realm of v

When I originally installed Media Center as part of my Entertainment system, the major question was – Will it be used enough to justify using all that space and energy? Seems like it is getting more and more involved in our daily lives. Our lives have become so busy that beside live games (NBA and College Football mainly), we hardly watch any show while its airing. We Tivo everything and watch it later at our convinience. But with most TV networks providing online digital copies of their shows, even our recorded shows have been minimized to regional language shows, and few shows that are not available online. But a lot of our watching has switched to on the Media Center PC. With Netflix’s online movie database increasing, seems like we can get away with not having a Cable connection at all.

However, the interesting part is that the TV networks and Internet providers seem to be moving in opposite directions. Having all this content online would mean that as more and more users start watching content online, we would be using more internet bandwidth. But the Internet providers has started to cap their download limits. If you want to have a bigger (or unlimited) download limit, which you would if you are watching streaming online content, you have to pay more to get something more than the regular Internet package. Hence the cost that you might have saved by moving away from cable or sattelite television, comes back.

So will have wait and see how things play out between the Internet providers and Cable companies.

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So, the PSU of my Media Center PC died. Luckily, this power supply was made by Ultra products which are known to make products of good quality and that probably the reason why they back it up by good warranty (it should have been a life-time warranty in this case). So, I was delighted that I will not have to shell out cash to get a replacement. Little did I know that the Support/Warranty system of Ultra Products is kind of a scam. I called them up to RMA the PSU. From my talk with them I found/realized the following things.

• I had registered the PSU as soon as I bought it. But they couldn’t find any record of the registration. Their registration database does not register components with their serial numbers but rather just the Model. They search their databases based on the name of the person who registered it. I have registered at least 3 products on their website (this PSU, a RAM DIMM, and another PSU that I had bought for my friend) and funny thing is they could not locate my name in the database at all.
• They do not RMA any product unless you send a copy of the receipt to them via email. Luckily I had bought this PSU online and hence had the record on the website I bought it from. I have RMA’ed a couple of components. In most of the cases, if the user does not have a receipt, they take the manufacturing date as the date of purchase. Not in this case, since there is no serial number attached to the component itself.
• Finally I was able to get the RMA processed (without life-time warranty), since they offer 3 yr standard warranty without registration. They asked me to return the faulty PSU in the original shipment within 15 days of the RMA date (not the date of receiving the replacement PSU) and I have to pay for the return shipment. Now, counting out the days in receiving the replacement PSU, and weekends, I was left with 6 days to return the PSU. I had to use Priority shipping to make sure I get there in time. With the size of the box they had sent me, I ended up paying $29 for the shipment.

I think I was better off not RMA’ing the PSU at all. I could have bought a newer and better power supply by adding some money to the $29 I shed to return the PSU. After this experience with them, I will prefer not to buy any product from Ultra in the future unless I can just afford to throw it away once it fails.

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