A blog by Morgan

Our Kogan Blu-Ray Player Died :( - Part 2 : The replacement

2010-08-16T18:02:00.003+10:00

For all you out there that care Kogan came through with the goods and instead of fixing the Blu-Ray player replaced it with the latest model with added wi-fi connectivity goodness. According to the box it came in it's a "quality tested" unit which i assume it's a returned/refurbished/second hand unit but looking over it the player and remote it looks brand new and included all cables and accessories.

On the positive side the boot up time of the new model is significantly faster than the old one and the menus are a lot more responsive. I still can't get BD-Live up and running and can only assume that considering two different Kogan Blu-Ray players are having issues it must be a problem between the Kogan software and my network. I'm yet to come across any compelling BD-Live content so no great loss.

All in all it took 7 working days from registering the fault to getting a replacement with the added bonus that i didn't need to drop it off or pick it up and all postage was covered by Kogan. I'm pretty happy with the response from Kogan support and based on this experience i'd be confident to buy from them again knowing that if something did go wrong that i wouldn't be waiting to long for a fix or a replacement.

Our Kogan Blu-Ray Player Died :( - Part 1

2010-07-22T17:08:00.002+10:00

Hey All,

For all you out there that care our Blu-Ray player manufactured by an Australian gadget company Kogan died. I'm not sure if anyone out there has heard of kogan but they are attempting to undercut the big boys (sony, panasonic et. al.) running an aussie owned and run company purely online. The main reason i went for this blu-ray player was that it was one of the few blu-ray players out there that can play back blu-ray discs (BRD from now on) from any region whether it's a, b or c. Though most BRD's are authored for multi-region playback this is mighty handy for playing back a few US import BRDs from the likes of showtime and fox studios.......

Anyway getting back to the point, it appears the firmware isn't kicking in after booting it up as you can see from the beautifully shot youtube video below. As Kogan is an online only venture based in Melbourne it's a bit hard to take it back to a retail shopfront for warranty claims. I was a bit worried about the hoops i'd have to jump to process the support claim but thankfully after a brief support email exchange (with a link to the aforementioned youtube video). They agreed to organise a courier to come pick up the BRD player and send it back to them at their own cost. How cool is that? I didn't even need to leave my front door or pay petrol/parking/postage to get it back to them. This is shaping up to be a better experience then dealing with a shopfront and big manufacturer.

I'm at working day 4 since my initial support enquiry and our blu-ray player is sitting somewhere in kogan warranty land getting its guts ripped open. I'll post a follow-up once it comes back.

P.S. One negative about this player is that all blu-ray discs refuse to go online using the profile 2.0 BD-Live functions. It hasn't been a big problem but I'll be interested to see if it comes back fixed (though i should probably get them to check that before they send it back!).

Why a blog?

2010-04-09T18:04:00.000+10:00

For all you out there that care i know it's sooo early 2000's but i figured i'd start a blog. I've got so much to offer the world so i decided to make it all that much easier and let people access it from one place!

Okay the real reason is that i bought the morganritchings.com and morganritchings.com.au domains awhile ago and figured i should redirect them to something. I figured i'd get in early on the domains before the cybersquatters did once my pop, political etc. career hits the big time. Who knows maybe i can get this blog to outrank my linkedin, facebook and (much neglected) twitter pages.