Daewoo DVD composite out failure (DVG-5200S)

This is exactly the sort of thing you get when someone's been reading this weeks copy of " DVD Hacker's Weekly " and has tried the latest sequence of remote button pushes to turn a single region player into one that plays any region, any standard, and probably video tapes as well ...

Using the component output where you manage to get at least some sort of locked display, check all of the setup menus - particularly anything to do with picture setups or standards setup. You may well find that it has had some odd mode like Secam set. Some players have a " restore defaults " menu entry. If you say that you've got another of these that's working correctly, examine the setup menus on that one, and compare the entries that are set.

Don't believe owners when they tell you " It just stopped working ". I would say that 90% of the DVD faults of this nature that I see are due to customers having ' fiddled ' to try and get it to play that foreign DVD that Aunty Maud brought back from her holiday ...

Arfa

I've seen a similar situation with an Apex DVD player, but found that the issue was due to the progressive scan setting being enabled accidentally. For some reason, the progressive scan setting also affected the scanning of the composite output. There are supposed to be ways to reset this by a few remote control presses, but I didn't have the original manual at my disposal. I was eventually able to reset it by "feeling around" in the setup menus with what little I could discern from the television's output.

Maybe this is the case for your Daewoo players? Progressive scan settings seem even more suspect if you say that the compoent out is working fine on your television; perhaps your television supports progressive scan?

Anyway, my two cents.

-Darrick

You've seen the advert on the telly. In the trade, it reads slightly differently - a little more like

" Piece of crap ? That'll be the Daewoo ... " ;-)

Arfa

Arfa,

Thanks! I had considered that the units had bumped into the wrong region format mode, but I've seen mine try to play a weird resolution of PAL framerate before and it just rolled or had bars at the bottom or something. I didn't know if it could go B&W from that. I'll check it, but the owner's were an uncle, and a friend of the uncle. They're the type who would be extremely lucky if they could figure out how to navigate through "folder/DVDROM" mode, let alone enter any weird region commands. ; ) They'd also have told me if they tried.

I guess there is a possibility that the Daewoos can get easily zapped back to whatever defaults they have, without permission. I've read that their quality control isn't the greatest, that's why I was hoping that someone was familiar with the problem.

I didn't bother to check the caps on the power supply board, but I will, or I can just swap one of the bad video boards with mine, to see if it works OK (unless someone here thinks that would endanger my good board).

If anyone has any other suggestions or knows a region or test mode which would present a skewed black and white composite out, I appreciate any help.

-Thanks Again!

BTW- Arfa, It's actually one of the short black models with nothing but the DVD player. The same uncle bought one of the silver Daewoo players with the built-in VCR, and it was like a whole different brand. It barely played anything.

I hoped that might be the case too. I figured they might have some type of hard reset command for a last resort. I'll fish around on the web, and if I can find anything, I'll take it out there tonight and post back here if it works.

-Take Care George