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A brief introduction to Toppy firmwares

Firmware is the name given to the computer software that controls your PVR. From time to time, a new version is released, and then people debate over whether or not top upgrade it. Through this site we work closely with Topfield’s UK distributor to help test and evaluate new firmware.

You can always find the list of firmwares available in our downloads area, together with notes about which are the recommended versions. Each one is complete in itself – you don’t have to install them in order, and if you try a new firmware and don’t like it, you can change back to an older one just as easily.

Updating firmware

Firmware can be updated in a number of ways; by connecting to your computer using a USB cable, via a serial cable, from another PVR, or by a broadcast on the digital TV system – an OTA update.

OTA updates happen from time to time, and they’ll be announced in advance via the news pages on this site, and on our announcements email list. You can find out how to join that by clicking the logo at the top of the page to return to the site home page then choosing ‘About our feeds’ from the right hand navigation panel.

Although Topfield is trying to make sure updates are broadcast as often as possible, the latest firmware will always be available to download from the internet first – and not every version will be broadcast. So you may need to update via your computer.

Topfield’s official updater only works on Windows, but there’s a third party program called ToFi for Mac users, which you can download from our software library, and also a tool for Linux users. The update process for Windows users is described in Section 6 of the manual.

We also produce our own guides to major firmware updates, and these include details of how to perform the update from Mac and Windows systems – you can find the latest in our Documents library, in the ‘User contributed guides’ area.