, but not support jpg 2. Improve: samba server name is host name+macaddress last four digit 3. Improve: limit record time limit to 6 hours.

2008/8/19 1. Improve: add repeat function while play video (except DVD), repeat off: just play one video and stop at the end repeat one: just play one video and repeat. repeat all: repeat play all video file in the folder. 2. Improve: add 1000 files limit while use copy&paste function in browser (except copy from PC to samba server) 3. Improve: add DVD folder play

2008/8/12 1. Bug fix: switch between list mode and photo view could crash system. 2. Bug fix: in mp3 play mode, the information window not been clear correctly while play next file. 3. Bug fix: wakeup from RTC will enter to "video in" while schedule exists, otherwise enter main menu. 4. Improve: add repeat function in All view mode while play mp3, the repeat works like in Music view mode. repeat off: just play one music and stop at the end repeat one: just play one music and repeat. repeat all: repeat play all music file in the folder. 5. Improve: add repeat function in music slide show while play picture from All view mode. repeat off: return to browser while end to last file, the background music also stop. repeat all: repeat picture and background music 6. Improve: prevent copy from folder to his child folder. exp: copy from /folder1 to /folder1/folder2....not allowed! 7. Improve: prevent switch to setup menu while video recording in running

Firmware 10/16/2008 R1.1
This version of the firmware was only available from Iomega for a few short days. Here are the change notes (and changes)

1. Russian OSD support 2. improved samba server and ntfs driver 3. firmware update from hard drive, i.e. mac user can do firmware update. Shows as an additional option in System menu. 4. new Western Europe font 5. display MAC address in network page of setup 6. remove DIVX menu item from setup 7. record quality support HQ, SP and EP, remove LP and SLP 8. long key (up and down key). What Iomega means is that you can press and hold up/down during menu selections instead of having to continuously press to scroll through the items. and new PC installer can display firmware update progress even in HDMI TV.

Firmware 2/12/2009 R1.5
This firmware is not available in an update. It is being shipped with some drives. Telnet is not enabled by default. The following information is unofficial and has been determined through experimentation with the 1.5 firmware.

Known fixes:

1. (from R1.1) Russian OSD support 2. Using ntfsmount from www.linux-ntfs.org, possibly to fix the virus scanner problem. 3. (from R1.1) Update firmware from hard drive 4. (from R1.1) new Western Europe font 5. (from R1.1) display MAC address in network page of setup 6. Fixed DIVX code. Assigns new code that works. 7. (from R1.1) record quality support HQ, SP, and EP. LP and SLP removed. 8. (from R1.1) holding up / down on the remote will now repeat. 9. Text encoding UTF8 is now being called Unicode(UTF8), and another option was added "ShiftJIS" 10. Built in webserver appears to allow for doing some online configuration, such as setting the volume, changing the machine name, and setting a M3U playlist. Not sure if any of these features work yet. 11. wpa_supplicant updated. Not sure what this accomplishes, but there are no new wifi drivers included. 12. Now using the internal discovery service daemons. Not sure of the significance of this, since it was responding to the discovery before, except that it may free up some processing power. 13. SNMP added into the list of files, although I didn't see any place where it was actually using it. 14. On the 1.0 firmware, it quite often lost track of "the next" media after stopping. So far, I have not had this happen on the 1.5. possible bug fix.

It is still unknown if using a Large File Support samba driver yet. Also unknown is if they have updated the RTD microcode or if any new formats are now being supported.

Firmware 4/30/2009 R1.8
This version is currently available for download from iomega. Change notes before 2008/9/17 are already documented in the R1.0 firmware release, so I do not include anything beyond that in these notes.

Undocumented changes:


 * 1) Telnet is not enabled by default.
 * 2) The web server on the drive has been disabled.
 * 3) When recording from AV Input, the yellow light now comes on and stays on to show that it is recording.
 * 4) In separate subtitles files the screenplay can now display up to 8 lines of subtitles.

Minor corrections have been made to the change notes to correct spelling. The wording below, however, is iomega's original wording.

090430 1. Fix the Schedule record and playback chip then press standby key system crash problem.

090422 1. correct ntfs driver 7.02 bug(system crash randomly) by update kernel(update by Realtek at 090416) 2. Add language support: hebrew, arabic while in browser view and subtitle, but no OSD(without translation). 3. Fix Greek subtitle loss some letters 3. speed up mutilanguage view in browser. 4. speed up samba server throughput to 3MB/Sec.

090326 1. correct selftest bug

090316 1. ntfs driver update to 7.02: resolve rtfs to paragon problem- folder cannot seen. 2. add play/pause while play mp3 3. add turkish, japanese, central europe. 4. change textencode to auto set except osd set to english.

090227 1. correct photo view crash problem. 2. ntfs driver update to paragon 7.01: resolve io read error problem 3. Add greek support.

090212 1. Fix the 4GB file size limitation while recording(by update libfaccess.a). 2. Fix the DRM UI(add sopport play in all view) //2. Fix the record problem while upgrade R1.0 to R1.5(by fix install_a). //3. upgrade ntfs driver to paragon v7.01 (fix leopard problem while copy file to 359, but the file can not seen) //4. fix the playback problem while play TS video which over 4GB (paragon should be R6.15 above).

090121 1. DivX DRM support

090113 1. patch audio firmware, no DTS! 2. fix Io read error caused by copy video from samba server and play it on time.

Change notes from 1.2 to 1.5

1. new NTFS driver from paragon (the first company that implement Linux version commercial NTFS driver). 2. fix WEP 128 bit Wireless security problem 3. support both ASCII and HEX input for WEP, this version firmware can distinguish ASCII or HEX and auto convert ASCII to HEX if necessary.

Note that, WEP only support open "system" mode, "share key" is not supported.

2008/11/21 1. Fix the 4GB file size limitation of samba server 2. If the source file is set to read only in Windows or marked as locked in mac os, then copy such kind file from mac to screenplay pro by samba, the error message "not enough privilege" will appear. the version 1.2 fix this problem by updating ntfs driver. 3. display the "copied size/total size" when copy file from external usb to ScreenPlay Pro

2008/11/07 1. Fix: support hdmi to dvi. 2. Fix: ntfs bug while copy "DragonForce" folder from pc to usb, make system crash. 3. release R1.2

2008/10/31 1. Fix: samba server, support 4GB file

2008/10/24 1. Fix: support shift-jis, the setup menu also add shift-jis option

2008/10/17 1. Russian OSD support 2. improved samba server and ntfs driver 3. firmware update from hard drive, i.e. mac user can do firmware update 4. new Western Europe font 5. display MAC address in network page of setup 6. remove DIVX menu item from setup 7. record quality support HQ, SP and EP, remove LP and SLP, and new PC installer can display firmware update progress even in HDMI 8. new PC installer can display firmware update progress even in HDMI TV. 9. support long key

2008/10/10 1. Fix: Change setup menu to two column to support multi language 2. Fix: Install_A support hdmi 3. Fix: fix ui bug in setup-&gt;misc-&gt;music slide show. 4. Fix: support micro p version display in setup menu.

2008/10/03 1. Fix: Install_A, make pc install tool support upgrade. 2. Fix: Since Install_A has fixed, enable upgrade funtion in Setup-&gt;System menu 3. Realtek release ntfs driver update, fix bug while delete file. 4. Fix: Remove parental control. 5. Realtek release ntfs driver update, fix bug while copy small file from pc to samba, the file size error(but file is ok).

2008/9/26 1. Fix: Change Arial font 2. Fix: Support Russia

Firmware 1/15/2010 R1.98 (really 1.96)
Iomega originally released this as 1.98, then corrected the webpage to report the same as the installed which was 1.96 even though the installer said it was 1.98. This was up briefly and is no longer available.

Change notes

091217 R1.98 release (incorrectly reported) 1. Add PORTUGUESE language 2. Fix samba client with Win7 3. Add playback resume(the same as 1071) 4. Fix HDMI setting(force setting no matter edid communication ok or fail)

090828 R1.9 release 1. fix long file name display error (too short) 2. fix static ip setting error 3. fix hebrew text error(just support !, . ?)

Items changed that were not documented:

1. Removal of TV/SYS button (now it does nothing) 2. Removal of 5.1 as an option under audio setup. 3. When you stop a video pressing the stop button, you can press play again to resume. You now press stop a second time and it will say Resume Off. If you power off without having stopped resume, then if you go back to the movie it will pick up where it left off. 4. You can no longer use stop to navigate back through folders like you could. Instead it goes all the way back to the main menu. The return button does navigate backward one level, making it consistent with what the setup menu navigation is like.

Firmware 2/24/2010 R1.98
This was posted to the website 2/24/2010 and has an internal date of 2/2/2010. The change notes are identical to the other 1.96 version. You can download this verion at this link.

Items changed that were not documented:

1. Western changed to Western European. 2. File comparison differences suggest changes to wireless communications.