I am very sorry to have to resort to this in order to try and get a satisfactory response from Meridian. I am sure that you can all understand that as one of those who attended HH2 and left very impressed and enthusiastic about his choice of Hi Fi equipment this is doubly painful.

Last summer (July) I returned my 861 and 800 to M's dealer here for return to the factory. The 861 display was not displaying and the 800's drive was, well ....driving me up the wall, but for sure not doing what is was supposed to do.

In addition, I asked for upgrades to latest firmware etc for both machines, spike protectors (the black polyurethane feet) for the rear pair of D8ks and an HD621 to connect the PS3 to the system.

Never mind that the spike protectors and the HD621 have still not arrived, we can live without them and apparently so can Meridian, the 861 is finally displaying, but the 800, well it had a good return trip of a few thousand miles and arrived back just as it left. The drive is driving me even further up the wall but most definitely not producing any music except from CDs (it was doing that before it was sent) and it obeys the basic commands of 'OPEN', 'PLAY' etc whenever it feels so, which is not very often.

The dealer was made aware of this immediately, which is many weeks ago, and has tried his best to make Meridian aware of the problem and the frustration it is creating but to this minute zilch!

Now, you might not actually believe this, but I happen to have a second 800 - a version 2 that I bought from the States. I have asked the dealer to change this to Region 2 so that I can use it but he is not sure how to do this. Furthermore, the configuration program will not communicate with it so despite the investment of not a few thousand pounds, Euros or dollars (take your pick) we will not be able to use the system as intended this Xmas. It is unfortunate that this is the time of the year when the whole family and friends get together and we can enjoy it.

I have a plan 2, of course. I will use the PS3, minus HD621 but what the heck, assuming everything else works it will still sound fabulous. Which, of course, begs the question, why spend more than what we spent on the PS3? This is not a rhetorical question because, as I have said in another post, I am in the middle of creating a specially designed home theatre room in our house.

Apologies for the long rant, and best season's greetings to all the friends and fellow Meridian fans, but to repeat how I feel now:

Meridian, YOU ARE PATHETIC!