This is not a rant. Just wanted to know if anybody else had a similar problem.
Got a 608 about more than a month ago. Its video output was connected to a splitter which is connected to a panny plasma and my pj. Upon initial installation, i was able to see the menus on the tv/pj. When I got home the same day but after the installers have already left, I couldn't get video from my sky cable digibox to display. I also couldn't get the pj/tv to display the menu. I initially thought this was a handshake issue between the splitter and the AVR. Since the display worked fine with HDMI sources, I just plugged in my digibox to the input of my media player/dvr and was pretty happy watching videos and movies for a couple of weeks. Was too lazy to try a direct connection since the cables were somewhat neatly tied up already.
About 2 weeks ago, I tried installing my xde 500. Initially, while trying to watch Master and Commander, there was sound during the introduction to the menu screen but upon playing the movie sound died. I left it to play while I was dressing up. I suddenly heard the loud sounds of one of the battle scenes. I went down to lower the volume and was able to watch and finish a different dvd after. The next night, we tried watching a different DVD. A couple of minutes into the movie, we heard static which was getting louder. I paused the movie and when I tried playing it again... no more sound. I still thought it was a problem with the DVD player so I shut it down and changed it with my Pioneer. When I played the pio, there was sound already. But since my wife got sleepy from waiting for me fix it, we didn't watch any further. I thought it was really just the DVD player until the next night, the same thing happened. The store where i bought it from told me to try to test tone. I had to wait for it to happen again to try it, but true enough, no sound even during test tone and from all other sources. Plus, my xde works fine with my Denon.
Brought it in to the store that sold me the unit who brought the unit to Toyama. A week after, they told me that it had something to do with the HDMI board or DSP board. (They mentioned both, don't know if they were connected or the same.) In any case, I find out that it might take up to 2 months to get the parts. Has anything similar happened to anybody else here? Was I really that "lucky" to get a lemon?
They advised me that it might have been caused by unplugging and plugging in of HDMI cables while the Unit was on. While I don't really do it that much, there was a problem with the unit since the video output gets dislodged very easily so I often times have to tighten the connections. I wonder how you can test if the connections are tight enough if they're not plugged in.
Anyway, hope they can sort it out soon. More or less a month of use tapos ganon agad. Di ko tuloy alam if its a good thing that I got it locally. On one hand, warranty. On the other hand, if I bought it from abroad, I probably would have gotten a good unit at a cheaper price.