Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

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Kip Conner

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Mar 13, 2011
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Athens, GA
So what do you think will happen to Avid consoles next April with Microsoft ends it's support with Windows XP. Will Avid be forced to issue a company wide upgrade to all of their desks?

I was looking into putting boot camp on a second mac that I have and always thought of XP as being just what I needed, but now- not so much. If XP is losing all it's support and is going to become a free for all for hackers- what would be the next Windows OS to get? I'm only going to use it for Venue Off Line editing and system architect on occasion.
 
Re: Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

Kip Conner said:
So what do you think will happen to Avid consoles next April with Microsoft ends it's support with Windows XP. Will Avid be forced to issue a company wide upgrade to all of their desks?

I was looking into putting boot camp on a second mac that I have and always thought of XP as being just what I needed, but now- not so much. If XP is losing all it's support and is going to become a free for all for hackers- what would be the next Windows OS to get? I'm only going to use it for Venue Off Line editing and system architect on occasion.
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Windows 7 is well-vetted and very stable. It looks the same, works the same (plus or minus User Account Control), and should be a no-brainer for general use. Windows 8.1 is actually a significantly better architecture, is at least as stable as Win7, and more efficient. I've had very little compatibility trouble with Win 8.1, though the user interface changes are annoying (and going to be changed back at least in some sense in the next version). IE11 that comes with Win 8.1 is more problematic, but installing Chrome or Firefox can solve that issue.
 
Re: Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

Jason Raboin said:
Why couldn't Avid continue to use XP?

My S3L runs on XP, and I don't think they're going to EOL it anytime soon.
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Two different issues in this thread - what OS to run on your FOH computer - which should be an easy choice, and the lifespan and future of Windows XP Embedded.

According to MS: Windows Embedded | Product Lifecycles Windows XP Embedded is supported until Jan 2017. For products that are under development today, XP Embedded seems to be a poor choice for the mfr. to spend resources coding for. There are at least 4 versions of Embedded code newer than XP. I'm not up on the resource requirements of each or any feature support constraints, but would think that in cases of AVID gear which is a fairly robust platform, there would be available hardware resources to run newer code, if the mfr. wishes to extend the working life of the systems.
 
Re: Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

Jay Barracato said:
The Intel 8088 and its machine language was in use in products for decades after it was outdated in computers.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD
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Most of those scenarios were non-networked, and therefore security vulnerabilities were less of a concern, so they could run as long as parts were available. Whether that's acceptable for a console is debatable.
 
My point was agreeing with you. Lifetime of a chip/operating system in a specific application is different from the lifetime in general computing.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD
 
Re: Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

Note that it appears MS is committing to support for embedded licensees through January 2016. I am not familiar with Avid's license scheme so I don't know if their version is in fact XP Embedded.
Microsoft Product Lifecycle Search

That merely kicks the can though, not solves for an infrastructure purchase that should last 10+ years in many cases and if bought brand new tomorrow appears to have an expiration date of a little over 2 years.

While this also applies to wireless mics in the 600 MHz band it does seem disingenuous on the part of manufacturers to do this to consumers of decently expensive professional equipment where long-term support is generally assumed.
 
Re: Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

Jon Dees said:
Note that it appears MS is committing to support for embedded licensees through January 2016. I am not familiar with Avid's license scheme so I don't know if their version is in fact XP Embedded.
Microsoft Product Lifecycle Search

That merely kicks the can though, not solves for an infrastructure purchase that should last 10+ years in many cases and if bought brand new tomorrow appears to have an expiration date of a little over 2 years.

While this also applies to wireless mics in the 600 MHz band it does seem disingenuous on the part of manufacturers to do this to consumers of decently expensive professional equipment where long-term support is generally assumed.
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After reading the thread up to this point, my question is "what needs to be supported?" An embedded system, by definition, has no changes to the operating system unless an OS bug that affects the device's performance is discovered. The VENUE software is a relatively mature product and any issues related to the OS have pretty much been dealt with.

The real challenge here is the use of USB keys that have been infected by other computers. While we haven't had any issues so far the reports from the field have led me to scan BE's USB devices with my laptop before they go into the desk. It's also a good time to fix any i/o routing and save the result to a new show file. :)
 
Re: Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

What virus software do you use to scan the USB sticks before inserting them into the desk?

I guess on the security/ networking front, we're all smart enough to password protect our shiny little network boxes and not broadcast the SSID…. right? :)
 
Re: Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

Kip Conner said:
What virus software do you use to scan the USB sticks before inserting them into the desk?

I guess on the security/ networking front, we're all smart enough to password protect our shiny little network boxes and not broadcast the SSID…. right? :)
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I use AVG Free. I don't recall if I set it up this way or it is the default, but it scans removable media upon connection. I think Windows Defender can be set to do so, too.
 
Re: Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

Besides Digidesign, at least Digico and Soundcraft have their consoles running on XP embedded, although the concepts are a bit different. Personally I woud never connect any of them to a WAN network ("the internet"), so the only threats I see are USB sticks and hacking a local control network. In fact the Digico way of booting from a ROM seems a bit safer as that might help against viruses from USB sticks. And normally the kind of events where you really need wireless control during the show are normally not the ones where there is danger of hackers in the audience. Probably a beer being thrown onto the console or even the operator himself are more likely to cause trouble. :-)
 
Re: Avid Consoles…. XP and ?

Keep a clean copy of the boot drive with all your preferences/plugins/updates/default snapshots and there will be no issue.

Standard computer backup rules apply.
 
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