Rigol DHO914S Bode plot

[2N3055]

Instrument vendors do actually fix things after release. Not maybe taking every customer wish, but if they find that instrument is not performing properly they fix it. Keysight does it. R&S does it (they sometimes take time but they fix). Siglent fixes things too, actually better than them sometimes.

The monetary relationships between KS, R&S and their customers are of a very different scale. Similar to the service life of the equipment. The fact that Rigol, Siglent, etc. are also providing the fixes is actually a matter of good will. Perhaps it's more profitable to keep releasing new cheap toys frequently making many users happy to play with them. But I think it'll be not fair to assume that the vendors are intentionally evil. Although they may have a more important, actually not commercial customer, the capabilities can also be a factor. The software consumes the majority of man-hours, not the hardware. If you check the Rigol internet site, you can read that in 2024 a new SW development center is set up somewhere in center China, at the former silk road. That probably means that currently the SW development capability of Rigol is not great, while it's now too expensive to continue to order the development from outside than do that work in-house. Let's wait...

I would prefer if you would exclude Siglent in rationalizing why Rigol thinks it is OK to release alpha level products and never fix them. Because Siglent definitelly tries to not do that, and invests significant effort in that.
And talking about cheap toys, Rigol DHO4000 is definitely "Big Boys" price and not an entry level instrument either.
And that on also receives no update form many bugs reported on whole platform, after being released 2 years ago.
I also know that Rigol is investing serious money into developing new products and chipsets etc.
It is their DECISION to deliberately skimp on FW development....
It is their strategy.
As long as users keep buying "half cooked" products and keep "defending" "poor Rigol" for it, they will happily do nothing to increase quality of FW development. That is what "capitalist West" thought them ooh so well..

[Fungus]

I don't get how a company can invest tens/hundreds of millions in bringing a device to market (surely what it costs in making ASICs, software development, etc.) but can't afford a couple of weeks of bug fixes after users start to find them.

Makes no sense.

Rigol is still fiddling with the DHO800 licensing and doing other things in their firmware.

Most of the bugs are minor things so what gives?

Maybe they have stats on how many 'scopes will come back under warranty as "bricked" with every release.

[Martin72]

As long as users keep buying "half cooked" products and keep "defending" "poor Rigol" for it, they will happily do nothing to increase quality of FW development. That is what "capitalist West" thought them ooh so well..

I don't know if rigol still sells many DHOs to people who don't care if and how their device works.
They came onto the market with the 800/900 as very entry 12 bit scopes a while before siglent, so the models sold well at first.
Now the owners can only hope that rigol will change its mind.

[Njk]

I would prefer if you would exclude Siglent in rationalizing why Rigol thinks it is OK to release alpha level products and never fix them. Because Siglent definitelly tries to not do that, and invests significant effort in that.
And talking about cheap toys, Rigol DHO4000 is definitely "Big Boys" price and not an entry level instrument either.
And that on also receives no update form many bugs reported on whole platform, after being released 2 years ago.
I also know that Rigol is investing serious money into developing new products and chipsets etc.
It is their DECISION to deliberately skimp on FW development....
It is their strategy.
As long as users keep buying "half cooked" products and keep "defending" "poor Rigol" for it, they will happily do nothing to increase quality of FW development. That is what "capitalist West" thought them ooh so well..

If you think that everything is fine with Siglent, I've no objections because of no experience. But the facts are:
- they're of the same origin (a communist country, BTW),
- their products are of the same price category,
- they're competing on the same market.
Because of that, I'm not sure their similar products can be as different as day and night. Although Siglent operates a more dealer-friendly policy and that naturally results in more talks about their products on the internet.

Concerning Rigol, the latest crop of products (DHO800/900, DG800/900 Pro, DM858) belongs to the entry-level category (hence cheap toys). Looks like they'd patented a new type of plastic enclosure and the main goal of the release is to get a feedback about that innovation from the market. For that goal, the SW quality does not make a big difference. Some products, e.g. the DGs seems even more undercooked than that of the pervious generation, and Rigol is not in rush to update the SW.
On the other hand, the latest public firmwares for the upscale series (DS7000/8000) are dated 2024 (or late 2023), which is a quite recent date. Notice that there are many series but few hardware ("chipset") generations. Latest upscale models are based on the Ultravision 2 hardware. I don't think there is a significant SW difference between the series that uses the same HW. It's basically a platform code. The fact that there are no upscale series based on the low-noise Ultravison 3 HW suggests that the code is not yet mature enough. So they're releasing an entry-level scopes with the SW as is, making money to fund the development efforts (it definitely can take a time because of complexity of the matter). Note that at the same time, they also have to continue providing maintenance to the Ultravision 2 code.

BTW I was wrong saying that they'd established a new SW development center. Looks like it's just another Rigol facility, not dedicated to SW. Anyway, I'm not defending or blaming them for more and more half-baked products. But sometimes, commenting on what Rigol is doing is like to comment the erratic movements of a drunk man.

[Martin72]

- they're of the same origin (a communist country, BTW),

 
Oh, that must be new, otherwise countless brand manufacturers wouldn't be producing there.
And I thought the McCarthy era had been over for decades.

[Njk]

- they're of the same origin (a communist country, BTW),

Oh, that must be new, otherwise countless brand manufacturers wouldn't be producing there.
And I thought the McCarthy era had been over for decades.

When you work for a brand, you're not free to do whatever you want. But when you're unleashed...

Yes, McCarthy era. Looks like we still have a huge crowds of funboys.

[KungFuJosh]

I'm pretty sure politics aren't supposed to be discussed here. 🤷