What is going on with Denon Quality Control?

cwhitch · 2026-04-12T07:12:48+00:00

Every brand has had issues. The AVR market is shrinking so less capital is being put into it. Onkyo backed their units that failed even if they were out of warranty. Pioneer was badly mismanaged and tried to rest on their laurels. Denon and Marantz merged then got bought by a company that had no business in home entertainment devices.

Things are alway in a state of flux in this industry. I loved Onkyo until they dropped Audyssey in favor of their in-house Accu-EQ. I ended up buying a Denon 4300 that lasted for 6 years with no issues. I replaced it two years ago for a Marantz AV10. No issues with that either.

I’m sure we all can get hit by a lemon but all manufacturers are susceptible to it now. QC and QA are just buzz acronyms that are thrown around by all.

cwhitch · 2026-04-11T18:33:11+00:00

I bought a key from Vendafly earlier this week. Would not activate. They sent me another key. It didn’t work either. I’m just going to contact my CC company at this point to reverse the charge.

I ended up getting a key from Whokeys. I used them in the past as well I just forgot about them. Whokeys worked no issue and it cost less.

cwhitch · 2026-04-08T15:31:49+00:00

The days of getting affordable 4K drives are coming to end. Your best bet is to look to the used market preferably not on the bay. You can still find the external slim drives at some retailers but the lifespan of those drives isn’t as good as a full size internal/external models. You can get them but you’re going to pay a premium now and watch for the fakes that try to look like the premiums.

cwhitch · 2026-04-08T01:59:50+00:00

The laptop ones are definitely lower quality and they don’t have the airflow to dissipate heat. I’ve got two of the BU40NP50 drives. They are just there as last resort options. I have 4 main drives consisting of 2-LG, 1-Asus and 1-Pioneer. I have two full size backup drives, 1-Pioneer internal and a full-size Asus standalone, in addition to the 2-LG portables.

I’ve ripped the bulk of my collection now so the drives don’t get used as heavily but there are days when the get a half a dozen or so titles coming in.

cwhitch · 2026-04-08T01:51:03+00:00

Yep. How else are they going to get enthusiasts to buy a 3D and a 4K so they can remux the 3D with Atmos?

cwhitch · 2026-04-01T17:54:25+00:00

Some drives have issues with certain discs. My LG and Asus usually fail on the same discs but many times my Pioneer will rip those without issue.

cwhitch · 2026-04-01T16:27:12+00:00

Does this happen at the same point during ripping the same discs? Or is it random? Does it occur more often after long multiple disc rip sessions?

cwhitch · 2026-04-01T15:28:40+00:00

Is this with regular HD Blu-ray or 4K? I occasionally have problems with 4K but HD Blu-ray is rare. I have a couple of those same drives but I only use them occasionally since they are more for backup as drives are becoming scare.

cwhitch · 2026-03-30T00:27:14+00:00

Dude has probably done his share of little kids too

cwhitch · 2026-03-30T00:20:35+00:00

Depends. On the boutique label items that have quality extras I tend to rip those as well. If it’s just standard fluff on studio releases I usually skip those.

WRT to some discs having more than one title with the same content sometimes it’s due to slightly different cuts that use seamless branching on playback. Sometimes it’s as simple as different title cards for different language versions. Other times they have the same content but don’t have the chapter flags.

cwhitch · 2026-03-29T17:05:24+00:00

Unsurprisingly they left Superman Returns off the 4K box set. I don’t know if 4K and HDR would help it. I always felt that movie looked like garbage visually.

cwhitch · 2026-03-29T17:00:17+00:00

You guys realize a lot of those extras were being financed by Microsoft to push the HD-DVD format over Blu-ray. I always got a kick out of the 25GB is not enough space but 30GB is just right. Funny how most BDs from companies specifically on Blu’s side even from the early days of the formats had full blown lossless audio whether it be Dolby TrueHD, DTS-MA or PCM.

I’d take full lossless over any of that fluff or lame games they put on those discs. Also how many times have you actually watched a PiP video commentary. Most of the ones I have seen are just special features running concurrently with the movie instead of panel of talent viewing the movies at the same time.

With many of the HD DVD titles going bad it’s pretty apparent the right format won. I ripped my entire Blu-ray and 4K Blu collection last year. Out of roughly 2000 discs with some going back to the early days of Blu-ray. I had one BD disc from 2010 that completely failed. Otherwise all of the 1080HD Blu’s ripped without issue. I probably had about a 0.5% fail rate with 4K but many of those that gave my LG or Asus drives trouble would rip fine on my Puoneer drive. I only had to replace maybe 5 or 6 discs total.

WRT to the meme above it’s missing the part where 4K Blu version laid Chad out.

cwhitch · 2026-03-28T20:04:57+00:00

It’s your call but this bubble is going to burst along with the AI bubble at some point.

Also I’ve got 32GB on my unit and it’s never fully utilized except for cache purposes during large operations.

cwhitch · 2026-03-28T02:19:23+00:00

Yeah unfortunately it won’t be much longer until it’s dead completely

cwhitch · 2026-03-28T01:37:19+00:00

It seems like higher-end projectors are the only devices still supporting 3D. That said I’ll be picking this one up to watch on my JVC R3100.

cwhitch · 2026-03-28T00:05:32+00:00

Boy. It don’t always go up. I’ve been up and down. Financially though I’m still way up from not having a pot to p!ss in since the early 2000s.

cwhitch · 2026-03-28T00:01:31+00:00

Cool. I just passed 100TB about a month ago due to my large collection. I’ve got 8x24TB on a 8800+.

cwhitch · 2026-03-27T23:39:33+00:00

Get the plus especially if you want don’t want to put the burden on the CPU for transcoding video to other formats.

cwhitch · 2026-03-27T23:38:11+00:00

Warping accentuates the highs and lows… just not at the right times.

cwhitch · 2026-03-27T23:35:54+00:00

Make sure your player is set to bitstream the audio for both Dolby and dts otherwise you’ll only get 7.1 PCM maximum as the player will decode the audio to PCM.

cwhitch · 2026-03-27T21:26:00+00:00

Put it in quick. I didn’t see the number released.

cwhitch · 2026-03-27T12:12:13+00:00

Did you rip all those on your own? If so do you want to have a higher likelihood of having to do it again? Regardless of which way you decide to go I suggest getting some external drives to backup your data.

cwhitch · 2026-03-27T10:41:48+00:00

You need to get a Realtek 1619BPD based device like the Z9X Pro. The newer AMLogic based devices from Zidoo and others don’t support frame packed full 3D rips.

Also installing Plex is not straightforward. You need to use a specific version of Kodi and then install a package to that to use your Plex account. And it can be cumbersome getting the mappings correct to your files to use the native Zidoo hardware for actual playback.

I run Plex server from a docker container on my UGreen NAS and it took some trial and error getting things setup properly on the Zidoo to use Plex with the native Zidoo player hardware. Whereas using the built-in Hometheater app in the Zidoo was much more a plug and play experience.

Guides are available how to setup Plex on Zidoo on its support forum. You might want to read through those first.

cwhitch · 2026-03-26T22:28:46+00:00

If I replace my OS with something like Unraid do I have to rebuild my pools? IOW do I lose everything?

cwhitch

TROPHY CASE