Sony NEX hack by Someone 1.00 from Andrew Reid on Vimeo.
EosHD posted the video you see here on top to explain the possible future NEX camera hack. The author (and not the hacker!) of EosHD speculates that “46Mbit on the older NEX 5 without too much trouble and it is still early days yet, so we could see stuff like intra-frame recording and improvements to HDMI out, or even 4:2:2 colour in MP4 mode and higher resolutions.”
Please don’t get too exited about this now. It’s all speculation and imagination now. Let’s see if the hacker group will succeed in releasing a real hacked firmware with lots of new features. I would be certainly happy because this means we would not have to wait for Sony to improve our NEX (and maybe SLT) cameras. And don’t forget that APP support is coming wih the next NEX camera…this is also a good news 🙂
36 Responses
Exciting stuff!
FIRST
FAIL.
Epic fail and just a little sad that you do it.
Hmmmmm so many NEX cameras…I have a NEX-7 for example.. this hack needs to be universal all NEX Cams, not model dependant.. there are so many cameras and models out there and more coming out each day.. no product develops or matures anymore.. lets see if a hack is viable and on time before another 5 million other NEX cameras and variants come out and this is abandoned like most developments..
what so special about 46mbit?
Quality?
Oh… But the quality different is very obvious/big?
Yes…see stock GH2 bs Driftwood GH2 hack. The quality difference in video is incredibly large (hacked GH2 can resolve nearly as much as Canon EOS 1Dc)
What are the overheating issues at that bitrate?
I would say that it remains to be seen if overheating gets worse or better. My guess is that it could be better because by uncompressing, the processor could potentially be doing less work and just outputting to the fast sd card. The instability issues experienced with early Driftwood hacks on the GH2 were due to firmware stability and not so much the processor/hardware stability.
Okay. Sony should reward those firmwarer which are actually helping sony delivering various of improvement over the old firmware which are also sony not intend to do for sony nex and slt users.
Sony don’t need a hacker, they just don’t want to do it.
Worth noting that even on the most hacked camera (GH2), there is a tradeoff between bitrate and noise…
http://philipbloom.net/forum/threads/gh2-hacks-noise.1814/
Nevertheless, I would love Sony firmware to be hacked. More so than Nikon and Canon, because Sony is most likely to cripple their DSLR video hardware for marketing reasons (i.e. maintain differentiation between their video DSLRs and dedicated video recorders).
Good point. However, one must realise that Panasonic’s GH2 is not only a 3 year old camera, but also by default it would have worse noise than any Canon/Nikon mix thanks to its 4/3 sensor. So, with APS-C the trade off wouldnt be so drastic, especially with the much newer 5n and 7.
What is nice with firmware hack is interval script for timelapse…
I would rather see Sony just provide clean and uncompressed HDMI output, then I can choose. Y own format and bitrate with an external recorder.
I’m with you on this Tom, if you need better image for professional work this can be done with a external recorder as the Ninja 2 or the Pix 220, so please Sony leave the option of HDMI output clean with a firmware upgrade, of course a nex 5n with a Pix220 having XLR audio inputs convert the NEX 5n in a little FS100, so this will kill the VG20.
sony should hire those guys and give them the necessary resources to work.
What makes you think that Sony want us to have 46Mbit? You think Sony aren’t capable of this? They are already THE pro choice for video!
Basically that is the same stuff we have seen a couple of weeks ago. Just showing some files in the hex editor.
c’mon, this is a lame story of a possible outcome, let us know when it is more that theoretical. Now get on with the juice we all crave!!
My dream… would then come true. Kudos to the hackers for their effort.
Sony has a few smart programmers also and I don’t believe they (Sony) will allow open source.
Yes, you can hack but the end-product is seldom worth it in the end.
Look, its hard for lens-makers like Sigma to sell third-party optics and make them work from Sony release to Sony release.
When a product design is compromised to a point that a third-party programmer (hacker) has control of a product from a multibillion dollar corporation that is a big Fail that will be corrected on the next release.
Can this work for the SONY A77?
You want unknown firmware from unknown programmers messing with your A77? Good luck with that…
The “hack” is in very very early stages right now. All that has happened so far is that the guy has found a way to open a firmware and put a modified version on some Sony cameras and that’s about it. What exactly can be changed in the firmware is not known at this point. So we don’t know right now if it is even possible to make updates in the firmware to get higher bitrate. The 46mbps claim is not by the hacker himself, it has been made by a separate person.
” just ignore Andrew Reid. He’s a dollar store amateur.”
LoL. So true!
Is there actually any evidence that the firmware has been flashed back to the camera? I understand that this has not happened yet as the guy does not want to risk bricking his camera and asks for donations to buy test hardware.
It seems that he did eventually try to put the firmware on the camera. And he was able to get around the initial checks and fool the camera into believing that it is a genuine firmware. However the camera hangs up during the update process, so the process isn’t completely successful at this pint.
I hope they will enable 1080p video on the nex 3. I do not know why sony disabled it to record 1080p since it has the same specs as the nex 5.
If this end up anywhere like CHDK there’s tons of promise, heck even letting me do different frame rates or lower resolutions on my NEX-5 would be sweet, I’d gladly trade off my 1080 for 720/60
I would love to have a 720/60 option. Sometimes I don’t need the file size 180/60 puts out.
(I would really like to have 720/120, but that is wishful thinking.)
CHDK is a fairly extensive hack. The hacks in GH1 / GH2 etc are much more limited compared to CHDK and we don’t know if with NEX even those limited would be possible or not. So don’t keep very high hopes right now.
I just checked the hack’s author page on EOSHD. It is getting more interesting now.
He’s actually able to decode the firmware and flash it back to the camera. The second step has not been proven previously but now is.
So good progress. All that is needed for the community to get started is available.
consider a poll
asking for donations for such hack
i think many people holding the sony cameras will be ready to donate and in return we will get a better camera which we can configure as per our needs
I am a NEX 5n holder and ready to donate 50bucks
please start a poll
so we will know how much people are willing to donate
I already donated for Canon hack and i am using their hack which helps a lot