...have they gone bust? Their URL seems to be dead...

Just curious as I'm wandering what their current prices on mid-price Pioneer DVD is (I'll never fork out top dollar for a DVD player like the Naim DVD5 as music's more important to me).

My Pioneer 656 is good, but me being me, I'm kind of worried it'll die soon enough, so was going to look at the site today and it doesn't even ping...

Yes, went bust a while back. I read somewhere that they have apparently reopened under another name, but not sure what and if I'd actually buy from them again if that's the case.

YIKES! So where can I get a Murkyvision-disabled DVD player now then?

When the Pioneer packs up, I'm going to need one without Macrovision, because the Sony TV I use has a grey bar at the top on all Macrovision-coded tapes and discs - not nice...

Perhaps they went bust because of poor customer service, if my first (and definatly last) transaction with them was representative.

I bought a fairly expensive (around £45) QED scart lead from them at the same time as a Pioneer DVD player.

I had to return the lead because the pins were loose but they sent it back to me saying that it was not faulty AND charged my credit card with a hefty fee for their trouble.

I got the lead replaced free by QED.

Techtronics came in for a pretty hefty pasting on the news groups when I was still reading them. The popular wisdom was that the number one proirity was to take your money. If the transaction resulted in a happy customer it was a happy coincidence. At the first sign of wrong, faulty, damaged, out of stock or obviously second hand goods, it was a case of digging in and preparing for a long fight. Many claimed to have been ripped off and given up because for the sake of a couple of hundred quid they would put it down to experience. This always puzzled me because if you're using a credit card you should be well covered.

My first ever multi region player (Samsung 709 bless it) came from Techtronics and still works fine to this day. But even allowing for poster's drama and axe grinders I couldn't bring myself to order anything from them again, such was the volume of complaints against them. avland.co.uk and multiregionmagic.co.uk have been my suppliers since. I recommend the latter very highly for their after sales service.

Cheers

Harry

BLIMEY!

I've had 3 players from them; the first was a Sony 525, bought SPECIFICALLY because the Pioneers of the day had lipsync problems. Guess what!? Yep, the Sony ended up having the same problem. Faulty firmware - across the board. I didn't want to pay to get the firmware updated as I considered it good money after bad (the Sony really was a POS).

The Samsung cheapo I got next was fairly good, though it had a quirk with some discs bringing up subtitles etc when not requested (this has been the case on all Samsungs I've experienced, before and since - wish they'd solve that!).

My Pioneer (touch wood) has been tip top...

I went to Techtronics all 3 times due to them stating about Murkyvision (that and Sony TVs do NOT mix!). Richers wouldn't confirm if their Tridec(?) mods'd do this...

BTW - do multiregionmagic/avland do home cineam amps? At some point my E800's gonna snuff it and I'll therefore need some kind of amp with main L/R preouts...

My experience with the Techtronix people was more positive than you have had, and this was also true of customers I have spoken to who used them. Personally, I think the market may have dried up. After all, almost all players are region-hackable from the remote control nowadays, so there's a much smaller market (if any) for inserting hardware into DVD players for this purpose.

Ahh, Frank, but the better players (Sony, Pioneer, etc) AREN'T usually hackable (unless you of course have a specific remote control for them...).

My experiences were overall positive - though, as I say, I wish I'd not wasted my money on that POS Sony...