DVD player hell (or selling the lot...)

My Pioneer 656 has started acting up big time - refusing to layer change on 3 discs in the last 2 days, and totally f***ing up halfway through Road Trip.

Can this be down to dirt on the laser, or is the so-called wander Pioneer machine dead?

Call me a moaner, but I'm getting thoroughly sick and tired of shelling out money on sodding DVD players - this is the third machine in 3 years... I'm hoping that power cycling the machine'll sort it out (I'm not convinced it's not a surge or something that's caused this) but my money is on the player being stuffed, which is a sod since I need SCART passthrough (negating most cheapo players) and macrovision disabled (Sony TV = bad pictures with Murkyvision)/multiregion...

To be honest, if the thing's history (it's only 18 months old and cost a fair chunk when I could have got a £30 plastic fantastic) then I'm thinking of selling all my AV stuff and giving up, having got sick to death of being ripped off by the "next big thing" all the time.

In fact, if it IS shafted - anyone want all my hifi and AV gear and software? I could pay off all my debt and bugger off to Thailand and become a farmer!

 

I have an old Pioneer 444 and within the first year it was displaying the same problems, it needed a new laser fitted (luckily under warranty)

Mine also refused to play some disks first time and need ejecting and putting back in a few times before playing and also stopping films mid-way.

This isn't what you wanted to hear I know, but I tried cleaning mine and eventually gave up and sent it back for repair.

Andrew

Edit: Just to add, it is still working today, 3 years on!

 

My 626 stopped playing CDs in one year, although it still plays DVDs.

Gonna swap to a Denon next time I think.

 

Feels your pain. Get Sony next time. 6 years old and still spinning. Oh don't forget to turn them off at night.

 

Why do you have to turn them off at night ???

I have 2 dvd players at the moment - my Sony which has been going trouble free for 4 years and is used for cd/movies and sacd in a 2nd system, and a Denon DVD-2900 for my main system which has been working fine so far.

However a friends Pioneer recently died on him and he decided to get a £30 one from Asda. He's a bit annoyed as the machine cost £500+ and essentially he has ended up binning it - it cost more than £30 to have it fixed.

I have a funny feeling that we may never see a classic dvd player - too many dirt cheap throw away ones available from the hifi/av mecca - the supermarket.

 

oh dear, pioneer used to be excellent in hifi, but my faith is dented, sadly we will never go back to the variety of hifi, its largely gone av so there won't be all that fun we had before dvd.
I had a pioneer 575, it whirred badly on one disc, sent it back, said I wanted another that worked, they sent the blasted same one back, same disc in, whirred and vbrated badly again
sent the thing back for a refund.
never again, pity the 575 sounds very poor on cd, or perhaps a good job.

 

NO WAY!!! My first player was a Sony and it was an unreliable piece of sh** from day, err, 30-ish. Same as their godawful CD players - the only Sony optical product I'll use is MD as (touch wood) they've never let me down yet.

Techtronics are bust, so the Pioneer's fit for the bin (Pioneer UK won't touch it 'cos it's been hacked). I'll TRY a laser cleaner in it to be certain, but £350 for 18 months (and about 1000 hours) use is pretty damn shoddy if you ask me.

That said, am tempted to ask Richer if they can get mechs for it, since it'll be a damn sight cheaper than buying a new equivalent quality machine.

Having said that, the Bush DVD I got my sister from Makro (£28) was pretty decent. I think I'll either get a Tosh from Richer, or a cheapo no namer, since I bought Pioneer on quality. What a misnomer.

Shame really, since my 1990 Pioneer CT447 tape deck and 1992 1750 Laserdisc are still going strong and have never been serviced.

To be honest, I'm sick to death of this throwaway culture - I'd rather pay twice as much for something that'll last, but that plan didn't work on DVD did it? Sometimes I wish I'd lived with the bugs on my el cheapo Samsung (bought after the Sony) rather than wasting money on a "decent" Pioneer.

And no, even if I had the money I'd NOT be buying the Naim DVD5!

 

Well my five year old Pioneer 717 is still going strong, and a year old pioneer 868 has never had a hint of a problem. I think its just bad luck, doesn't mean they are all crap.

 

once again we think in a similar way, dom!!, I don't like the throwaway culture either.
in the days of valves, resistors and caps were great big things, now they are surface mount, I have a ex-washing machine serviceman friend who doen'st know much about the electronics, if there is anything wrong with the board, they just chuck and replace.

that's why I don't like surfact mount, just look at a quad ii amp for ease of replacing.

If pioneer can't get dvd right, what chance have naim? they are reliant upon the big guys transports and chips.

I always have a policy of not jumping on the dreaded technology/new thing bandwagon, it seems some sad souls have to have the latest thing.

1. you pay for the r/d through the nose at first
2/ there are usually problems with the tech.
3/ nowadays will it last? cd has been going for what, 25 yrs???!!!
we have dvd, dvd-a, sacd, goodness knows what else, you don't know where to turn.
you can't just redo your huge collection every few yrs as they want. total stupidity. I adopt the tory party policy on europe....wait and see....but there is still the pressure and feeling that you are missing out....

 

Surface mount is easier to replace components on than through-hole...

The difference is more in complexity. Where you have 1000 components it will take much longer to find a fault than where you have 10. So much so that it's cheaper to replace than to fix. The complexity is a necessary evil in the case of a DVD player unlike a simple valve amp.

DVD layer transitions have always been a cause of problems... my old computer DVD drive couldn't cope with it, and my old landlord's sony lifestyle DVD thing had issues as well. Clean off the laser lens with isopropyl alcohol and make sure that the tracks that the laser moves on are clean and lubricated. Beyond that, there's probably not a lot you can do.

Consumers tend to complain about the throwaway culture, but it's consumer driven. People want DVD players for £30, so they're made for £3. Of course they won't last.

 

My cyrus dvd player ran for years perfectly, also acting as a cd transport. I bought another and that has also been perfect. You don't have to give up.

 

I've got a Pioneer DVL-919 DVD/LD combi player. The transport has always been noisey (as seem to be the case for Pioneer DVD's of that vintage e.g. 717) but it hasn't yet failed and is still going strong after 5 years of admitedly light use.

Never had a piece of hi-fi equipment fail on me yet, usually I find most pieces of elelctronic equipment tend to fail within the first few hours or first week of ownership if it's going to do so at all IME.

 

I know what you mean, I am a bit annoyed that my Marantz CD player has packed up on me, its working at the moment though but next time it goes plays up I will have to take it back. I bought it thinking it would last for ever, my parents Sony CD530 is 5 years old now, thats still going strong.

I've never had a problem with Sony stuff, but some of my Marantz stuff has had reliability problems, its a shame because I like the Marantz sound the discontinued 6000x line which I bought into was also very cheap, I paid £300 in total for my CD6000OSE LE, and 6010 OSE.

When you think the CD6000 retailed for more than that when it was brand new.

What annoys me more than anything is those cheap hifi mini systems costing £40 and they only last 4 months, its bad for the evironment.

I think many things are better made though, my parents 1998 Pansonic TV and VCR is still working as good as new. I remember as a kid my uncle would be round almost on a weekly basis fixing somthing on our old Baird TV.

I bought a Compacks DVD player (no brand but made by an American electronics company in China) it cost £60 when most were twice the price, i've had it for two years now and its still going very strong, its very similier to the Cambridge Audio DVD player (it has the same case) but the CA has higher quality audio components and probably a better video processing chip.

 

I paid £350; I don't class that as something that should be expected to fail in less than 2 years - especially when my cheap(ish) Philips VHS is still going strong after 7 years. If I'd paid £30 for the Pioneer I'd not be fuming...

AT - Baird are a rental TV brand; that one was probably ex-Radio Rentals, and made by Thorn/EMI or JVC. We had an early 80s toploader in 1988 from them and it was a beast - but kicked ass!

I'll whip the lid off if the laser cleaner won't work - I reckon the laser mech's farked though.

Of course - it could be electronics - I kept getting odd green gremlins when going from the loading screen to menu, then from menu to film on a couple of discs last night. If that's the case - than it's in the bin for the Pioneer!

 

The old silver thing, we had one of them as well, kept breaking down just like the TV my uncle gave them to use though.

I never knew that about Baird, you learn somthing new everyday, that brand was apart of my childhood.

 

I had a Nytech amp that was in for repair more often than it was playing music. It finally self-destructed in spectacular fashion during a party.

But other consumer electronics; don't get me started. They invariably go wrong the day the warranty expires. We must have got through a dozen electric kettles, toasters, vacuum cleaners and the like in the past few years.

 

With us its washing machines, they never last more than two or three years. Its on all the time though.

Batteries always seem to fail on me as well I did complain to trading standards that batteries only last a day or so but they never replied back.

Then there was my second hand battery business, it was all well and good apart from I had no customers.

 

Tell me about it

Actually, our toploader was the black one with silver trim, with Dolby Stereo (apparently those linear tracks are still present on modern tapes as well!).

I'm gonna take that 656 apart over the weekend to see what's what...

 

TBH, the general quality of the laser assembly/lens/transport mech isn't much cop these days. Especially in DVDP's (of any price bracket, it seems).

Reminds me of all those properly-engineered glass-optic philips transports of the late eighties/early nineties. Hell, the transport in my parent's 1988 philips hifi is still going strong - and its never been serviced!

I think the problem is that they simply don't design transports to last any more. Personally, I blame PC-CDROM. Since a PC's shelf life is only 5 years, why engineer something (more expensive/better built) that will last longer?

Might as well take costs down to the wire and shift more drives?! Looking at the catastrophically shite dvd-rom drive in my new pc, the future really is bleak for optical transports. Laptop transports are even worse!

Demand for high quality, massively built optical transports must be at an all-time low. Order of the day is cheap sh*t for £30 dvdp's etc.

At least pc dvd transports are self-replaceable and easy to get hold of, unlike dvdp transports!

Spare a thought for those poor sods who have shelled out £2,700 for Townshend TA 565's though. They'll be sending them back every three years for laser assembly replacement and getting charged £500 every time

DT

Might be worth noting that we ask an awful lot from our dvdp's these days, dom. Can I really expect my 565 to read every disc known to man AND play video AND loop scarts AND process/pipe DD/DTS AND sound/look good? Not surprised there isn't much left over for quality components after all these features have been included....

 

This is why it's much better to buy a cheap transport and use a decent DAC which is buffered - offering jitter free performance from any tranny. The Benchmark DAC1 is perfect. The transport then becomes disposable. Quite a few people on PFM have ditched top naim spinners for this very solution. This is what I will be doing shortly in preference to far pricier options. Money far better spent on more amps and ever larger speakers.