However, both the Stellar and I are here at work for another four and a half hours… 
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Have fun getting it set up later! I’ve sure enjoyed mine over the months I’ve owned it.
Yeah, about that… It hasn’t been so fun.
First off, I have a 65" Hisense TV. Come to find out, the Stellar remote screws with the TV. If the TV is off, hitting any button on the GCD remote turns it on and opens up an app. If the TV is already on, the GCD remote still changes inputs or opens various apps on the TV. Likewise using the TV remote… It screws with the volume, inputs and other settings on the GCD.
And I have NEVER seen a IR remote sensor so darn sensitive as the one on this TV. You want to see something absolutely ridiculous? This is what I had to do in order for the TV to not “see” either remote control. Something has to be done about this. I’m not about to buy a different TV.
Second… Am I doing something wrong? For the life of me, I can NOT get the Setup Menu to appear on the GCD. It doesn’t matter what input I have it on, and it doesn’t matter how long I hold the button down for. At no time ever does it come up to “Setup”. I literally held the darn button it for a minute, and nothing.
I powered it down completely. I unplugged the power cable from it for a couple minutes, I’ve switched to different inputs. No matter what I do, it will not go into the Setup mode.
In fact, this button does absolutely nothing. It doesn’t light up the display nor does it change inputs. It’s completely dead.
Needless to say, I am not having fun, nor am I happy. Not to mention I have to go to bed now just to get back up in 5 hours to go back to work, for a lovely 15 hour shift. So I can’t even mess with this thing anymore until sometime after 8pm tomorrow.
Anyway… That’s that. These first two pics, I was still excited and happy. The third pic, not so much, as right after that is what resulted in the very first pic… I’m going to bed.
That’s really odd about the button. I just tested it, push for two seconds, the word “Setup” appears on the screen under whatever it’s showing right now. When I let go, I’m in the setup. It does sound like that button is broken, which seems like something QA should have caught.
That’s not going to help with the remote conflict, of course, which is a problem.
I’d talk to support. You’ll want to get it exchanged for one with a working button at least.
@rkosara - I don’t know why I just directed this post to you. You’re the only one who responded in the past 19 hours!
Anyway, I contacted the dealer and he’s going to send another one out and RMA this one back. Because I even tried doing a factory reset on it… Several times, to no avail.
Quite disappointing to say the least. I mean, at least I get sound out of it, though I have to tape a clump of microfiber cloth to the darn TV in order to use it. I don’t know if anything can be done about that as all Stellar’s probably use the same exact IR codes, which means the new one will most likely do the same exact thing to the TV.
If it’s any consolation, I too have that issue with the remote of my WS4 Preamp and an older Toshiba TV, the volume down of the remote pops the tv menu every time, except when tv is off. In my case, the tv has to go. It was the first CRT that Toshiba made almost 20 years ago for HDTV. 165 lbs of indestructible Japanese tech. I’ll be curious how you’ll end up.
Hey chops I have to ask since I saw you ordered about 5 days ago, did you order direct or from a reseller? I ordered mine direct on December 11 and I’m still waiting. My account still says “processing.”
Thanks
@lmerino - I went through a reseller as I was informed PS Audio is backlogged until late Feb.
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Late feb? I hope not. I was at least told early to mid Jan.
Yeah, hopefully they get this sorted out for you quickly…
I don’t know. That’s just what I was told.
Yes, he has another new one in stock and will be shipping it out tomorrow.
As a side note, I have a new Schiit Mani coming in this week as well.
Nice. I think your patience will pay-off and you’ll be extraordinarily pleased with the SGCD. It’s simply awesome.
This kind of thing can be hugely frustrating. I hope the other one you’re getting will work! Have you thought about what to do about the TV? Depending on how you use it, you might not need the remote all that much, anyway. As long as you can keep it from freaking out when it sees the SGCD remote, at least.
I’m curious how PSA QC missed this problem, doesn’t sounds like shipping issue to me. I think some QC process needs to be revisited
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It is frustrating, but there could be worse things to deal with. The nice thing is, I just wait for the other one to arrive, swap the cables and be back up and running in no time, hopefully with all functions operational.
As for the TV, I have no idea what I’m going to do. I’ve been trying to hunt down something online about possibly disabling the IR sensor via some kind of “factory diagnostics” or something. I have a strong hunch I’m not going to find anything.
Anything is possible. You have to remember, PSA shipped it once to the reseller, then the reseller shipped it to me. Not to mention all of the tossing around in between both trips. So who knows at this point.
I am so sorry for all this. The last thing anyone wants is a frustrating experience. It’s odd the button doesn’t work. I’ve heard of the standby PS button not working but the setup mode button not working is a new one. Know that we are here for you.
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Hello Paul.
No worries at all sir. It’s no fault of yours. I’m blaming it on shipping. I can’t trust any of the shipping couriers as far as I cant throw them. Unless of course my particular unit was built at 8:01am on Monday or 4:59pm on Friday. 
Well today has been a very productive day. I had three separate goodies show up in the mail, a new Music Hall MMF-2.3SE, a Schiit Mani phono preamp, and the replacement Stellar GCD!
The mode button on this GCD works perfectly. And on top of that, I can actually hear slight differences between the three different digital filters, so that too was possibly not working on the first unit.
Note the nasty wad of microfiber cloth taped all over the IR sensor on the TV. I need to figure something out for that. That’s just horrible looking.
In order to do the swap, I simply placed the new unit on top of the fist one, swapped the connections, then slipped the first one out from the bottom with the help of my daughter.
Before the new GCD arrived, I moved the Roku to the little table to the left and placed the Schiit Mani next to the Bluesound. I then set up the new turntable with the stock cartridge. I was highly underwhelmed by the sound. I barely made it through two albums before deciding to swap in my Ortofon 2M Bronze. Much MUCH better!
I have to say, right out of the box (literally), the Mani is impressive to say the least. Same can be said for the GCD, though with the first one, I could tell things got better after several days of constant use.
And now, much better with the 2M Bronze…
