How broken is it? (1 Viewer)

[RonGecan]

Hi everyone,

I bought my then girlfriend now fiancee a dvd player for Christmas a year ago (ok, I bought MYSELF a dvd player for Christmas but that's another story ). We haven't really used hers all that much so I can't say how long this has been a problem, but on two DVDs last week (John Q and Bourne Identity) it stops, blips, and jumps around at very particular points. Now that we live together, I swapped mine with hers and had no trouble with the disks.

Any suggestions on this? On one hand I would think the laser is shot, but given that it happened each time at the same point, might it be overly sensitive to smudges or scratches on the disk, and if so, is this fixable or even worth fixing?

Much thanks in advance for any help you could provide,

Ron.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Have you even tried other discs yet?

Some players cope better than others with dirty, scratched, and smudged discs. (Suggestion: Assuming you buy your discs, take care not to scratch them!)

 

[Jason Pugh]

You didn't say how much the DVD player cost either. If it is a cheap player then I would chunk it. You can actually get pretty darned good players very cheap now. Then again, if it is a nice player that cost a good amount then that changes things.

Jack has the right idea here. You need to try a lot of DVDs and make sure you try ones that look perfect (no scratches or smudges). When the laser went out (not once but like 3 times) on my Panasonic A110 it was similar to what you are talking about in that it wouldn't start until about 45 minutes or so into the movie. You didn't specify if you could FF past the bad spot and it clear up or not. In my case it was bad from the time it started to the end of the DVD. Plus, once it showed up it got worse pretty quickly.

 

[RonGecan]

Thanks. No I didn't say much about the unit. It's a sony, can't remember the model number, but I think it was around $200 when I bought it at Christmas 2001. Certainly not a back breaker, but irksome that I dropped that dinero for not a whole lot of payoff.

I seem to recall that it has some ability to fast forward through the bad parts, however, you still have to end up skipping the whole scene. Thinking about it some more, I remember giving up on Die Another Day a few months ago due to the same problem, so that's at least three movies (probably out of a total of five) that I simply wasn't going to watch.

I would simply bring it in, but worry that the guy "will look at it", turn some screws, charge me $100, and still have the same problem.

Ron.

 

[John-Miles]

I had the same problem with my parents SOny DVP NS300 i beleive it was, took it back to sony while it was still under warranty and got it fixed, the problem still shows up once in a while cause the player dosent handle dirty or scratched discs wel, but they did improve it.

bottom line we found was it crapped out on some rentals, but never on the dvds i actually own, ic it was a disk problem and the player cant handle it.

 

[Bob Maged]

.

...I remember giving up on Die Another Day a few months ago due to the same problem...

Die Another Day is not out yet (in Region 1, at least) and is scheduled for release June 3, 2003

 

[John-Miles]

Ron if you do take it in to be fixed tell them the problem in detail, get an estimate and hold them to it, if the problem comes back demand they fix it for free since they never did it the first time.

 

[RonGecan]

Ok, it was The World is Not Enough.

 

[Jason Pugh]

I don't know man... Do the math and it just doesn't make much sense to take it in. From my personal experience you won't get out of there no matter what for under about $75. You can get plenty of decent NEW players with a warranty for $100. It just doesn't make too much sense to me if the DVD player isn't special (outstanding PQ or something) because for $25 more you get a warranty on a new DVD player that is probably better. This is just my personal opinion. I've seen too many things get fixed and it end up being a short term fix.

 

[MarkHastings]

Do the math and it just doesn't make much sense to take it in. From my personal experience you won't get out of there no matter what for under about $75.

Agreed. Especially considering you paid $200 almost 2 years ago, the player probably isn't worth more than $100 now a days so I'd be cautious about putting money into it when you can get a new one.

My 4 year old Toshiba had a software problem, but the $150 to do the upgrade just didn't seem worth it. Think of the player as a car...it's "totaled"