I'm one of many who can't get their 5005 to upgrade the firmware even though Liteons instructions are followed precisely. If you're aware of this subject, you'll know that probably half or more of 5005 owners have run into this "wall". In fact, in my case, Liteon Tech support has offered to take the thing back since I'm not pleased with their inablity to provide answers or a fix for it.

My question is, does anyone know how some owners are getting upgrades to install while others can't? Is it a batch problem or what?

Frankly, with the exception of this upgrade issue, I really like the 5005 very much. It offers a great many features not available on much more expensive machines & (for me at least) has been very reliable & user friendly to operate.

I want to get upgrades to install mainly for the 3 hour recording feature which is apparently available on some firmware versions.

I just upgraded the latest firmware with no problem. It seemed to fix a lot of problems.
Now I can pop the +RW or -RW disc into any machines and it will play with no problem.
I never used to be able to do that prior the firmware upgrade.

I think the biggest problem is that the instructions for performing the upgrade only centre on Nero's products other burning software is slightly different. what they should do is show how to do in easycd or B'clips softwares.

I have myself found no problems with the updating process quick, simple and straight forward.

Only problem that I can say was rectified for me was the TV tunner would start searching from CH4 missing the BBC1 on ch 3

One minor problem that I forgot to mention with my unit was on some channel the color is kind of faded. It looks like one of those colorized black and white movie. But the color looks fine during play back. Does anybody have this problem ? I think it only happen to one or two channel. I usually don't watch while it's recording anyway. Do I have a bad unit ?