Phillips DVD Player Not Reading DVDs, ejects with no read

Cleaning is unlikely to help unless the player lives in a very smoky atmosphere. Dust on the lens is rarely a problem with DVD players, due to the much higher disc rotational speed, which tends to keep the dust blown off.

4 years is about right for a worn out laser. Does it still play CDs ok ? If it does, this is usually, although not 100%, a good pointer to laser trouble.

Arfa

Thanks Arfa. Great input. I'll go buy one and put this in the crusher:).

Chris

i have 'repaired' numerous dvd players by cleaning them.Don't listen to those who say it won't work - just try it anyway, what have you to lose? this is a repair group after all.

if its a philips machine, the only hitcvh may be that you'll probably need the special hexagonal driver to get the case open! may mean a trip to a local hardware store. regards, b.

gosh.... cleaning is so damn easy..... why didn't you clean it before you posted your question?

I'm glad to see that you put the word " repaired " in inverted commas. Presumeably, this is to indicate that you are using it in the loosest possible connotation. I repair DVD players for a living - hundreds of them from all manufacturers and, whilst you may, on one occasion out of a hundred, get a fix from cleaning the lens, it won't be a long term one.

If you read my reply properly, I didn't say that it *wouldn't* work, only that it was *unlikely* to work, which I'm pretty sure that most on here - and you too if you are realistic - would agree is an honest representation of the situation.

Of course the owner should try cleaning it - it's a fundamental try, but I stand by my original opinion that it is UNLIKELY to effect a ( lasting ) repair.

And the special ' hexagonal driver ' is called a Torx driver.

Arfa

Arfa Daily ha escrito:

...that was because I didn't consider the machines in question broken.

Disagree. I still have 3 machines which I restored in this way going strong after 4 years, 4 years and 3 years respectively. (Philips, Sharp and a no-namer) plus another I gave to a friend last year which I believe is still operating fine.

I know the laser pickups commonly fail, and in a high proportion of machines the power supply is the other main culprit. Ribbon cable failures resulting in 'no disc' errors I have seen a few times of late too. However, the point I was trying to make is that as with any optical device, cleaning is critical to proper operation and is a common reason for failure.

...certainly is a 'fundamental try' (sic), especially for a non-technical person who would doubtless be able to do little else. more so if the unit isn't used that often (in which situation, your theory as to the dust being blown off is flawed). Hence: cleaning is worth a try before condemning it to the landfill. Since the OP wanted to choose between 'cleaning or throw away', I just think you should have put that more clearly in your post, it might have been more helpful.

Ok Ok, let's not get all defensive! ;-) I do take your point though that dvd players tend to fail more due to psu and laser failure. but ....(lasting) repair unlikely - why not? experience shows it's perfectly possible, especially if the laser unit was OK and dirt really was the cause of the problem, in which case there's no reason why the unit couldn't go on working for another few years, at least 'till cleaning is required again!

-B.

All-righty. I guess we could argue about this all day - and I've got lasers to change ... !!

The reason that I said that any fix produced by cleaning was unlikely to be lasting, is because if dust has managed to settle on the lens - and the rotational speed of the disc *does* produce a very strong wind at the lens, trust me on this, I have it on good authority from a manufacturer whose training course I did - then there will certainly be dust settled on the critical angle mirror and the face of the pickup diode array. And before someone says that in some laser arrangements, the pickup diodes are not flat in the bottom of the optical block, I know this ...

Any dust on the internal optics will not be able to be removed by any cleaning method commonly employed in workshops. Thus, any improvement achieved by cleaning the optics that you can get at, is likely to be compromised in the long term, by the dust that you can't.

I used to clean the lenses on DVD players, with varying degrees of success - initially - but an awful lot of the ones that seemed to be cured, came bouncing back a couple of months later, in trouble again. This often results in an irate customer, and more so if the warranty on the repair has just expired. Is it worth it ? For the same reason, these days, I seldom rely on just cleaning of CD lasers. Most are so cheap, that you may as well just replace them, rather than risk losing a customer. Of course you will be able to find exceptions that prove the rule, and I'm sure that there are ones that I've cleaned, which are still going strong.

However, if dust has settled on the pickup diodes, the output balance is quite likely to be affected, unless there is a perfectly even layer of dust across the whole array. There is a limit to how much slack can be taken up by the servo circuitry, even on players where this is done automatically. DVD is a technology that works by the skin of its teeth, with a fair wind behind it. It doesn't take much upset in the system to compromise this.

Again, I didn't tell the owner not to clean it. He asked if he should, and I merely told him that it was unlikely to effect a cure. Perhaps he can tell us if it did any good ? If it did, fine. If it's then still going in a few months - better. He will have been one of the lucky ones. But to everyone else reading this, I still stand by what I said, for the additional reasons given.

As far as power supply trouble goes, I would agree that this is also a very common failure area, but in the case of Philips machines, it's ( almost ) invariably a short circuit secondary rectifier, which results in the psu going into cyclic shutdown, giving a machine that's dead, to all intents and purposes, rather than one that's just refusing to play discs.

Didn't you like " fundamental try " ? I was using the phrase in a sort of 'spoken speak' rather than 'written speak' ... conversational maybe ? d;~}

Arfa

My standard advice for most Philips products.

;-)

(Pioneer dvd players last longer on the average.)

Mark Z.

Odd that, isn't it Mark ? I can't recall ever replacing the laser ( or having to clean one .... !! ) on a Pioneer DVD, nor having to scrap one. Their CD players and lasers are equally long-lived.

Arfa

I've replaced a few - but considering how many units Pioneer sells, I think their failure numbers are low.

Mark Z.

Other than esthetics, it is hard to imagine a repair requiring a screwdriver to be worthwhile. So if a "lens cleaner disk" doesn't solve the problem, it is likely that the mains cord and the screws holding everything together are worth much more than the machine as a whole. Furthermore, a current machine will probably play many more types of disks, and do it better. All this for US$30 or less....