Makes me wonder if the Chinese manufacturer is intentionally obscuring the chip labels with black ink now, to make reverse-engineering tougher.

It's much harder to read the printing on the chips on the V6 board than on the V2 board. The smaller V6 board leaves a lot of empty space in the case that has me wondering if I could fit something else in there, but the power supply section of the board seems to have shrunk along with the board itself, and power availability has always been a problem with these boxes. All the same chips: MSD7802 with a heat sink MSD1237 demodulator a RAM chip, a small flash ROM chip with 8 surface-mount connections, and the RF box, which looks identical. Other than size though, the motherboards are very similar. All the same connectors the only difference is that the V6 connectors are more 'scrunched together' due to a smaller motherboard. The back panel is only slightly different between the two. Front-panel display consists of a single LED: red means standby mode green means it's 'on.' If the LED is off, it means power is disconnected (either by the front-panel switch or by unplugging). The old box says Dolby 'Digital ' the new one says Dolby 'Audio.' Apart from that cosmetic difference, they are identical: Channel up/down buttons and a 'hard' power switch that physically disconnects power from the box (which is unusual most competitors just have a pushbutton that switches it to 'standby' mode, same as the remote). They're identical except for the Dolby trademark silk-screened on the front. One thing that hasn't changed is the case and front panel.

2014 the new HW-150PVR is V6 with V6.8 firmware both from Sept. I also have an older HW-150PVR with a V2 board that came with V2.0 firmware (which I later updated to V2.1).

Homeworx hw 150pvr firmware download