Help Needed With Pioneer-454

[Im_Stupid]

Desperatly need help here.

Have a Pioneer 454, had a short while now, suing it through a VCR due to my TV being too old to take it direct, clearly then my TV does nto accept NTSC signal. But the Player converts it. (It is multi Region).

Any how. It all worked fine, even the Us dvd's I have and the DVD-r's. I get back today, after someone has been playing with it and it was jumping (the picture).

Nothign playing. I have looked in the instructions and set the DVD detect mode to Auto, now i get a steady picture, but not on my US or two of my DVD-r's, one a US rip and one a DVD/SVCD.

Any ideas greatly appreciated. If i do a factory reset it will nto be multi region anymore and although i was planning to get a new TV that does accept NTSC I was thining in a few months, not this weekend!!

Sorry it long, thanks for reading and thanks for any sugestions and help.

[Im_Stupid]

Its rapidly going down hill now. More of my DVDr's are not playing and now some of my VCD's are not playing either. A few of my Film DVD's are going into a freeze pixel mode then continueing.

I have tested all of these in the xbox with sucess. I am noe assuming the player is bugering up. I have only had it a few weeks. All the self written medi is high quality, could it be the fact I am putting in DVDr's although supported as written on Pioneers own web site, or is the player proving unrliable.

Anyone had similare rpoblems and come to a soultion ro a replaced machine??

Thanks.....I.S.

[Im_Stupid]

After talking with pioneer they said to take it back to the shop for further investigation. After doing so (this morning) they said that it must be the DVD's I have rather then the player. They were unwilling to try any backups I had and would nto test them in another machine (same or different models).

As a result they say due to the manufactures literature being vague about DVD-r compatibility etc etc they will not change or exchange the player. This is despite the fact EVERYTHING did work when I first got the player home??

Does anyone know where I stand on this?

As far as i see it, I bought the player on the strength of Pioneers web site spec and the write up as given by Richer Sounds and when at home everything was working. Now some aspects simply do not work. Therefore it is clearly not suitable for its purpose as it simply does not work as instructed by Pioneer and Richer Sounds.

Does this not mean I should at least have a simple same for same exchange?? I thought so. I have had this continuing problem since well my first post.

If anyone can now help my exchange / refund entitlement i would be grateful. Cheers.....IS

[flaninacupboard]

a friend of the family had a 454, it did exactly as you describe, slowly stopped working, and is now dead. only things i can suggest, if someone was playing with the settings, make sure the video format is set to PAL and -not- Auto. your VCR will -not- be NTSC compatible, so you always want PAL coming out of the player. the only other thing you can do is try and find a way into service made and get the player to adjust it's settings. i never found a way into service mode, but you can ask pioneer. are you having any problems with "proper" discs?
the issue on -R compatibility is a tough one. as we all know not all writable discs are the same. the player could be compatible with 99% of brands, but that will still upset someone, so at what stage do you stick a "-R compatible" badge on it? 50%? 60%? i don;t know what the official line is, but i think you're stuck on that one. the only way you can get round this problem is if when you buy you ask "will it play brand X -R discs?" if they say yes and it doesn't then it's not fit for the purpose it was sold and you can return it.

[Im_Stupid]

Thanks, it is good to finally hear that at least one person has had the sme problem. I have tried it set in PAL and still the other region DVD's come out jumpy.

Since my post, I have been at a friends and tested the player on his NTSC compat TV and all is ok, this clearly does nto help with the DVD's that do not work.

I saved good and hard to get this and i can see myself having to sell it second hand and forking out for another player that really does do everything as it says.

Thanks .....IS