[dba-Tech] The ruggedness of DVD players

Gary Kjos garykjos at gmail.com
Thu Mar 23 10:48:32 CST 2006


We have two 5 disk DVD changers at our house. The older is a Sony. It
was bought a few years back, probably 5 to 8 when we first wanted DVD
capability in our livingroom. It replaced a 5 disk Sony CD changer
that got relegated to duty on a different system. The Sony DVD has had
the same freeze up issue you describe. We don't watch that many DVD's
with it though, so I don't have a good feel for the frequency. On the
ones it had problems with there were fingerprints and/or scratches as
they were borrowed disks that had not been handled very carefully.
Generally cleaning the disks helped, but I don't think it completely
eliminated the issue either.

The newer 5 disk DVD changer is a Yamaha and while it has never
skipped or frozen or had any issues, it has lead a sheltered life so
to speak as it has mostly only played disks in pretty pristene
condition.   And I don't have any burned disks only store bought ones.

I do have another 5 disk CD Changer that is causing me problems
though. It is a Technics one that came with a rack mounted stereo
system. I guess it's about 15 years old or so, circa 1990. It was my
main system for years until I got an entire new system in 2004 and it
got moved to another room under my wife's control. (Funny I get her
old FURNITURE in MY room and she gets MY old electronics in HER room)
When I had it I had noticed that it was skipping on CD's that I had
burned on certain tracks, but it worked fine on all store bought CD's.
Now it seems to be skipping on EVERYTHING. I'm guessing that it will
cost more to repair it that it will to replace it, so I am thinking
it's days are numbered. I think I will rotate in the aformentioned
Sony 5 disk CD changer.

I know when I first started burning CD's that many older CD players
would not play my burned CD's while the newer CD players had no
problem with them. Was particularly a problem in vehicles it seemed.
Perhaps something similar is going on with the DVD's relating to the
burned DVDs. Over the years as we got newer vehicles with newer CD
players the problem essentally went away. Although I have noticed that
the CD walkman I use at work is now skipping on some of my homebrewed
CD's of late. It never used to do that and it made me wonder if the
CD's themselves are beginning to "go bad".

Good luck with it!  Hope you get it all fixed up and playing smoothly
again soon.

GK

On 3/22/06, Steve Erbach <erbachs at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...or perhaps I should say the flexibility or forgiving-ness of DVD
> players.  We have a 5-disk changer made by Panasonic that recently
> went on the fritz.  We'll take it to a local electronics shop for
> service soon.  It pretty much played most DVDs, but it had problems
> with DVDs created with your garden variety DVD burner.
>
> We got a VCR/DVD player combination for Christmas and that thing is
> very touchy playing DVDs, even pristine brand-new disks.  The movie
> will be going along fine and then, halfway through, the image will
> pixelize and halt.
>
> My son has an X Box that plays just about everything with no problems.
>  The only thing that it wouldn't play was a DVD someone sent me that
> had a couple of old TV shows on it.  Now my PC's DVD/CD-Writer combo
> DID play that DVD just fine, but it was the only device in the house
> that did.
>
> My question is, do you lot have any feel for which DVD players or
> player/burners are better at playing most kinds of DVDs?  It's great
> that my PC's DVD player is so capable, but I don't want to watch
> movies on a 19" screen by myself.
>
> Any recommendations for consumer electronics DVD player brands or models?
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Steve Erbach
> Scientific Marketing
> Neenah, WI
> www.swerbach.com
> Security Page: www.swerbach.com/security
> _______________________________________________
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>


--
Gary Kjos
garykjos at gmail.com



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