Jane, this all worked fine for me. Get latest version of monkey and install it. Connect your hd500 to your computer and you'll be prompted to do any updates. When that's done connect your variax to the pod with the digital cable. Run monkey again and it'll detect the variax via the hd500. Y ou should then be available to download the jtv firmware update via the hd500. For such a great product the instructions for the variax aren't great and there are still no advanced guides for it!! Cheers. Gav