Pioneer Warranty

[ChevyS10]

Hello..

Pioneer 810H just died...Stuck on the powering up screen. The unit is still under warranty. I assume it is a bad hard drive. If I send it back to Pioneer, will they just replace the drive and send it back to me or will they send me a refubished unit? I have heard stories about Humax sending out refurbished units that looked awful with scratches and other damage. I would hate to lose this particular unit..it is MINT! The customer service rep. didn't seem to know what they would do.....

Thanks..

[bicker]

Are you sure there isn't a DVD in the DVD drive?

[ChevyS10]

Hmmmm..Didn't think that would make a difference. The disc eject button does not function. Is there a way to get the tray to eject manually?

Ahh..will try the paperclip trick.

[bicker]

It definitely makes a difference. Bad DVD.

[ChevyS10]

So I popped open the DVD tray...and there was no disc there. So.....

Anyone know teh answer to my original question...

Will pioneer fix my original unit or will they send me a refurb??

And since I am asking... is there any fix that they can do to correct the "kazoo" noise that has plagued the unit for the past 6 months.....

Thanks.

[robomeister]

There is no telling what Pioneer will do in this case. Did you buy the unit from an authorized Pioneer Dealer? If not, you might be in for a fight. Or have to pay $200 to get it fixed. And since Pioneer has discontinued production of this TiVo model about 2 years ago, they might not have any in stock. But it is easier to simply send out a new or refurbished unit as a replacement rather than replacing the hard drive.

I have several of these units and they seem to be more reliable than the Humax units. I base this on the stories I've read on this forum. There were some initial problems with some pixelization, but that was fixed with software update 5.2.2, many moons ago.

The part of any TiVo that will fail first is the hard drive. You indicated this up front in your original post. I've upgraded every unit I have with a larger hard drive, so I have a set of backup images to work with. Replacing the hard drive is not that big of a deal, if you aren't afraid of opening the case and know how to upgrade a computer. If you run into difficulties trying to get Pioneer to fix your TiVo, I suggest looking in the upgrade forum here. InstantCake might be your answer.

Good luck.

[ChevyS10]

The unit was purchased from CompUsa so there shouldn't be an issue there. I've looked into replacing the hard drive myself but figured if Pioneer were going to do it for free why not let them..I just don't want a refurb.

I was also hoping that there would be a fix for the dreaded "kazoo" issue with the audio on the unit. It comes and goes depending on the channel I record..very annoying, especially for the shows I want to burn to disc and save.......

[bicker]

You may be better off with a refub. Though, my kazoo issue just magically vanished after a while.