Arlo PRO 4 image was clear and is now pixelated

[kevinh2003]

Set up Arlo Pro 4 at bird feeder a couple of weeks ago. Initial image was very clear. A couple days ago the image became very pixelated with poor resolution. I cleaned the lenses and camera face an nothing improved. Set up a second camera today and it is also very low resolution. I have selected the battery power option for highest quality video.

[Kurant]

With all due respect, this shouldn't be slow. We paid a lot of money for cameras that are almost unusable.

Lets get it done, it's an embarrassment at this point. 

[austindadams3]

It's just standard operating procedure with firmware rollouts. Their last rollout of firmware 20 was rolled back because it was causing massive battery drain. If they rolled it out fast and there was a similar problem found, then everyone would experience it and there would be even greater backlash. Now that they have a proposed solution, we will just have to wait. Oftentimes, issues aren't found until it's rolled out to a larger audience than internal testing can find. 

[CornishRattler]

Adding my voice to the awful video quality, installed my 2 Pro 4's yesterday and was shocked how bad the quality is. Checked my firmware (it updated as soon as I installed them) and I'm on 1.080.19.2_40_a462be1

Really thinking of returning these at they are at present wall mounted paperweights. I changed from a Ring system with thankfully I still have.

[Kurant]

That's great and all, but I'm really not interested in hearing it. 

I have a $500+ camera system sitting in a box that I can't return that doesn't work, and hasn't worked for months. 

Arlo has been ZERO help with customer service or willing to help work something out or even return the cameras to them. Arlo went weeks without saying anything here, and all of a sudden they have a solution that will "roll out slowly"? They know this is a problem, this thread is very apparent with the issue. They offered no customer support or alternatives other than "too bad, you'll have to wait." 

Sorry but it needs to get fixed. Period. I can appreciate the technical side of it, I have been in IT and enterprise solutions for almost 20 years for a subsidy of a prominent tech company, but there is a point where it goes too far, and this is it. 

[austindadams3]

Complaining about any finalized firmware rollout being rolled out slowly is ignorant (especially from someone who works in IT) because that’s how all software rollouts are done properly (at least by any responsible company) but I agree with everything else you said. They’ve known about this issue for months now and only now do they acknowledge it and come out with a fix. Support reps on chat told people this wasn’t a known issue and to perform troubleshooting steps that obviously weren’t going to fix the firmware problem, which wasted people’s time. The least they could do is acknowledge that this was a problem when it became well known with many complaints over the past several months. The original update that caused this problem should’ve been rolled back immediately, but they instead decided to just ship it out without considering rolling it back.

[Regret_buying]

"Rolled out slowly" with no specifics and no timeline and no option to manually update for those of us who notice and actually care, IS something to complain about, though.  Don't you think?  
Where's the proof that ANYONE AT ALL has received this rollout?  Am I just supposed to believe, in good faith, words from a company that has a reputation for neglecting its customer base?

Is there even an official statement about this "slow rollout", or are we just being leaked this information via hearsay? 

[austindadams3]

The response was from an actual customer service rep from Arlo who confirmed this fix is being released. This issue will be all fixed soon! 🙂

[CornishRattler]

Sorry, just had to run outside, apparently there's a pig flying over the street

[Kurant]

No, it isn't. Adaptation is a far more important metric as far as rolling out firmware updates.. Slow rollouts are not "standard". 

Companies like Samsung do it because their updates go to a large swath of different devices. For adaptation in different platforms something like that makes sense. This? Not so much. But that's neither here nor there. "Slow" is what we are going to get.  But let's be honest, these are borderline useless in their current state.. They can't get any worse. 

[austindadams3]

I've been a beta tester for various companies over the years and us beta testers do have a valuable role so maybe that might be a good idea for them to do here. Beta testing and/or "slow" rollouts are quite common and standard in many industries. We can only guess why Arlo is doing it here, but if I were to speculate, it's because their last rollout caused massive battery drain on the Pro 4 so they're taking it a bit more cautiously here and I don't blame them. What I do blame them for is taking this long to update us on anything. Waiting months to have a fix issued or any update whatsoever is ridiculous. 

[mrockas]

Any news on this issue? When will be the fix rolled-out?

Doesn’t make sense to take this long.

[CornishRattler]

Both my cameras have today updated to 1.080.20.1_23_d50a19d and it has corrected the pixelation

[ShayneS]

@CornishRattler 

Thank you for the update.

[Kurant]

Mine has yet to update. 

[Barc]

CornishRattler,

Do your video recordings have any stuttering or jumpiness?

[CornishRattler]

As I mentioned above, the issue (for me) has been resolved with the firmware update. They quite bad before, I have view the recordings in the app, on PC and in HomeKit and they now are as they should have been all along.

[Barc]

Thanks.  I asked because on Aug 8 they had me load that version of firmware as a beta test on one of my cameras and while it removed the blur issue, it created a stutter issue.  I reported it to them at the time, so if yours looks smooth then they must've fixed it before the new rollout.  My camera is still using the Aug 8 version with the stutter.  Hopefully, when the rollout reaches my cameras, all will be clear.

[CornishRattler]

Ah right. The update has definitely resolved the problems

[countrygirltwo]

I posted on this thread in May with the same issues and it’s still not resolved. We are now September. So frustrating that a fix is not rolled out yet to everyone. We all spent the same money on these cameras with high hopes that we would receive good camera quality, what a huge let down from Arlo!

[QuinnLee512]

This is some super slow rollout. Still do not have the new firmware.

[Jerry_E]

Anyone seen the fw update? No progress on my end. More than six months of poor video quality.

[OogaR]

Nope. None. No update. Zero help. 

In fact, tech support last Friday told me there is no update to address a pixelation issue. 

Yes, that's a true story. 

[Kurant]

That's hilarious because they told me the exact same thing when I opened a tech support chat hoping someone could force the update or give me some sort of roll out status. I had to point them to this thread, and then they escalated my case, doubled down on insisting it was my internet again after ruling that out at least two other times and asked me for more pictures and videos on top of the 20 I've already sent them.

These people are confused. 

[Barc]

I just received the firmware update on all of my Pro 4 cameras.

[KSC1]

I took it to "X"(Twitter)! Arlo posted about the Pro4 camera being ranked the best...on Sept 4. I responded to the tweet about this issue and this unanswered thread!! If you have Twitter, do the same. They post regularly on there so if enough people from here take this issue to their Twitter page...they will step up!!!