Page 1 of How I broke my DVD Philips 701 and then how I fixed it ....

For seems a rather unimportant reason now, I wanted to flash my firmware. Now this may seem rather stupid but I forgot my model
number and downloaded the firmware for a 710, wrote the cd, flashed
the firmware.

At this point I realised to my horror that I`d pretty much broke my player; sound didn`t work and the LED display seemed to be in klingon.

I tried downloading the correct firmware for the 701 but it wouldn`t update as the incorrect firmware was a higher version.

Now, if you have done this foolish thing like me, here`s how to fix....

a: download correct firmware for the 701
b: rename the firmware file to a number greater than the incorrect one
c: edit the "Download.02a" file so it contains the new filename
d: burn the cd
e: update and enjoy

hope that helps someone, for a good four hours I was convinced my girlfriend was going to kill me for breaking my rather expensive Christmas pressie from her!

already knew that...but thanks anyway.....

PLUS....did you know...that you can downgrade your firmware in the same fashion to 6.2......this will enable those without the means to use the RC6 method to view regions 1,2, 3 and 5..using
PLAY 159 101 040 000 140 PLAY

you can then re-upgrade the frimware and the hack will stay intact.....

or you can downgrade to 5.5 and use the same code that my ONEFORALL hack uses

elphragle, did I understand correctly: even if firmware is broken there is a something in Philips player that allows to load CD with correct firmware image and repair firmware?

Did your player respond to ON/OFF button? Or you pressed EJECT? What happen after you put disk to player (screen flash, LEDs)? Write more details, please, since it is very interesting issue. Most hardware will completely lock after unsuccessfull upgrade but Philips seems to have protection against that.

more details:

I foolishly flashed it with the firmware for the 710 from
http://members.tripod.com/flash_cd/ which was version 8

once flashed I could play dvds but got no sound and all the menus were
gray and different and it was branded "grundig"

it also seemed to let me view the video at different speeds (1/4 and 1/2) which I never noticed with my old firmware

the on/off button did not work, it just worked as another eject button.
the on/off button on the remote control did work tho.

the LED`s were not alpanumeric characters at all, all looked like odd triangles and stuff like "/\ ¦ ¦>" when I tried reflashing the firmware before renaming the files it would flash "/¦ /¦ /¦" three times and eject.

I have no ideal if this is the case for other players as this was the first time I`d ever done this and I`m not too keen to repeat the stress as I believe for about four hours that I`d broken my player totally.