Reviews Reliability

[admin_exported]

Hi All,

In the products listings in the back of the magazine could there be an entry for reliability?

The 2 products that spring to mind (I am going back a bit here):

Panasonic PTAE700 cracking machine but plaged with problems and what made it worse was the attitude of the people at Panasonic I had 4 machines in all, gave up after the 4th had a problem with its green LCD panel and got a Sony HS50 instead.

The picture on the HS50 wasnt as good as the Panasonic but it was more reliable machine and more stable.

Denon 3930, ohhh Denon, Ive gone through 7 machines (skipping stopping, not reading discs etc) and finally I have one thats works well, this was the only one that was repaired by Denon replacing a transverse plate (whatever that is)

After reading forums it seems its not just me having these problems but reliability issues dont get a mention anywhere.

Just an idea

 

[Anonymous]

I agree, reliability in hi fi equipment seems to be curiously overlooked when buying decisions are made

the usual best price vs best spec seems to dictate where and what we spend our hard earned on.

Regards your denon dvd player, i had a denon 2900 a while back, worst purchase i ever made, failed electrical

digital output, disc drawer mechanism kaput, and it shook like a french soldier when any dvd audio disc was inserted.

Sevenoakes were sympathetic and helpful during these problems (warranty covered) but it put me off denon dvd players full stop.

 

[D.J.KRIME]

fatcat40s:

Denon 3930, ohhh Denon, Ive gone through 7 machines (skipping stopping, not reading discs etc) and finally I have one thats works well, this was the only one that was repaired by Denon replacing a transverse plate (whatever that is)

After reading forums it seems its not just me having these problems but reliability issues dont get a mention anywhere.

Just an idea

7 3090's! what are you doing to them man!!!

I have a 3090 as do 3 of my friends and only mine played up having a transport faluire after about 18 months of heavy useage but this was collected by Denon and the transport and laser replaced with newer firmware all F.O.C within 2 weeks of the problem arising. Apart from this 1 instance all of our 3090's have been faultless.

A problem with forums and reliabilty issues is IMHO people only tend to post when they are having issues with a product so you only see one side of the fence as all happy owners tend not to post, so what may be issues with a small number of units can appear somewhat inflated.

Also I personally can not see how WHSAV can coment on reliabilty of a item they nly test for a limited period of time as any coments would surely be largely guess work?

 

[ElectroMan]

One survey of AV equipment reliability some years ago (not in WHF) did it by asking independent repairers what their experiences were, as it's hard/impossible to get this information out of the manufacturers and their official service agents. The article was written by their technical expert who also ran a repair shop. They held the article back for a month in order to give the AV companies time to comment, as some famous brands (I honestly cannot remember which ones) didn't come out as very reliable!

If I recall correctly, JVC came out top ...