Forced updates is a bad idea.
There was a change introduced in 8.95.3 that was causing HEVC videos to go black while skipping forward or backward. I raised this issue on this forum but no one was able to help me. Then, the problem was solved in 8.95.7 (I don’t remember the exact number). Till that time, I would just update and go back to 8.95.2 because that version worked the best for me. If I did not have that option I would look for alternatives to CoreELEC because that problem was big enough for me.
My thread here: 8.95.3, S912, black screen while skipping forward or backward . @anon88919003 could not help. I don’t think anyone can help every user, so let us choose what works best for us.
Another thread: HEVC resync issue after skip (non 4K) . The developers knew about the “problem” (for me), because they implemented a change for a few users in 8.95.3 which broke something for me. But, no one was able to help. So, I stayed at 8.95.2. I am happy for the help that I got. I am not complaining. I am just saying, let me stay at a place where it works for me.
There are problems which have no solution which affect only a few people. We don’t upgrade because we have a reason to. If you are going to force updates, you are going to lose users. There will be a tech savvy user, who is going to make community build which will not force updates, we will move on to that.
Just like OpenELEC->LibreELEC->Kszaq->CoreELEC. Life moves on. Blunders of MS W10 updates should be a good lesson in forced updates and MS is full of bright engineers (in 10s of 1000s) and much bigger userbase (even the beta) but things don’t work out as planned. Moreover, they get paid, so they have much more responsibility and stakes are much higher.
I have been using Windows from Windows 3.1 days, and have upgraded as soon as there was a new version available. But, I have not upgraded to W10 and still use W7 because the changes in W8 and W10 are not to my liking. I am looking at linux in my future.
I like the developers and extremely good response and help from all the developers here such as @Ray , @TheCoolest, @vpeter, @anon88919003. This is the first forum under ELECs where I have made an account. So, I don’t want a good product to destroy itself. Forced updates on anything, (especially, stable) is a major step in destroying the product.