Pioneer DVD-V7400
My 2nd purchase was a Pioneer DVD-V7400, rated at the turn of the century as the world’s best industrial disc player. With no-one else bidding on this one in December 2008 (there were another two eBay auctions running for the same item and at the same time), I bought a real bargain for $45, but there my short streak of good luck slipped out through the backdoor. The seller, a Russian lady in Florida USA, fed the wrong details into the shipping calculator, so instead of the advertised $55, I had to cough up $85! Ok, so under eBay rules I could force the seller to honour the original shipping cost, but I couldn’t risk a spiteful revenge in the shape of a DVD player classified as dead-on-arrival. I could of course also cancel the transaction, but the other V7400 auctions had already ended, and I simply couldn’t care to wait until the next Pioneer came along. To be fair, the damned thing was very heavy, so I suppose $85 was a fair call, and I paid up, but not without giving the seller a good paragraph in clear African English.
I had no idea whether my version came from a museum, shopping centre, training room or TV station, but apart from missing the control button for the microphone level, it was in a very good condition and produced as good a CD sound as I could expect. The Pioneer’s overall sturdiness of frame and driving gear was legendary, and with less than 2000 hours on the clock (yes, it was running an internal “odometer”), it was a true component-for-life item with a motor and bearing guaranteed for 50 000 hours! And let’s be honest, it had a proper mean look with that square and deep body in Menacing Black…
Unfortunately the unit also had several not-so-good features, or to be more precise, a lack of features. For one it had no LED indicator, but that could be overcome by relaying all the track info to the TV monitor. The first really big obstacle was the discovery that even though the Pioneer sported any version of multi-channel output I could wish for (all running out through either optical or co-axial connections), it had no audio decoder feeding into analogue multi-channel RCA posts. And that’s what the Onkyo required as origin of feed. The solution obviously lies in the incorporation into the system of a suitable audio decoder which can process the Pioneer's signals. And so I moved on to yet another dark chamber buzzing with electronic black magic. This was old technology, so was the door still open? The struggle to source a suitable signal converter is discussed under "Dolby DTS Decoder".
Pioneer DVD-V7400
The third and biggest mountain to climb was the region lock. And this lock really was the king of all DVD locks - no easy code to key in or fancy little program to flash via infra-red. I tried them all, dudes, and none worked. Pioneer USA said it can't be done, forget it. I knew it was region locked when I bought it, but I read somewhere that it could easily be unlocked with the proper Pioneer code. So on and off I searched for the elusive code for a few months, until I finally accepted that there was no code for this particular Pioneer. I then sourced a UK site called dvdunlocks4u and they listed the V7400 as one of the machines their little programme could unlock. I bought this programme, lined up the player and my pc via infrared, and … nothing. Can’t say that this is 100% true for all makes, because I have seen reports of people being successful with this, but it definitely does not work for the 7400, so I have been misled.
The third and biggest mountain to climb was the region lock. And this lock really was the king of all DVD locks - no easy code to key in or fancy little program to flash via infra-red. I tried them all, dudes, and none worked. Pioneer USA said it can't be done, forget it. I knew it was region locked when I bought it, but I read somewhere that it could easily be unlocked with the proper Pioneer code. So on and off I searched for the elusive code for a few months, until I finally accepted that there was no code for this particular Pioneer. I then sourced a UK site called dvdunlocks4u and they listed the V7400 as one of the machines their little programme could unlock. I bought this programme, lined up the player and my pc via infrared, and … nothing. Can’t say that this is 100% true for all makes, because I have seen reports of people being successful with this, but it definitely does not work for the 7400, so I have been misled.
Okay, no code, no software; so the next step was the dreaded option of chip replacement. Anybody who has had a look at the minute detail of components and circuitry involved here, will know that this is no job for the ordinary soldering-iron or the sticky fingers of an amateur. In October 2009 I finally located a Dutch company called JVB Digital who was advertising exactly this conversion for the V7400, either as DIY for $95 or as an in-shop conversion for $185. After I sent them an email to confirm specific details, the ad overnight changed to no DIY and the in-shop option jumped to over $444! Out of principle I refuse to deal with people who conduct their business in this manner, never mind how desperate I am to obtain their services, and in my mind it simply portrays just another dealer flashing impressive lists without actually having worked on the items. I don't care to find out whether their system works or not, and $444 anyway is a joke.
Late October I sourced a German converter, this time listing a plug-in for the V7300. My first info request in English was met with a thundering silence, so using a web translator I fired a concoction in German at them. Still waiting for reaction. By now I have resigned myself to the cruel fact that the Pioneer would remain stuck in it's original zone, so henceforth it will do duty as CD-player in the hi-fi setup.