2 recent, weird and isolated issues with BD playback

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.