DS9800 becomes unavailable for airplay time after time

[Philips - Remko]

Dear users,

We understand the frustration this issue is generating. To improve the quality of our product, we will appreciated a lot if you can provide us with more information for our investigation:

1. Under what conditions did you detect the problem of blinking red? Was it during playback of music via airplay, or via the MP3 link?

2. How long did you use the unit before the problem happened? Any special user pattern?

3. Did you find the failure when you were working on a FW upgrade?

4. Any other thing that you may tell?

5. Would you be able to give the serial number also?

Thanks a lot for your help in advance.

Kind regards,
Philips Moderation Team

[rby]

Excellent that this is being dealt with. I have so far had three seperate pairs of DS9800W - all of which has died. One (the first one) turned itself off and refused to turn back on. No lights, no nothing - just as dead as if no power was connected. The two other ones died with the red flash as the others' in this thread.

With regard to the questions I will focus only on the latter two, as I suspect the former one was a switch-issue rather than this one with the red flash:

1.)
Both units were connected to my Samsung TV set through the headphone jack. At the same time I regularly used an iPhone 3GS, an iPad 1 and iTunes on my Mac to send music to the device through AirPlay. The units were both updated with the latest firmware 3.8.88.1000. There was no issues with connectivity or reception prior to the incident. I was not there, and the speakers must have been completely idle when it happened.

One of the speakers broke down like this: I returned from work where the speakers had been on standby. When entering the room I heard a weird "whuuuush"-ing noise from the speakers. It sounded just the same as the sound that comes right in the middle of a firmware update - but they had already been firmware updated a long time ago and I or any other had not initiated a firmware update (I live alone and the wireless network is secured). After trying to reach the speakers setup-page to see what was going on (but it was unreachable) and waiting for about an hour I pulled the power from the speakers, waited and put it back. By then they showed began to quickly flash green and then flash red slowly - with no option of reset.

The other speaker broke down while I was not there. It had begun flashing red by itself (I was not in the room when it happened, so I do not know if the "whuuush"-ing sound had been there prior to my arrival. Pulling power and reinserting produced the same quick green flash followed by the slow red flash.

My theory is this: The units somehow put themselves into a firmware upgrade mode OR some kind of safe-mode from which they cannot themselves recover. I have no idea what causes this, as I was not in the room when the incident began. I can only say that no "humans" interacted with the devices when they broke. It might have been a NAS-server on the network calling out some broadcast message - but I doubt it. The best fix for now must be to isolate the situations in which the speakers turn into this "safe" mode - and then make additional checks to make sure it does not happen when its not supposed to! But then again, if any components are broken inside the unit - the issue might be a different one than can be fixed by firmware.

2) About 4-8 months for all of them. See above for usage pattern.

3) No. Incidents happened many weeks after updating to latest FW. But please note that in one occation the speakers sounded like they were in some kind of update or safe mode.

4) The speakers were working brilliantly up until the point I left them idle and went back to find them broken.

5) I will be happy to give serial numbers for all the above mentioned units. But not in this thread as I already had trouble with the Danish philips department giving me mixed messages about the SN of one of the units. Please send a PM to me - whomever needs the numbers.

Best RBY

Dear users,

We understand the frustration this issue is generating. To improve the quality of our product, we will appreciated a lot if you can provide us with more information for our investigation:

1. Under what conditions did you detect the problem of blinking red? Was it during playback of music via airplay, or via the MP3 link?

2. How long did you use the unit before the problem happened? Any special user pattern?

3. Did you find the failure when you were working on a FW upgrade?

4. Any other thing that you may tell?

5. Would you be able to give the serial number also?

Thanks a lot for your help in advance.

Kind regards,
Philips Moderation Team

[Philips - QK]

Dear rby,

Thanks a lot for getting us all these comprehensive information.
I have just forward these information to our product team for further study. We can assure you that we are working on this issue and we shall let you know if there are some updates on this.

With thanks & regards,
Philips Moderation Team

[hippiehop]

OMG!!!!!!!! This is so frustrating... I've never been so angry in my life.... I actually fell asleep while trying to get more than 5 seconds of a song out of these speakers via Airplay!!!! Who did the Q&A on these????Hundreds and Hundreds of dollars and complete audio silence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!You have got to be kidding me!!!! I tried to update to the latest software and surprise surprise my DS800W's already came with the latest version...
EPIC FAIL!!!! EPIC FAIL!!!!!! The only thing that works is the charger and the remote control!!!!!! I've got some fancy artsy pods sitting on top of my floorstanders now... PLEASE FIX THIS NOW!!!!!!!!!! NOW!!!! AHORRA MISMO!!!!!

[hippiehop]

This is a follow up to my first post above

Philips you are so lucky I have an Ipad2 - I updated the software on both my iphone4 and ipad2 to IOS 5.1.1 and the iphone is still a no go even with the DockStudio app!!!!(In fact when trying to connect it says Device not supported!!) The ipad however plays - I got about 2 straight hours without interruption the other night!!! Whew!!!!!!! I was seriously thinking about gutting my DS9800W's and stuffing some flowers in them These things were DOA as far as my iphone4 was concerned. I started out with both devices on IOS 5.0.1 - I surely hope when the iphone5 is released with IOS 6 this issue will be resolved - I keep most of my music on my phone and now I have to clear space on my ipad for the same music.... YUKK!!!!

P.S. I brought these as an alternative to powering up my 5.1 Airplay AV receiver and I cannot complain the SOUND is AWESOME!!!!!!

[Helper]

SOLUTION !

Okay Guys...

After reading this thread and spent a couple of hours trying to get the update applied i finally figured it out.
It could be that some of you are making the same stupid mistake as i did.

I was just simply trying to update the firmware using the setup button on the back of the speaker. I Connected to the Philips_fidelio created network, and tried to update the firmware through 192.168.0.1.
This led to the led flashing red after pressing the update button in the firmware update section .(corresponds fairly to some of the problems some of you have described)

The proper way to do it is of course to access the speakers from the browser being on the same network as the speakers. My speakers was using 192.168.0.14( found the IP by accessing my router and checking my connections ) , typed the speakers IP in to safari, and accessed the speakers and updated the firmware.

No going on the new 3.8.88.1000 - Fingers crossed for some improvements ! ( really disappointed in the lack of user friendlyness, and stability from such a high end product!)


Checklist

- Setup the speakers to your home network

- Log on to your homenetwork

- Check the speakers IP adress by accessing you router and checking its connections

- Type in the speakers IP adress in safari , and you should acces the speakers interface

- Update the speakers !


Hope it helps some of you

[Oscar]

Thats a nice one Helper!!! Great one

[888]

One more guy asking for a solution !


Up to the moment I can't say I had too much delight on my DS 9800W speakers :


First to the positive aspects:

- If they work, the sound is (relative to their size) fantastic

- The classical look of "loudspeakers" in our living room has gone



And now about the flaws :

- in the 7 months of owning them there were not too many ours of listening to them properly

- different indications for malfunctioning displayed, sometimes only after a week of (randomly) operating them, sometimes after less than 1 hour of standby (as this evening)

- sometimes restarting the loudspeakers does work, sometimes not
(errors may vary between "unknown error -15000" / "loudspeakers not found" & others )

- the "beep" for confirming the connection between Mac and Loudspeakers yesterday came 5 seconds after booting them or several times later, when the connection was already built up...


The DS9800W loudspeakers already got sent in for inspection but it was claimed that nothing had been found.
Funny enough, the loudspeakers sent back still have the original serial number on the chassis, but new ID on the Bonjour setup menu (!?!)


I have 2 different Mac generations with 2 different OS generations (10.6.8 & 10.5.8), both showing the same effects, so we can exclude those as cause.


I checked on help on the internet, but either the advices shown so far didn't work in my case or proved as utter nonsense (...even if someone claimed it solved its problems...).


Does anyone know any final solution before I will return my DW9800W to my dealer and look for an other brand ?


Thank you for your help

[HvLee]

And now about the flaws :

- in the 7 months of owning them there were not too many ours of listening to them properly

Same here, is there any solution yet? I even "upgraded" to a Airport Extreme and put a Airport Express next to the speakers for maximum coverage ... but still audio drop outs. (Previous routers; WD N900 central and Linksys E2000)

[HvLee]

Same here, is there any solution yet? I even "upgraded" to a Airport Extreme and put a Airport Express next to the speakers for maximum coverage ... but still audio drop outs. (Previous routers; WD N900 central and Linksys E2000)

Did anyone try to download the studio app and disable the "Livesound" and "DBB"? I just disabled them both and they have been playing for a whole 2 hours. Can someone try?