CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

Times must be getting tougher.

A few weeks ago I went to one of my main sites for service manuals. It's a member site so kinda semi private. Anyways I was looking for a Denon manual and I put in the model number. Nothing. Not surprising cause exact models don't always come up. So I try a prefix, still nothing. This was odd. Should of got something. So I just put in Denon. Should of had lots of hits. Nothing. I tried JVC, Sony and such and had hundreds of hits. So I passed it off as a server problem and would check again the next day.

2 days later tried just Denon again, nothing. Knowing Marantz is also Denon I tried Marantz. Again, should of had hundreds. Nothing. Other manufacturers were fine. Hmmmm, that's odd.

Waited a week. Tried Denon and Marantz again. Nothing.

So I contacted the site administrator. His return email stated that the company that owned Denon and Marantz contacted him on the manuals posted and the copyright issue and suggested that he remove all Denon and Marantz manuals. Which he did.

So I was bummed a little even tho this is not the only place I get manuals from. Then I wondered if they still had the backup of all those manuals. So I contacted the admin again and asked if I could get a dump of all the Denon Marantz files in the database.

Needless to say I now have around 15 gigs less hard drive space...... Mr. Green

Jeremy112 · Joined: 28 Sep 2006 Posts: 2649 Location: Fond du Lac, WI

Dave Lister · Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 11:15 am Post subject:

Was he selling the manuals or is his service available free of charge?

Maybe you should contact the admin and tell him to contact the company and suggest that he is providing them with a free archiving service and that many people use their products because the manuals are so easy to get and that removal of the manuals may mean people could stop buying their products and buy another manufacturers products.

Whenever I research a product one of the criteria is the availability of any documentation whether user manuals or service manuals, I have chosen to not buy products because there was insufficient documentation like that available.

CasetheCorvetteman · Joined: 09 Nov 2008 Posts: 6326 Location: Australia

Dave, i think they wont care one single bit if you tell them that.

gjaky · Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2802 Location: Budapest, Hungary

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

I've noticed it on quite a few sites. Of course it doesn't concern me anymore, LOL. Very Happy

The only reason I could think of is they are trying to keep the repair work with their authorized service centers. Of course then they should not have released the manuals to the public. A lot of manuals are not that expensive anyways.

CasetheCorvetteman · Joined: 09 Nov 2008 Posts: 6326 Location: Australia

General consumers couldnt give a toss what info is out for these products, and at the end of the day, they make up the vast majority of purchases. They listen to what a salesman tells them, or what they read in an internet review, not whether or not they can download a service manual they wouldnt understand even if they wanted to.

Manufacturers are in it for the money, and as much as they can get of it. They want to sell you the least they have to for the most they can. While they do that, they want the general consumer to believe they are not only getting a good deal ( which they are usually not ) but also that what they have is the best money can buy ( which youre absolutely kidding yourself if you think in this day and age it is anything more than just barely adequate to sell ).

All the while, the manufacturer doesnt need a free archiving service, they dont make money from that and chances are they employ at least one person that knows how to burn a .pdf file to a CD for backed up storage.

Id go so far as to say 95% plus of electronics items sold are sold to people who wouldnt give service and repair of their purchased item a 2nd thought til it fails, then they worry about who can fix it. Hence, availability of service documentation has nothing what so ever to do with MAJORITY of electronics sales, so why would a manufacturer give a hoot about whether or not you can easily get the manuals?

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 2:19 pm Post subject:

And of course these same manufacturers are telling consumers that 2 year old product is obsolete, their salespeople tell everyone to buy a new unit, and after 7 years, they discontinue parts..

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

gjaky · Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2802 Location: Budapest, Hungary

But they releasing newer and newer sound standards: prologic -> 5.1- > 7.1 .... 100.1 Very Happy

that's how they make you feel using obsolete technology

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

Very interesting. So yesterday someone emailed me with a Denon AVR problem(you know who you are, lol). So I go to my Denon/Marantz folder and there is only 1 service manual in there. I thought I was in the wrong folder but when I checked another Denon folder from older manuals I had, they were there. Going back to the folder with all those manuals I got a dump of, still only 1 in there.

Then it hit me as I have seen this before. All my manuals were deleted. D&M Holdings, aka Denon/Marantz must of hired a hacker, or had one in house to develop a worm to seek out these manuals and delete them.

Now the reason there was one left is because I had made a copy of one and renamed it. Now it was still named Denon and still had a model number in the title, it was just altered slightly.
This led me to believe that the worm was looking for a marker in those other files I had downloaded. And either being a copy or slightly renaming it changed the marker. And as I said, all other Denon/Marantz manuals I downloaded prior from this big dump, and from different locations were still there.

Seems like a fairly big expense and trouble to go through just because they don't want their manuals out of there grasp. Laughing

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

Sure does. Normally if somebody said They had sent a worm after him, I'd tell him to take off the tinfoil hat. Laughing

But that does seem damn suspicious that they just vanished like that. You sure you couldn't have accidentally done it?

I don't believe D&M would have sent out a seek & destroy bot into the world -- that would open them up for some incredible lawsuits, if nothing else -- and it seems unlikely that they could have vectored a worm directly to your machine. Maybe if they know who you are, they emailed you something with a worm in it, and you triggered it? Still seems kinda farfetched...

Next time you get a copy, you'd better burn them to DVD!

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

ecrabb · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 3:26 pm Post subject:

Possible? Sure. Likely? No.

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor"]Occam's razor[/url] applies here.

It's exceptionally unlikely that D&M Holdings is going to the lengths of creating worms to nuke only certain files off recipient's machines.

It's much more likely that something was corrupted on the PC's directory, files newer than X were removed by a restore point, etc.

Are you not running any virus protection at all on your internet-connected work machine, Mac? What email client do you use?

SC

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

ecrabb · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 3:36 pm Post subject:

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

Tinman · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 4:11 pm Post subject:

mc86 · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 1:12 am Post subject:

I'm surprised you guys can get the stuff at all. 1) Liability {I recently learned I can't find ECP4500 service manual (2nd half) as Ehome restricted distribution back in '98} 2) proprietary forcing authorized service <good point, marc on THEM not repairing own equip>, etc. 3) design for disposal and not service.

I've been doing light restoration on my grandpa's old '77 john deere 212 recently...man, great cast iron kohler engines and almost 700 pounds of metal...1/4" thick plate, etc. A person can buy those machines AND most parts for 1/2 price of a new JD-XYCRAP nowadays...

Listen to us -- grumpy old men!
Matt

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 5:29 am Post subject:

I'm thinking that this is another cheap ploy to get the average consumer to buy new stuff. Very few people fix the older receivers, and the newer they are, the more complex they are to boot, so without schematics, the few that are being serviced by competent techs are less likely to be. I used to recommend Denon, but no more if they pull this crap.