I bought a Pioneer that records and has a 250G Hard Drive. I was lucky enought to buy an extended warranty. It broke down twice now. In Canada, Future Shop just said that its not worth fixing. They will give me a new DVD recorder.

THey told me that the saleman will tell me what DVD recorders I can chose from.

My question is what is the new Pioneer model? DVR-660H-K? Is there any other company that has an equivalent DVD recorder or should I just stick with the latest Pioneer?

It is unusual for recent Pioneers to break down so quickly, so you likely did get a rare "lemon". The closest replacement model to your 650 would be the current 560, the new 660 only adds an ethernet jack at much greater expense. Take either one they offer and you should be OK.

I just came back from my local Future Shop store. They exchanged my lemon for a new Pioneer 660. That is the good news.

The bad news is that I lost my remaining 3 of 4 years extended warranty. I was told that their policy states that I need to pay a new extended warranty!!!

While some may think, hey at least you got a new player you need to consider the following. I paid $150 for the original extended warranty and if you add the cost for a new extended warranty it comes to $300!!! So I have paid $429 + tax(on sale) for the lemon + $300 = $729 for a little more than 1 year that I had the DVD player.

By the way, I remember the original salesperson said thst my original warranty would be carried over to the new model. Of course, that is hard to prove!

So my question is, is this normal policy?

Note: They told me if I had brought it in within the 1st year of the DVD, I would have been able to transfer over my extended warranty. I sent it in to fix only weeks past the 1 year mark. What bugs me even more is that if the original saleperson told me the truth I would have brought it in before the 1 year date!

I just came back from my local Future Shop store. They exchanged my lemon for a new Pioneer 660. That is the good news.

The bad news is that I lost my remaining 3 of 4 years extended warranty. I was told that their policy states that I need to pay a new extended warranty!!!

While some may think, hey at least you got a new player you need to consider the following. I paid $150 for the original extended warranty and if you add the cost for a new extended warranty it comes to $300!!! So I have paid $429 + tax(on sale) for the lemon + $300 = $729 for a little more than 1 year that I had the DVD player.

By the way, I remember the original salesperson said thst my original warranty would be carried over to the new model. Of course, that is hard to prove!

So my question is, is this normal policy?

Note: They told me if I had brought it in within the 1st year of the DVD, I would have been able to transfer over my extended warranty. I sent it in to fix only weeks past the 1 year mark. What bugs me even more is that if the original saleperson told me the truth I would have brought it in before the 1 year date!
Yup, this is their standard policy. You can see all the fine print (and I do mean fine print, in PDF files) at http://w2.assurant.com/fspsp/termsandconditions.htm. Specifically:

If we replace a product after the date of expiry of the
manufacturer’s warranty and during the term of this Plan, then the Plan
will immediately be deemed fulfilled and will end on the date of the
replacement.

I ran into the same problem with a PDA given to me by my wife for which she had purchased a Product Service Plan. (I don't normally buy them myself.) It was replaced after expiration of the manufacturer's warranty but before the expiration of the PSP, so the plan could not be carried over to the new unit.

Personally, I think this stinks but I don't know if other extended warranty plans are any better.

Tony

I think this stinks but I don't know if other extended warranty plans are any better. Last year the hard drive on my Pioneer 640 died and I had it replaced under the extended warranty provision of my Visa card. The benefits under that plan are limited to the initial purchase cost of the failed unit, so that seems consistent with what's been described here. Of course with my Visa card I don't have to pay anything extra - the manufacturer's warranty is automatically doubled with every purchase I make on the card.

...The bad news is that I lost my remaining 3 of 4 years extended warranty. I was told that their policy states that I need to pay a new extended warranty!!!

While some may think, hey at least you got a new player you need to consider the following. I paid $150 for the original extended warranty and if you add the cost for a new extended warranty it comes to $300!!! So I have paid $429 + tax(on sale) for the lemon + $300 = $729 for a little more than 1 year that I had the DVD player...

I'm glad that you brought up this issue about the limitations of extended warranties. Even though it's in the fine print that the warranty is fulfilled with the first claim following the initial factory warranty being over, this has much deeper implications if a major repair is subsequently required.

For instance, someone may find after a couple of years of using a DVD recorder that the DVD tray is sticking, or making a funny noise, and they decide to take it in for the extended warranty service. The entire repair may consist of simply replacing a stretched drive belt, which is one of the most common problems experienced with consumer electronics. Many people would probably be able to fix that problem themselves, the belt being usually just a $2-3 item.

Now perhaps a month after getting the unit back, the HDD goes. Again, while it may be easy for many consumers to replace a HDD in a computer, it is nearly impossible for most people to replace and professionally initialize the HDD in brand-name DVD recorders, except for some off-brand models which format anything you put in.

So the scenario is obvious: Someone may waste a $150 extended warranty on a $10 repair, while a subsequent major repair such as replacing the HDD with a cost of somewhere in the $400+ range, all of a sudden becomes that person's financial obligation, making it usually futile for most people to pursue the entire thing. But even then, you usually get stuck with a repair estimate bill costing anywhere from $20-50.

You (ADP02) were in a sense lucky that the first failure of your Pio 650 was a major one!

Extended warranties are very very tricky: the ones sold by the the retailer usually have the most damning fine print that renders them useless for most people on many items. You are very VERY fortunate yours included a replacement feature and that Future Shop actually honored it by giving you a new unit. In your specific case, the $150 you spent on the warranty for the 650 eventually netted you a new 660 which is actually a much more expensive model, so in a way you made back the $150 already.

Whether its worth blowing another $150 to get an extension on the 660 is a different question. While its highly unlikely you would get a second lemon, especially from a newer production run, it is possible of course, so only you can decide if you received enough value for your $150 the first time to spend it a second time. Perhaps if you used a credit card, you can rely on that warranty instead of or in addition to the store warranty: check with your credit card company.

Note there is a tendency on ALL post-2007 recorders equipped with SATA hard drives for the drive connector to work its way loose or oxidize, causing false symptoms of hard drive failure. If you are very careful, most owners can fix this common problem themselves without leaving behind tell-tale traces that would void their warranties. You generally just need to remove the top cover, find the connector plugs on the rear of the hard drive, and gently work them completely loose and then gently but firmly re-seat them. This will cure 90% of flakey hard drive issues in a new Pioneer, Sony or other DVD/HDD machine with SATA hard drive. (You can recognize a SATA connector because it is a small integrated plastic plug about half an inch wide with a normal-looking wire. Drives with EIDE connectors usually have a two-inch mini circuit board attached to the hard drive with a half-inch ribbon cable coming off the little circuit board- these do not usually come loose or oxidize.)

Last year the hard drive on my Pioneer 640 died and I had it replaced under the extended warranty provision of my Visa card. The benefits under that plan are limited to the initial purchase cost of the failed unit, so that seems consistent with what's been described here. Of course with my Visa card I don't have to pay anything extra - the manufacturer's warranty is automatically doubled with every purchase I make on the card.

Sean -- do you remember how much they charged to replace the HDD in your Pio 640?

In a similar situation, the repair estimate to replace the HDD in a Pio 640 (in Canada) was $350 for the HDD, $120 labor (which included the fee for the estimate), plus 13% taxes, which exceeded the original purchase price of the unit.

Sean -- do you remember how much they charged to replace the HDD in your Pio 640?

In a similar situation, the repair estimate to replace the HDD in a Pio 640 (in Canada) was $350 for the HDD, $120 labor (which included the fee for the estimate), plus 13% taxes, which exceeded the original purchase price of the unit.I don't remember the exact price, but that's certainly within perhaps $50.00 or so of the charge for my 633. Of course the 633 cost more than the 640, so I didn't have an issue with the repair exceeding the cost of the unit (although it was within 20% or so, I think). I'd expect that if the old unit was a "write-off" (cost more to repair than to replace") then the warranty would provide a replacement (ie, new) unit instead.

If you're technically inclined you can repair the 640 yourself for the cost of a hard drive (less than $100), a service remote (about $65) and a donation to HKan's web site where you can get a copy of the necessary firmware.

My only problems with my 660h-k unit are these:
1) DVR:
How come there's no undo? If I divide a title I can't recombine it? Why not? How hard could writing that software be? Then there's no preview to the cut. There's a preview when dividing chapters but not dividing titles. How hard would that have been?
2) Music:
I thought, since it's got 250 gb hdd, it'll function as a multi-disc changer too. Well, it does, sort of. It's not so bad that the number of CDs you can upload is limited to the number of artists. I was only gonna upload 100 max anyway. 99 is the limit. You can also upload them as mp3s.The problem is that if you want to shuffle between songs (to get a higher quality playback than you get from your computer) it doesn't play randomly between songs but between folders. If Windows Media Player and Winamp and iPod and Zoom and all those can write a random program, what's wrong with these guys? If you have two folders, one of which has one song and the other has 4 albums with 20 titles each, you'd better like that one song because you're gonna hear it 80x as often as the others. Also you have to turn the TV on to see what song is playing when in Jukebox. Scrolling LED is an ancient technology but the machine just reads "JUKEBOX." You can't see what's playing when in random mode. The machine just reads "SHUFFLE." No access to titles via the TV screen. There are a limited number of playlists furthermore and only 25 songs allowed per playlist and no way to remove a song from a playlist once it's added. If you accidentally add a song twice, well, you're gonna love that song twice as much. There's a 2 second pause between songs even in Jukebox mode so, if you like to listen to opera, you'd better listen to it off this machine because you're gonna have a lot of annoying pauses right in the middle of the action.

Those are my problems, so far, with the Pioneer 660H-K. If I'm wrong about any of these things, I'll be thrilled to be corrected!

No, you're correct: the "jukebox" functionality sucks. But as I've said many times, this is normal. Mfrs hype these alleged "features" simply to drum up interest in DVD/HDD recorders and get press coverage, because nobody's buying the damn things anymore. If you stop to consider the price paid for the unit, and the amazing video functionality it offers, you'd realize there's no way they could actually make the "jukebox" thing really work right unless they doubled the price, added a wirelesss keyboard and GPS-like supplementary display. Think about it: retailers are sitting with warehouses full of unsold DVD/HDD recorders priced at $299 because the mass market considers them "overpriced" and "too complicated". Chances are slim that doubling the price and adding a "real" jukebox would bump sales up any. You want a juke box, buy a Windows HTPC. You want a tiny invisible jukebox? Buy an Apple Mac Mini. But don't buy a DVD/HDD recorder for anything but video.

The lack of an "undo" feature is my only real solid beef with Pioneer recorders, which I otherwise love. It is infuriating that they make it very easy to accidentally erase a title from the HDD but give no option at all to undo it. But they are not alone: no other mfrs offer undo either. You CAN have an "undo" feature when you dub to DVD, however: just use the editing tools in the HDD-DVD copy list window INSTEAD of directly editing material in the HDD Navigator screen. If you divide a title in the wrong place, or make other editing mistakes in the copy list window, you can just exit and start over because the actual recording remains untouched on the HDD. You are only making a "list" of changes that the machine will make on the DVD copy. Every DVD/HDD recorder dating back to 2003 offers this method of "undo", it is more difficult to implement directly on the hard drive because it would burn up additional HDD space and CPU horsepower. Not unlike the way PhotoShop used to take over an entire PC in the old days.

My DVR-650H-K hard drive failed after about 9 months. It was acting a little strange right from day one and would sometimes lock up and have to be rebooted. I warned the retailer about this problem in advance. Sounds like a computer OS system I know! Anyway, since I know they guy who works at the place, a small AV shop and not a big box retail joint, they just gave me a new one. It has been going strong for over 1 year with no problems whatsoever. Yeah, the jukebox is a bit of a joke but the unit is decent overall and we get a lot of use out of it. I am happy with the product.