In article , Arfa Daily
wrote:
[snip]

Some " high end " CD players, are in fact just badged up low end ones.
I'm often surprised, and not a little amused, when I open up an item
for repair, that has cost it's owner 500 quid, only to find that inside
it's identical to an £80 one that I have repaired earlier in the week
... It's always hard to know what you're buying unless you are ' in the
game ' as it were. Most Marantz items are just differently badged
standard Philips products.

Although I'd tend to agree with the above, it may be worth pointing out
that some apparently identical/similar players may have un-obvious
differences. e.g being differences in programmable ROMs that control things
like the servos, or how channel errors are handled. Some makers also make
play of things like fancy components, although in my experience this is a
dubious 'feature'... :-)

[snip]

Just as an aside, I wonder why domestic DVD recorders are so unreliable,
and yet the ones that you stick in your computer, seem to go on for
ever ?

Can't comment on hardware faults in DVD video recorders. However the
Philips recorder I have does show annoying problems due to bugs in the
firmware/software. I assume this is the responsibility of the programmers
at Philips. However once you get 'above' the raw servo and data control
this may be akin to having an OS or application on a computer go wrong, as
distinct from the actual drive...

Slainte,

Jim

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