[Bob Coleman]

I kinda agree with you Don, but having spoken to an electronics design engineer friend of mine, he tells me that it is entirely possible for manufacturers to install a serial number-specific chip on the PCB that will prevent a firmware upload from a non-allowed source.
Although he doesn’t know about this specific model, he says that effectively, that chip will ensure that the camera will only ever accept the Chinese firmware.

I hope he’s wrong in this case.

We shall see.

[Bob Coleman]

Hi Migue,
I went to the local Sony Service Center, and the guy seemed pretty knowledgable about all things “Pro” (he had a bunch of High-End Sony kit on his benches) and I was expecting him to just connect my EX1r to some special bit of kit and fix it, but no. He spent 10 minutes going throught the menu to tell me that there is no language option in the menu at all…this I already knew.

He then phoned the Head of Englineering for Guangdong region, who told him, and then me, that it is indeed a Chinese-only version of the EX1r and that you can’t get an English language option installed.

I’m not so sure this is the absolute truth. If you look at the camera, everything on the outside is printed in English, and as far as I can tell, it is the same camera sold throughout the world, but the Firmware inside is Chinese only.

There is an option to Update the Firmware in the menu but as my EX1r has the latest version, it won’t let me change the firmware to the European version of the same number.
I am now waiting for version 1.2 to arrive, and I will try again.

In the meantime, I am trying to learn the Chinese charcters for the specific menu items, I do have and English manual, so I know what they mean – its just a case of recognising the menu items!

It seems a shame to me that Sony have made many improvements to the EX1 when they released the EX1r, and stupid of me not to check, but I really didn’t expect the system to be Downgraded on an improved model.
Sony have let me down.

Hope this helps – Good Luck.

Bob.

[Bob Coleman]

Hi Don,

Thanks for your suggestion, but the fifth option in my menu is “Assign Button” and the one before is “Clock Set”. The language option is missing. I have seen this once before on a Sony consumer camcorder that came from Japan – the menu was ONLY in Japanese, and the language option was missing from the menu structure.

I’m thinking now that I may have a “Region Specific” version of EX1R and/or the firmware. Does anyone else know this to be the case? and is there something I can change?

Once again, thanks in advance for any help.

Bob.

[Bob Coleman]

John,
thank you so much – that fixed it right away.
(Note to self RTFM in future)
Hehe,

Cheers,
B.