OK, where to begin! Back in 1997, Upgrade Heaven was founded as a importer and modder of Asian, Japanese and American DVD hardware.
As you are probably aware, in Europe and the UK, we didn`t offically have DVD players until late 1998! Anyway, this service was provided both to
trade dealers, and the general public by us. Basically modifications and upgrades were supplied to UH by myself.
Once the DVD format was launched "officially" in the UK, UH were innundated with requests by UK dealers to provide our modification services.
Likewise we were also the first UK firm to offer a full regions 1-6 modification without any loss of features on the Sony range of DVD players,
starting with the Sony DVP-S715 & SVP-S315 in Summer 1999. 1999 also saw Upgrade Heaven move to larger workshops and offices in Leeds.
In Feb 2000, UH were the first dealer to offer a full software only, no dongle non-invasive software upgrade (Excel Sprinter) for the Pioneer range of
players. Although often copied today with claims that "we were first" on other websites, a quick search on the forums or in magazines such as DVD Review
will show that our Sprinter software upgrade was the first on the block!
October 2000 saw a change in the direction of UH. Basically Home Cinema Heaven became a fully fledged store, offering a full range of hi-fi,
Home Cinema, and Audio visual entertainment. I continued to supply modifications to HCH, along with other companies, many of which now perform instore
modifications with tools supplied originally by us. Among the many trade dealers that have used our services in the past 7 years include Sevenoaks,
various Sony Centres, Miller Brothers, Hi-Fi Bitz, SDB, Westgate Audio, MailUK, Peats, Hi-Fi store, Applied equipment, and many other Independants.
During 2000-2002, our Pioneer SPRINTER software only upgrade was featured ina number of magazines, including DVD REVIEW, WHAT TV&VIDEO, HOME ENTERTAINMENT to name but a few.
This was mainly due to the fact that the only way to modify a Pioneer unit at that time was via opening the unit, removing a soldered firmware chip, reprogramming it, then resoldering it back into the unit.
Our soultion was unique, using the players build in service port (hidden behind the ventilation slot) to reprogram the unit for all regions. Copied and imistaed laters by others
(which still required a chip to be plugged into the service port to work!), ours remained the original non-obrusive software upgrade.
2003 saw our release of the Pioneer codex for the new redesigned models launched that year. We were the first to have a solution using a special set
of factory codes transmitted via remote control, which were provided to Pioneer dealers accross the UK to update their units. To this day, Pioneer models use this set of commands
to enable multiregion. Many other manufacturers now use a similar set of commands via a special service remote, which we can provide for any of the models on our website shown as using this method.
2007 saw our support moving to the Panasonic range of BLU-RAY models. We now also support all the main models,
although these are a step back to 10 years ago, as most machines must have extensive SMT rework done at a component level to enable multiregion, due to the design of Blu-Ray regional coding.
So rest assured, our products don`t damage your unit if you follow the supplied instructions! To ensure you get the very best customer service and
benefit from 10 years plus modding experiance, we still offer a direct modification service for those of you who don`t have access
to a local specialist dealer whom can perform these upgrades. or supply a modified unit for you.
If you`ve a question, don`t hesitate to email. Thanks for reading;)
