07-02-2010, 02:19 PM
First let me start by saying as far as functionality goes they've hit a homerun. Unfortunately that ends the positive portion of my review.
I received my first device in January and within a week the belts came off the drive wheels. They took it back and replaced it with no problem. I received the replacement late Jan or early Feb, can't recall the exact date. Apart from the now famous issues with lube it performed flawlessly for about 3 months.
By the end of April the heating elements simply stopped working for no apparent reason. Shortly thereafter one of the belts also would periodically stop working. I contacted customer support and was advised that the 30 warranty had expired and thusly not eligible for replacement but was offered a chance to buy a replacement at the discounted price of $159.95. I declined considering the 60 free minutes would not be included with the the new one. As buying 60 minutes of time is priced at $39.95 there really was no discount on a replacement.
At this point I had nothing to loose and opened it up to attempt a repair. I found all 4 motors were completely rusted. They were not just slightly rusted, if fact there was so much rust and scale built up that it was actually interferring with the main motors spindles. I was actually able to clean it up and getting running again. It worked for about another month or so until the AC power adapter ceased functioning.
To sum it up, within 5 months I've now had 2 unit fail, one of which had every component completely fail. $199.95 is simply too high for a product with an average lifespan of a few months.
Observations:
Lube problems: It seems to me the device may have been designed to be used in a horizontal position while sitting rather than vertically and lying down.
Device connection to the control box: The plug connection comes loose way to easily and disconnects often with very little movement.
Realtouch Plugin: Media player does not always automatically open a selected video. In order to play a video I have to download a file (deliverrealtouch.asx) and then open manually. Sometimes the plugin must be loaded and unloaded a few times before it will begin to work.
VOD Videos: Some videos do not have the green play button and can not be played. Some videos seem to have encoding errors or were just badly encoded resulting in the device doing next to nothing when playing thoses videos.
I received my first device in January and within a week the belts came off the drive wheels. They took it back and replaced it with no problem. I received the replacement late Jan or early Feb, can't recall the exact date. Apart from the now famous issues with lube it performed flawlessly for about 3 months.
By the end of April the heating elements simply stopped working for no apparent reason. Shortly thereafter one of the belts also would periodically stop working. I contacted customer support and was advised that the 30 warranty had expired and thusly not eligible for replacement but was offered a chance to buy a replacement at the discounted price of $159.95. I declined considering the 60 free minutes would not be included with the the new one. As buying 60 minutes of time is priced at $39.95 there really was no discount on a replacement.
At this point I had nothing to loose and opened it up to attempt a repair. I found all 4 motors were completely rusted. They were not just slightly rusted, if fact there was so much rust and scale built up that it was actually interferring with the main motors spindles. I was actually able to clean it up and getting running again. It worked for about another month or so until the AC power adapter ceased functioning.
To sum it up, within 5 months I've now had 2 unit fail, one of which had every component completely fail. $199.95 is simply too high for a product with an average lifespan of a few months.
Observations:
Lube problems: It seems to me the device may have been designed to be used in a horizontal position while sitting rather than vertically and lying down.
Device connection to the control box: The plug connection comes loose way to easily and disconnects often with very little movement.
Realtouch Plugin: Media player does not always automatically open a selected video. In order to play a video I have to download a file (deliverrealtouch.asx) and then open manually. Sometimes the plugin must be loaded and unloaded a few times before it will begin to work.
VOD Videos: Some videos do not have the green play button and can not be played. Some videos seem to have encoding errors or were just badly encoded resulting in the device doing next to nothing when playing thoses videos.
![[Image: 2962348_problem-rust.jpg]](http://www.pixhost.org/show/1109/2962348_problem-rust.jpg)