2 recent, weird and isolated issues with BD playback

@tonykay @cleeds @oddiofyl Was just able to follow-up on this with McIntosh directly after trying re-initialization and checking for firmware updates again (none available).  

The 20th Century Fox BD problem is apparently a hardware issue since the deck has the latest firmware update.  I've been referred to Pro Tech Electronics in Cuyahoga Falls OH for that part of it.

The Dolby Atmos thing may or may not be related.  Atmos was released after the 881 was discontinued, so unsupported for it.  They have no idea why the BD re-encoding option to Dolby Digital (required for my MAC-3) isn't producing a rear surround signal from it.

Atmos is irritating.  It means I either sacrifice video quality to get 5.1 audio via DVD playback or sacrifice rear surround to get BD video with movies encoded with it. Perhaps McIntosh will produce a new firmware update to address this, but now that the 881 is discontinued I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it.

Thanks for the input everyone - much appreciated!

@oddiofyl @tonykay @cleeds I have an update on this at long last, and it's quite a story.

I dropped of the 881 at a Mc dealer on July 25, 2016 instead of Pro Tech (not open Saturdays).  Yes, over a year ago.  They couldn't fix the 20th Century Fox BD problem even after getting update firmware on disc from Mc.  They sent it to Binghamton in January.  Yes, over 10 months ago.

I got a call from a tech there in June.  Yes, 6 months after Mc received it.  They confirmed the problem but had no idea what was causing it.  They wanted to make sure I was OK with throwing a $1500 service at the unit.  I said fine, but you do know that I complained about this to you several months after I bought it, right?  Please send me the details, the tech said.

So I did.  About 15 pages of back and forth between me, Audio Classics and McIntosh engineering.  Crickets again until early August.  Yes, that's a full year after I'd dropped it off at the dealer.  Mc thought they'd found the problem, but were arguing about warranty coverage since I'd indeed brought it to their attention 20 months after I'd purchased the deck.  They'd even bought a copy of AL-VH in BD for testing as a result of that original complaint back when and still had it in the lab.  I asked them to please let me know when the unit was ready to come home and understand that I was running out of patience.

Crickets again until Monday this week when my patience finally expired.  Left voice mail for the tech.  Got a message back while I was out of town:  The deck was finally ready to ship back and the repair was fully covered under warranty.  Turns out the HDMI circuit had some kind of fault.  The failure caused the deck to indicate that the firmware had been updated when it actually hadn't been written to the EEPROM.  They never did find out why that happened, but when they changed out the HDMI interface, the firmware went in and everything worked.  This after replacing the motherboard, the daughterboard and the transport, all to no avail.

They're shipping it back tomorrow and I hope to have it back in and operational by next weekend.  I'll post a brief follow-up when I know it actually works, but thought you all would appreciate the meat of the story.  

McIntosh really does support their products no matter what, although sometimes it might take awhile;-)!

Congratulations on coming near the end of your journey to have your Mac DVD/CD player factory repaired. I only wish my experience had been the same. 

I bought a Mac MVP-871 as a demo unit from Magnolia Audio. They assured me that McIntosh would honor the warranty but Mac sent me a note informing me that there would be no warranty as the unit had been discontinued for more than a year. Magnolia promised to handle any needed repairs, unfortunately repairs were needed almost immediately and were never satisfactorily completed. I won’t bore you with the details but I wasn’t happy with the whole experience. I was able to return it to Magnolia for a substantial loss. 

Sorry to drag that out into the daylight but your saying that McIntosh 
“really does support its products, no matter what,” just rubbed me wrong. In your case, your patience deserved to be rewarded.

@tonykay  I'm sorry to hear about your experience with the demo 871.  Mc has always treaded me fairly and more than fairly in this case.  I wonder if your experience may have been channel related?  Not sure how they dealt / deal with Best Buy as a corporate entity in these matters.  Also, my deck wasn't yet obsoleted when I bought the refurb through Audio Classics.  

I do know that Mc doesn't show much love for their home theater stuff in general; their trade-up program seems more directed toward getting obsolete stuff out of circulation rather than providing a value proposition.  And nothing for sources at all.  They did service my MAC-3 pre/pro about 5 years ago.  That took about 6 months, too.  I ultimately ended up having to get A-C to chase down an intermittent fault in a couple of years later.  At least Mc was still supporting it with parts.  Very few companies will support something 20+ years old under any circumstances.

@cleeds  @oddiofyl  Final update on the deck:  Have played several 20th Century Fox BDs perfectly.  All other studios' BD, CD, SACD and DVD also fine.  Audio quality is as superb as when I first received it, and perhaps a bit better in the BD output.  Dolby Atmos still won't decode down to bitstream, so that is an obsolescence that can't be fixed.  OK, I'll just have to play DVDs with 5.1 instead of the BD versions of Atmos encoded films.  I can live with that.

effischer,

I think you are probably right, however, at 4.5 years old (older than mine, actually) I can’t help but think that McIntosh took good care of you as an accommodation to Audio Classics. In any case, you deserve to have your unit repaired under warranty for your patience, if nothing else.