Linn Classik Movie DI

Replaced my old (but excellent) separates system with this Linn a few years ago, as a way of reducing the complexity of separate CD player, DVD player, stereo amp and surround sound amp to just one box. This definitely gives convenience benefits, but I wish I'd kept the separates!

The picture quality is very good, better than a cheap DVD player but noticeably inferior to my old Arcam DV88+ for example.

Again, sound quality is very good. But again, not as good as my separate amps. Though some may say thats to be expected, the Linn is £3000!

However, my biggest bugbear is reliability. It won't read or play about a third of my DVDs, despite cleaning of the discs and running a DVD cleaner on the machine. Of the ones it does play, it regularly skips and stutters so I end up turning it off. I've even had to buy a cheap £9.99 value DVD player which actually plays EVERYTHING without missing a beat(!)

The handset is a nightmare and does whatever it wants, its been stuck on "TV" mode for months and just won't do anything so I have to use the front control buttons which is a major pain.

The machine takes about 40 seconds to open the disc drawer and a long time to read the disc.

The settings and menus are not very easy to navigate either.

When it works its lovely but I wish I'd gone for the Arcam Solo or kept the separates. Called Linn support but they want about £400 just to look at it - much too much!