Do Manufacturers "lock Out" Features On Certain Spas?

[TinyBubbles]

I'm not sure if someone in the industry would want to answer this or not. I know that balboa makes some control panels that are specifically sold to certain spa manufacturers and "private labeled". These control panels are in the VS series for example. If you check balboa's specs. it gives information on what the VS system provides, yet a spa with this control system doesn't do everything that is listed. Do some manufacturers disable certain functions on these control systems? Perhaps they only want a certain function available on their spas in a certain price range or with a certain package? The second part to this question, if they do this, can an owner reprogram the control panel to get full use of all functions. I hope this makes sense. I know that cellphone carriers are notorious for this. They lock out certain functions to a phone, but someone with the same phone, on another carrier, can use them. If a phone owner gets the information, they can reprogram their phone to take full advantage of it's options.

[Shaamus]

It doesn't take 20k lines of code to run a Balboa pack. I've heard that most of the manufacturers code are in the new Balboa packs and they're using dip switches to select. I think what you're forgetting is that you don't have the same equipment in a Sundance or Artesian or whatever that may be in a Cal Spa so enabling the Cal code on your Sundance isn't necessarily going to get you anything. Also, it's not about features as much as it is how that spa is designed to work. Balboa does it to simplify their manufacturing. I really don't think it's like Verizon blocking out the OBEX Bluetooth code so they can make money on their Get-It-Now crap.