Fukuda 881 Report Card: 5 Months
Well, my 881 kicked the bucket last weekend. I turned it on and it started screeching like a dying PC -- how apt -- so I turned it off. When I tried again after a minute, the noise was gone. Unfortunately, it also refused to read any and every DVD, DVD-R, and CD-R that I tried to play so I turned it off. I resigned myself to an inconvenient trip to the service center to have the d**ned thing fixed. Given the unfortunate experience of fiddlers_green in Ansons, I figured a trip to Sucat was probably my best bet.
I called Fukuda first thing Monday and was informed by Rey, the guy in charge of the DVD line, that they were open from 8 am to 5 pm. He also said that I could wait for my unit since given the symptoms, they could repair it in one hour.
When I got there, I was... shocked. The Fukuda service center is actually a small room inside their warehouse -- no waiting area. no reception counter, no queue, no chairs, no water machine, and no forms to fill out. I sat on a wooden bench outside the room near a forklift.
Rey just got my machine and told me to wait. About 45 minutes later, they asked me to enter the room to test the player. I was informed that since the unit was still under warranty, they just replaced all the broken parts. This included:
1. The entire lens assembly, for reasons unknown.
2. The motor assembly, which was fried apparently. The screeching noises were indications of gear misalignment which strained the motor and eventually burned it out.
Upon testing the unit, I immediately noticed:
1. Startup and disc load times improved considerably.
2. The screech and low PC-like hum that I had come to associate with the 881... was gone. It sounded like a regular DVD player.
The technician assured me that my 881 was likely to be trouble-free moving forward. It seemed like the problems weren't new to them, so I'm guessing that this may be tied to a quality control issue that affected a number of players that were shipped to the Philippines from China.
Anyway, I've been testing the unit and so far so good. It's played everything I've thrown at it including a couple of hard-to-read DVD-Rs.
I'll update this thread if anything unusual comes up.