The danger of releasing beta firmware for a device like the Pronto is it could easily wedge the device beyond end-user repair (e.g. the device no longer communicates with the PC, goes into endless reboots, etc.) Even with disclaimers in place, there are still added responsibilities that Philips must shoulder:
- Extra development processes to cut public-quality mid-cycle versions (including source control branching, extra QA on those releases, etc.)
- New processes and people to capture and respond to users' problems/feedback
- Burden of accepting extra units back for factory firmware reset in the event of a hardcore disabling bug
This is a lot of complexity for something that admittedly doesn't obviously (very critical word there) have much of a return for Philips. They could (and maybe do) have some kind of limited beta group they deal with that understand the process and the dangers, who knows.
Also implementing something like this could possibly lengthen the overall development cycle, which considering how long they already are, I'd rather not see personally.
