Firmware upgrade on our devices...

[coffeegreg]

Let's consider the following case... 🤔

The manufacturer of your device has stopped long time ago paying the vTuner service provider and because of this, the vTuner service does not work on your device no more. The manufacturer is fully aware that the internet radio service offered by vTuner should not work on your device, so it can introduce a new firmware version for your device that either completely:

• removes and/or disables communication with vTuner service
• or removes communication with vTuner and introduces the possibility of a new (paid?) subscription on another platform similar to vTuner but operated in a completely different way

What will happen then if you use YTuner? As you can easily guess ... your device will stop communicating with YTuner and silence will reign in the speakers. 🔈
The manufacturer may not even know about the existence of YTuner or... may know about it and do it ... intentionally. 👀
If your device allows firmware downgrade operation, e.g. from a USB stick, and you have enough knowledge to handle it, you will eliminate the problem... but what if there is no such possibility ❓
Then you AVR will lose the ability to communicate with YTuner forever, and what you now have for free, you will have to forget about it.

Therefore, before you accept a potential firmware upgrade operation (or... maybe you will not even be asked for your permission 👀 ), consider whether it is worth doing it...
YTuner can "protect" your AVR device from unexpected and unnecessary firmware updates if you only use its DNS Server service (Enable=1 in the [DNSServer] section) and add an additional entry to the InterceptDNs parameter that will prevent the AVR device from communicating with the manufacturer's website and thus downloading new firmware, which may block communication with vTuner and thus with YTuner.
I did this a long time ago for my Yamahas by adding the entry *yamaha.com and I don't have to worry that my devices will stop communicating with YTuner after the firmware upgrade and that there will be... silence. 👀

Think about it... 🤔 be smart... 💡 and enjoy the music. 🔈 🎶 🎶
Greg

[HansJA]

What HW does the firmware in our AVRs run on???
Could that FW be hacked??

In my Denon AVR 1912 I have several minor problems, the most irritating one being that a stream considered to be "Radio" won't accept FLAC while a FLAC stream over DLNA will work OK, and even display metadata.
And hacking the FW could make the upgrade problem go away completely.

P. S.
If I remember correctly, it's been a long time, the AVR would OFFER to upgrade the FW but would never silently go ahead on its own.

[coffeegreg]

@HansJA

What HW does the firmware in our AVRs run on???

Who knows? Try to find a service manual for your device and check it, but in my opinion it doesn't matter.

Could that FW be hacked??

By whom and for what purpose?

"Radio" won't accept FLAC while a FLAC stream over DLNA will work OK, and even display metadata.

I replied to this in another thread...

And hacking the FW could make the upgrade problem go away completely.

Reverse engineering of the machine code for a very little-known CPU model. 🤔 Additionally, the firmware file itself may be in a packed form an algorithm known only to the manufacturer and its integrity is protected by some checksum calculated by an algorithm also known only to the manufacturer and saved only in a place known to the manufacturer... 🤔
Good luck ❗ 😉

If I remember correctly, it's been a long time, the AVR would OFFER to upgrade the FW but would never silently go ahead on its own.

Sure ... But who will guarantee that something like this cannot happen at all? 🤔

[dzyndzla]

Very good hint; spoofing Marantz (MCR-610) traffic and investigating Marantz sites I can say it probably queries pfw.marantz.info while looking for firmware updates, so adding InterceptDNs=*.vtuner.com,*.marantz.info,*.marantz.eu,*.radiomarantz.com into ytuner.ini should prevent AVR from an unintended FW update.

I'm not quite sure about marantz.eu but AVR sometimes queries that domain too. I blocked it as well because why not ;-) All works, YTuner intercepts and there are no issues in connecting Spotify Connect.

pi@SLAVEPI:~ $ journalctl -u ytuner.service | grep 'intercept :' | awk -F'intercept : ' '{print $2}' | sort | uniq denon2.vtuner.com. denon.vtuner.com. denon.vtuner.com,denon2.vtuner.com. denon.vtuner.com,denon2.vtuner.com,pfw.marantz.info. pfw.marantz.info.

[coffeegreg]

Very good hint; spoofing Marantz (MCR-610) traffic and investigating Marantz sites I can say it probably queries pfw.marantz.info while looking for firmware updates, so adding InterceptDNs=.vtuner.com,.marantz.info,.marantz.eu,.radiomarantz.com into ytuner.ini should prevent AVR from an unintended FW update.

Exactly ❗ That's what I was writing about. 👍
Let's be smart and not be fooled. 👍 We spent a lot of money on our AVRs and now we don't want to change them at the whims of manufacturers and service providers. Unfortunately, the quality of new devices currently being manufactured is not as good as the older ones we own... 🤔

I blocked it as well because why not ;-)

I did the same... 👍