Obsolete after 7 years?

Clubikle

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Jun 27, 2020
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My Denon ceol Piccolo DRA-N5 was purchased after a glowing review in the magazine. It was a retirement present to myself as I was going to work in the Middle East for 2 years and then retire to Philippines, where I am now.
The Denon gave excellent service until this month when a failed firmware upgrade meant it had to go to the repair agent here.
On return, I had no preset channels, so I tried to install them. All attempts gave the message to look at radiodenon.com.
This was a web page for vTuner who have taken on the task to supply the station list ( so not Denon anymore ). They want a subscription of 3 dollars yearly. So Denon appear to have handed control to a third party. But I bought a product from Denon and expect the hardware to perform its primary function. The 3 dollars/year would also incur foreign exchange surcharges which at least doubles the price.
The service agent here who had £30 for the repair are sympathetic but unable to help here. At least I have PC or apple TV for radio but I have also a brick with a Denon label.
BTW, Yamaha had a similar problem, but found alternate source of stations for their customers.
 
A sad tale but unfortunately a sign of the times where items seem so reliant on software to do a particular job This is why I advocate buying a box to do one specific job well.
Having said that I think I would be writing to Denon for some sort of compensation as, due to their actions, your Ceol is now unfit for purpose.
It is perhaps a pity the dealer could not reset the firmware to the previous version, but then I am not sure it would have helped in this instance.
 

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