Page 1 of WARNING ROWA 280 DVD

Be warned everyone that there are at least 2 variants of this player .... one is the Pioneer Clone that we know about which can be chipped for auto region and macro off and the other is nothing like it ... it is not a Pioneer clone and most probabily has a remote hack ....

Easy way to tell them apart is that the Pioneer version has a programming / service port in the shape of a PS2 connector on the back

If anyone has ordered a chip for the Rowa 280 from us but has a player without the programming port at the back then please return the chip for a refund

Sorry for any confusion caused by earlier posts

Steve
www.dvdchips.co.uk

I drove 160 mile roung trip for this man to open my DvD player ,scratch it and to tell me that he was a learner and had never seen this PCB board. I was bad as hell!!! He works from home in the middlw of nomans land so becarefull of this man. Steve Hoyle www.dvdchips.co.uk is his web site. Go see for yourselves!!
What a waist of time and money.
The chip the Rowa 280 has is a Zoran ZR36710TQ Vaddis lll used in Toshiba DVDs
If you find the hack please can i have it??

As I said I am sorry for your wasted time and money .... I offered the mod for the Rowa 280 in good faith and no-one who chips DVD`s knew that their were two (or more) variants of this player ....

I do expect their is a hack for this variant of this player but I doubt there is a hack for macrovision which was the feature you said you were especially interested in ... this is why I suggested you leave the player here and I would attempt to make a mod for it .... not so I could look on the net for a remote hack ....

I do work from home and make no secret of this fact .. this is why my prices are generally lower that others in the trade....

It`s also true that I did not recognise the board ... again the reason I suggested you leave it with me ...

With regard to a possible remote region hack I would suggest trying those for the Minato G1 and Wharfedale 750s as the onscreen menus looked similar to those players and the main board although different did have similarities to these players .....

Regards

Steve
www.dvdchips.co.uk

In addition to the above comments it seems that the Vaddis III

http://www.zoran.com/products/dvd/vaddis3.asp

that is indeed fitted inside this dvd player does not have an Embedded NTSC/PAL Encoder so there is likely to be a seperate Video Encoder chip on the PCB (possibly underneath as I didnt notice it on the top) it could well be the ADV7170 as used on older Toshiba players meaning that a Macrovision disable chip may well be possible

Steve
www.dvdchips.co.uk

I dont normaly say things such as. Di..Head and what a Wan...R!!! All you have done is what i did once you damaged my Box when you opened it. what i mean is that you man handled it so it is now quiet obvious that is has been opened. 3 year warranty down the pan!!! ( I also said and made it a big point that i didnt want it opened!!!!) Anyway back to the point. Once i posted the chip model ( You will have noticed it when you Butchered my player) you then browesed the net and found out a little more about the chip and then went on to guess the rest!! You didnt offer any kind of sorry or explanation about possable hacks ect you just said that you didnt have a clue and that you was a learner!! It got to the stage that you got very worried because i was going to give you a good smack in the mouth for the way you messed me about. You know it was comming and i had to go before i damaged you!!
I fix and build pc, chip play stations and open mobile phones and i would have replaced anything that was damaged, it happened a couple of times with the PS2. I replaced them. You are a COWBOY and people should know about people like you that give good chippers and hardware hackers a bad name. You dont belong on a good forum such as this.

This is my last post on this subject .. you can have the last word.

If I had damaged your box I`m surprised you never mentioned this when I gave it back to you and you inspected it and not after you have opened it yourself.

It`s obvious that you are understandably upset about your wasted journey and this is why you are making these comments.

You told me after I handed the box back to you that you were only interested in having it chipped so you could see what I had done and copy it ... this being the case I am surprised you didnt simply view the online install instructions that were there for this model and order a diy chip.

Regarding chipping playstations ... who do you think wrote the code you are using ??

these links should give you a clue

http://www.shoyle.f9.co.uk
http://chip.aeug.org

It seems you are quite happy to make money out of my work but as soon as there is a problem that is totally unforseen then I`m mr bad guy...

I write my own codes and can make my own modchip solutions .... I`m no cowboy as you say....

Feel free to carry on with your slagging me off .. I`ve made my point

Steve
www.dvdchips.co.uk
www.modchipsuk.co.uk

I dont thinks so. My brother inlaw writes the hex for all my Play station 1 and 2s. Try again. I didnt inspect the Player closely because you deal with people in the Street and i had to get as far away from you as possable because i would have done something i would have regretted. I also asked you for info on how you "chipped" the player. You just said that it was a "box" you connected to the rear and that you do not would not sell one to me!!! You will have a box full of chipps and just slot them in!!! So why have me come all the way over if I could buy the chip from you?? Why not just say, all you have to do is buy a chip from me and slot it in?? Good job i didnt realy, wouldnt have worked and possable damage to the player!! I find it even harder to believe that you have even seen inside the Rowa 280. Tell me why the 280 that is new has all of a sudden change prodution lines and become a totaly different unit???

Anyone can program chips and sell them. My 9 year old daughter could do it. You to proclaim that you wrote the hex for the Playstation is laughable. It is a shame that you programing abilities dont stretch to web editing, anyone can throw a web up and claim what you claim. You could have at least made an effort!! I am well know through out the UK form my skills as a technician. I am the technical manager for a local computer firm and can put you on to hundreds of people that can tell you about my honesty and skill. I have built and repaired many peoples pc and have them travel from all over England. I can assure you that i will be telling them all about you and make sure people know of my bad experience with you. It will be on the wall at our shop on the tables at all the pc shows we visit and on our shop web site and my overclockes web site. You are a cowboy and i suspect that i am not the first you have upsett.

sniggering silently....GO PHANTOM!

I feel the need to reply to this in defence of Steve....I suppose I am technically his competitor, but this kind of response (from PHANTOM) isn`t really justified under the circumstances. Asda have only been doing the ROWA DVD-280 for a short time and so in that time, we at Mail UK have only seen a handful of these units. All the ones we have seen have been Pioneer clones with the service connector around the back, if a customer had brought a ROWA machine to us without the connector, we would have been just as surprised as Steve over at DVD Chips.

We (the dvd upgraders) can offer a wealth of experience, because we see more machines than the "average Joe" could ever hope to see, but we don`t have a crystal ball, so if a manufacturer suddenly changes a specification as drastic as this, we won`t know this until a customer brings us a new machine.

It can be frustrating if you make a long trip to have your machine upgraded only to discover it cannot be done, believe me, it`s just as frustrating for the dealer when you make a promise you cannot keep - I doubt Steve intended to let you down, he wouldn`t have lasted as long as he has in this game if this was normal, rather than an exception.....as it clearly is.

Due to the nature of this business, many of the dealers operate from their own homes, in fact 2 and a half years ago, we moved Mail UK from my own home into our current premises in Manchester, before that we were operating for about a year and still managed to offer a good range of products and upgrade services - we simply need more room to work/for stock etc and as a side benefit, we now have a showroom area.

Finally, I would like to state that the safest option is always, always to buy a pre-modified machine, the risks are with the retailer that way. If you are on a budget, then an easily upgraded or hacked machine is usually a good compromise but chances are there may be problem making it multi region.

Steve at DVD Chips has proven himself to be a reliable source of information in this forum and I hope that he continues to support it.

Steve
www.mailuk.com