I think I need a new DVD player

[wolverine]

I bought mine about 4 years ago. It was working fine until recently - now anytime I try playing a movie, it freezes up about 1/4 into the film.

All I see in the various troubleshooting guides are to clean the disks. Thing is, I just bought a new movie so it can't be dirty already. And it's happening to any movie I play.

Anything else I need to be doing, or should I just go buy another one?

I should point out that I'm no techno-geek, so I haven't exactly been keeping up with the latest in home entertainment technology. All I need is something that can play a Blockbuster rental without skips or freezing. I've noticed that recordable DVD players are out now...does that mean that one can now tape TV shows onto DVD the same way we used to with VHS? Do DVD players now include the cable converter?

 

[pokemon]

It may be the DVD player itself is dirty - get a cleaning kit for the player itself and try that.

 

[threepeat]

Anything else I need to be doing, or should I just go buy another one?
...does that mean that one can now tape TV shows onto DVD the same way we used to with VHS? Do DVD players now include the cable converter?

Wolvie, unless you spent a lot of money on your current DVD player, I would just junk it and get a new one. Usually the only thing that can go wrong with them is the laser mechanism, and the cost to fix that would be a substantial part of the cost of a new player ($150-ish).

If you tape TV shows, I would recommend getting either a DVD recorder or a hard disk recorder, both of which tape onto either DVD-/+R (write once) or DVD-RW/RAM (rewritable) disks. DVD recorders cost about $300 these days; hard-disk recorders cost about $500-$700 and have a DVD burner built into them. I highly recommend a hard-disk recorder if you can afford it. You pretty much can dispense with tapes and disks altogether, unless you want to archive something onto disk permanently. Moreover, if you are recording onto DVD, you will have to increase the compression rate (thus downing your video quality) for any program longer than 2 hours, but if you record onto the hard drive of a hard disk recorder, you don't really have to worry about that. I recommend this player LG 250GB HDD/DVD Recorder (LRH-539) http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0665000FS10061630&catid=# because it's got a huge hard drive (250 GB will allow you to record about 100 hours of video at a high-quality compression rate) and can play pretty much any format of audio (WMA, MP3, CD audio) and video (DivX, DVD-Video).

All DVD recorders and hard disk recorders include a TV tuner with a BNC input and output (ie., the same cable connections as your typical VCR).

 

[hitrack]

All good points.

I say unless your some kinda friggen sound/video freak just boogie up to crappy tire or wallmart and grab a fukkin DVD player for like $50 or less.

Will have all the most important goodies of taday. MP3, component video out (thats the one for 3 wires) and just be able to play back rented movies.

3peat has the 411 on a DVD player/recorder/DivX, but this represents a learning curve far beyond plopping in a movie you rented from cock-buster.

Although if your gonna dabble in digital time shifting I would look at a full blown PVR like from Bell Express View, etc.....

 

[maverick73]

I would go with the Denon 2910 in Silver. It's the best value out there. Gotta go now... couldn't read rest of msg... bye.

I bought mine about 4 years ago. It was working fine until recently - now anytime I try playing a movie, it freezes up about 1/4 into the film.

All I see in the various troubleshooting guides are to clean the disks. Thing is, I just bought a new movie so it can't be dirty already. And it's happening to any movie I play.

Anything else I need to be doing, or should I just go buy another one?

I should point out that I'm no techno-geek, so I haven't exactly been keeping up with the latest in home entertainment technology. All I need is something that can play a Blockbuster rental without skips or freezing. I've noticed that recordable DVD players are out now...does that mean that one can now tape TV shows onto DVD the same way we used to with VHS? Do DVD players now include the cable converter?

 

[wolverine]

Thanks all, especially my good buddy 3peat.

I'll try using the DVD player cleaner first. If that doesn't work then I'll go plunk down on a new player.

 

[ghostie]

Be careful of going too cheap. I had a $60 Zenith player that I got as a gift. It was just fine and then one day, about 10 months after I first got it, it started going "disc error" every time a tried to put a disc in it. I tried a bunch of brand new discs, same thing. So I try and find some troubleshooting info on the net... turns out these cheap Zenith players always do this. I read about 5 different accounts of guys who had the exact same thing happen to them with the same model, or a similar model. Apparantly the laser just craps out after awhile. Lifespan varied from 2 months up to about a year, so I didn't do too badly by having it work for 10 months - 6 bucks a month.

I ended up just junking it and buying a half decent one. Hopefully the new one will work for more than a year.

 

[sdw]

I bought mine about 4 years ago. It was working fine until recently - now anytime I try playing a movie, it freezes up about 1/4 into the film.

All I see in the various troubleshooting guides are to clean the disks. Thing is, I just bought a new movie so it can't be dirty already. And it's happening to any movie I play.

Anything else I need to be doing, or should I just go buy another one?

I should point out that I'm no techno-geek, so I haven't exactly been keeping up with the latest in home entertainment technology. All I need is something that can play a Blockbuster rental without skips or freezing. I've noticed that recordable DVD players are out now...does that mean that one can now tape TV shows onto DVD the same way we used to with VHS? Do DVD players now include the cable converter?

If you have a smoker in the house, it's most likely that the laser head is coated with crap. I used to ruin the CD and DVD drives in my computer this way until I finally stopped. The smoke gets drawn in by the fan the cools the CD/DVD drive.

The electronics for DVD players have gotten so cheap that you can find a player for $49. If you want to be able to record, you need a PVR which starts at about $250. Sony and Panasonic both make ones that record DVDs that work in any DVD player.

Just about every TV, DVD player, etc is 135 channel cable ready. They still need a black box to accept satellite TV or the Digital channels from Shaw. DRM rears it's ugly head here. You will find that you can't record content that needed a black box to display on your TV.