Barry,
Good idea, I dont (yet) have have any cordless phones, and I am a good 100m from the nearest other house so dont think thats it. I just turned my Philips video transmitter off but makes no difference. (VL1202)

I have had a response from Philips tech support, they think I have a faulty ipronto or ipronto network card.

It will be interesting as I am in the UK and I used BlueDo in the US. I am sure they will look after me fine.

Just an update, and a word of advice for those in Europe ordering from the USA.

I have been in contact with BlueDo. They have in turn been talking to the local Philips people and I think (although at this moment not sure) my network card will be replaced. This has taken quite a while, and I still have a dead ipronto.

In fairness to BlueDo the returns procedure is different in the USA to Europe, here is an extract from an email from Philips :

Quote :

Please contact us in any of the ways below for repair service:

If you are emailing from the American Continent, please call the Pronto hotline,
so we can arrange additional service for your iPronto.
The USA Hotline for the Pronto is: 888-486-6272
Please have the Model number, serial number and purchase slip ready when calling the Hotline.

If you are emailing from Europe, please return the iPronto to your dealer. The dealer can arrange a swap, including a temporary replacement, for your iPronto through the Philips repair service.
If the dealer does not know, please tell him he has to request an RMA form by e-mail, quoting his phone number, full name and address. (The RMA form is only for dealers)

Unquote

This story does not get any better I am afraid. BlueDo suggested that I contact Philips direct, reasonable suggestion as they do not have access to spares.

I have been in contact with Philips USA who told me to contact Philips UK, the US office cant deal with me as I am in the UK.

Philips UK tell me that they cant deal with an American ipronto, (even though they are made in Belgium).

I asked if I could pay Philips for repairing my ipronto... no apparantly not it seems.

Not good customer relations from Philips, what one would do if the unit was out of warranty I am not sure.

I have emailed philips tech support again (as suggested by the helpline) and hope they reply

Not impressed at all, beware potential buyers...

I realise that you are somewhat miffed at your iPronto not being sorted by Philips UK but unfortunately that is one of the risks that you take buying a unit in the US.

I work for a UK dealer who sells the iPronto and there is no way that we could handle a warranty call on your unit as the serial number would not tally with anything that Philips Europe would have listed as a European iPronto and so Philips RMA (who are separate to Philips) would simply not be able to do anything with that unit.

The unit was bought in the US and your dealer (BlueDo) should be handling your problem - you shouldn't have to be chasing Philips yourself - what the hell do BlueDo do for their profit? They should be sorting your problem with Philips for you. If Philips US are anything like Philips Europe then you will have little success chasing this through yourself - get BlueDo on the case for you - if they were happy to take your money and supply you in the UK then they should also support you. If you bought the unit whilst you were out there then you should really be looking at getting the unit back out there to them.

Phil

Phil,
Thanks for the input. My approach was exactly as you suggest, go back to the dealer and he will sort it.

Yes my risk buying in the US, just a cost thing.

There is an update, I had a call back from Philips Friday afternoon so I will let you know what they say.

In fairness to BlueDo they are trying to get a replacement network card for me but do not have access to spares or service support as I understand it.

It seems Philips have a different method of customer support in the USA to here. If you are in the USA you do not go back to your dealer, you call an 888 number (see my post above)

In terms of UK supply the price difference is / was huge, I would certainly have purchased from Letsautomate (or similar) if the cost was within 10% or maybe even 20% .. I have bought from them in the past and they are excellent... My pronto came from them.

Really the purpose of my post was info for those thinking of doing the same as me...

Update : Guess as good as I could have hoped for from Philips, they have offered a repair service.

They have promised me an email giving details of how to return the unit to them.

So thank you Philips in advance, thought for a breif, unhappy moment the ipronto was going to join my other white elephants :-)

Good news Andrew. Hope you soon have your iPronto back alive and kicking! ;~)

Kees

I had mega network issues post after installing 1.6.21
seems to be that the ipronto will maintain your network session info from the previous release, but the ipronto updated the network driver, hence the network wont work.
To solve this I had to clear the network info in the ipronto.
I did
switch off dhcp
reboot ipronto
ensure ipronto starts with no ip
restart dhcp
browse with ipronto

This way the ipronto collects a new session record rather than the old one.

Also a bit annoying at 5am ipronto tries to get epg
no network
10 minutes later ipronto tries to get epg
no network.
I got no no sleep till i unplugged and removed battery.
Surely you should be able to do a clean shutdown.

Arif

Group,

Very odd turn of events with my ipronto. Not sure I like it!

As I am sure you are all bored to death with mine has been out of action for several weeks now, all attempts to revive the network connection had failed.

I have had the unit back out of the box connected to the power supply, not really doing anything, other than me prodding the screen now and then to confirm it was still not seeing the network. Its powered up like that for 10 days or so.

just for fun yesterday morning I asked it to look for the firmware upgrade (again!) and as usual did nothing other than go around the loop - reboot, look for network, cant find server, etc etc.

Late for work I left home as usual..

Back home at 6 glance at the screen, and hey I have a network symbol !!!

Strange, my partner (Who never touches or plays with any of my toys normally) says she just hit the "channel +" button at about 3pm as instructed on the blue screen. I presume this was the "revert to original software" option.

Anyway this morning, still working, I upgraded to 1.6.21 and all appears to be well.

Could I ask for some help and advice please :

1) Network symbol
I notice that the network symbol next to the hard mute button goes out once "asleep" and takes 5 seconds to reappear once the screen is tapped. Is that the same for everyone else ? (Its so long ago I cant remember what mine was like.)

2) The original problem, return the unit ?
What is your view of my problem ? Do you think that I have a hardware problem thats now intermittent or its a software problem that may be cured by the latest upgrade ?

I have as yet not had instruction where to send my unit to... but should I send it back to be checked out or not ?

Any advice much appreciated !

Yours confused !

Hello Andrew,

On the network symbol -- yes, once asleep, this connection (and therefore symbol) cease and upon awakening comes to life within several seconds (I have noticed this varies from instantaneous to perhaps 10 seconds).

What you've explained for the firmware upgrade has ALWAYS been my experience when attempting to download firmware (I've had my iPronto since August 2003). I became convinced months ago that this was NOT my network/broadband problem nor an iPronto hardware problem. Either Philips has one small server attempting to serve what now must be thousands of users (in which case we all queue up only to be rejected and therefore need to keep re-queueing) or the software that looks for the server connection is poorly written or??? I've come to learn to wait weeks to make firmware upgrades (after everyone else has upgraded). This has two advantages -- I'm more likely to connect (although it is no guarantee) and I get to see if the firmware's any good (based on feedback posted here) before actually downloading it.

The only reason to return it is if you despise it and if you can get your money back. Otherwise, there's probably nothing wrong with it and you'll then simply be out of a remote for the duration of the "fix" which, if response by Philips on upgrades and problems is any indication, is likely to be months.

GRS,
thanks for the reply, and info on the network indicator.

Just to clarify before friday I had no network connectivity at all. In fact Philips were convinced that I had a faulty ipronto or more likely network card.


magically after several weeks it started working again ! Hmmmm

I should say I am one of the few here (?) who like the ipronto despite the problems I have had.

I have had a few network probs since 1.6.21 particularly with the network not responding after reboot (the ipronto tends to rebot every morning after downloading epg ).
I decided to leave my network up but remove my wireless ap from the network. I then set the ap to use no SSID ie the type of wi-fi one would find at starbucks etc... - did the pronto respond - no.
I then Rebooted ipronto so it would come up with default network settings and now its decided to use SSID of iPronto_network.
I restarted my access point with this ssid and now it seems to work. I rebooted the ipronto and so far no issues.
The question though is why would the Ipronto impose its own network setting.
I also noticed in the status tab that the SSID value is ANY - is the software using keywords to determine how to act ?? What if i wanted a network with an SSID of ANY would I not be up the preverbial creek without a paddle ???
Bit annoying as I use several access points and would like all to be the same, ie with a set SSID I choose or no SSID at all.

Real shame I cant nip to my local starbuck swith my ipronto :-(

Arif

mine has "NETGEAR" as SSID... default from my router / access point... detected automatically.

Guys, don't get me wrong, I love my iPronto. What it does, it does well, it just could do a whole lot more with just a little effort and focus from Philips.

Do you think that Philips have read the "How to run a sucessful Company" white paper released by Atari a few years ago? : )

...and this is why I did not like it :-(

back to my original problem, as again this morning the network light is out, all settings as yesterday.

Unplug WAP, reboot ipronto, etc etc... :-( Working for almost exactly 10 days.