Picture Tube Hazards

Just don't come close to the area around that "thick wire" and you should be ok. And watch the other circuitry, avoid using both hands if you can, make sure the thing isn't plugged in.

There are proper procedures to remove the DVD player section. It requires some disassembly. TV service tech's do this type of work all the time, and there are no hazards.

You should NOT be messing around in your TV set. Your safest procedure is to give it out to a service shop that services TV sets, and have them do the work. This way, it will be responsibly performed, and there will not be any possible safety issues after assembly, and when you are using the unit.

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JANA _____

-ss

I know what you mean but then I will have to bring my heavy TV to the shop (which is even harder since I don't have a truck), possibly wait a few days in which I won't have a TV and then get charge an arm and a leg...just to have my lens clean! I think I'll take my chances. That's what I get for buying a TV/DVD/VCR combo.

To be honest, you are likely to be wasting your time getting to the lens to clean it, as this is highly unlikely to be your problem unless a) you live in a very smoky house, or b) you've recently had some dusty building work done. Unlike with a CD player, normal household dust tends not to deposit on the lens of a DVD deck, because of the extremely high rotational speed of the disc, compared to a CD deck. This causes a layer of air to be dragged round under the disc at high speed, which tends to keep the lens dust-free. From years of experience repairing DVD players, it is far more likely that you have a worn laser ( or possibly, but less likely ) a worn spindle motor. If the unit plays CDs without skipping, then you can be reasonably sure that it is a laser issue.

Arfa

It started skipping when I was playing a CD. It has been exposed to a lot of smoke from people exhaling towards the TV. I'm prepare for the worst anyways, just in case the DVD unit is bad I already have the replacement # from Panasonic($110). So either way I have to pull the unit out.

-ss

Maybe they're just living on borrowed time, but I've fixed a number of them by cleaning the lens. I'd say it was the smokey environment in my house, but at least a couple of them were second-hand from others.

jak

You may be lucky then, and a clean of the lens might restore it - for a while at least, and assuming that it's not a computer-style IDE type drive. Cleaning never seems to help with these. Clean the lens with a cotton bud (Q-Tip) moistened with electronics grade (99.7% + ) isopropyl alcohol. Polish with a dry cotton bud. Don't be tempted to adjust any pots mounted on the laser. Mis-adjustment of them is likely to result in rapid destruction of the laser diode(s).

If the price you have from Pan is for just a laser, rather than a pre-assembled sub deck, be aware that most Pan DVD players, require mechanical adjustment of the tilt and skew after the laser is fitted. Provided that the model in question has the jitter meter software built in, this is not difficult, if a little fiddly.

Arfa

Yeah you'll be fine. Take care not to damage the delicate neck and connector pins of the picture tube, if you crack the glass and let air in, the tube is toast.

Thanks for all the info! It has a IDE connector on the back so I'm assuming it's IDE. Also the price from Panasonic is for the whole unit.

Yeah, I kinda suspected that might be the case, which is why I made the comment. In that case, I think, from experience, that you are unlikely to recover it with cleaning. As these drives are pretty much totally enclosed, anything like cigarette smoke has a tendency to condense out on the outside of the drive, rather than on internal components. I think that in the end, you will finish up replacing the whole drive, as you felt that you might have to.

Arfa

Well if it is IDE could he just purchase a cheap computer DVD drive and put it in there? I'd try that, but I have no expierence with dvd players that use IDE drives and don't know if it would work.

Mike

Hi Mike. I only ever tried it once. I can't remember the make, but I seem to think that it might have be a Sammy or a Tosh. Anyway, whichever, it didn't work. I remember asking the technical boys at whichever it was, why it didn't work, and they said it was a software thing. That somehow the player's operating system could recognise a 'correct' drive. I guess all CD / DVD drives have some type of readable model designator and serial number as part of their own controller's software, so maybe the machine's OS was programmed to evaluate this, or maybe the drives were even an OEM version 'customed' for recognition in these machines.

On the other hand, some time ago, I did a Yamaha hard disc recorder where the drive had failed. Looked like a pretty much standard IDE drive. We contacted Yammy to get a price on a replacement drive, and after the guy finished laughing at our sharp intake of breath, he told us that to be honest, we could put any old drive of the same size in it, but preferably one of the same make as well. So we ordered one off a computer supplies company for about a fifth the cost, flung it in, and away it went, good as gold. So the short answer is, I really don't know. I would be a bit reluctant to say that it's worth a go, for fear of corrupting the machine's software. There have been many cases where people have tried to make machines multi-region or region-free, by following either half-arsed internet instructions, or Honest Harry's Mod Tips page in DVD Hackers' Weekly, and ended up with unrecoverable corupted software, rendering their pride and joy useless, and outside of warranty ...

At the end of the day, 110 bucks is not the end of the world, and if I was the OP, I think that I would feel happiest just dropping in a manufacturer's official replacement part.

Arfa

Another thought. There are Laser cleaning CD kits on the market. It has little brushes in the disk, and you can simply put a drop of the cleaner on to the brushes, that comes with it. Follow the instructions.

Most of the time, in these units skipping is a warn laser.

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JANA _____

It started skipping when I was playing a CD. It has been exposed to a lot of smoke from people exhaling towards the TV. I'm prepare for the worst anyways, just in case the DVD unit is bad I already have the replacement # from Panasonic($110). So either way I have to pull the unit out.

-ss

I tried that already with no success. I even tried compressed air. Also the player is only 1.5 years old. I've probably only play around 50 DVD's and a few CD's during that time.

You are brave to recommend these !

IMHO, if you want to do no good at all at best, and actually damage the laser at worst, use a cleaning disc with little brushes on it ... On several occasions, I have seen an otherwise good laser wrecked by the brush getting caught in the lens suspension, and tearing this off with the high rotational speed of a DVD. As I have said on many occasions, it is rare for DVD lasers to suffer from dust like CD lasers. Even on CD lasers, the cleaning discs do little good, as the brush bristles are deflected by the 'wall' around the lens periphery, which is a typical design shape of a CD laser's lens.

Arfa

Don't tell me that:( But since a laser cleaning CD kit is a 'CD' wouldn't the DVD player use the rotational speed for a CD?

"James Sweet" wrote in news:S5ryi.6723$pf3.3835@trndny06:

Not to mention the mess that the 15 psi on each square inch of the tube can make if you 'get lucky' and shatter the tube. Kind of like a grenade going off. It can throw glass for quite some distance.

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bz    	73 de N5BZ k

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an 
infinite set.

bz+ser@ch100-5.chem.lsu.edu   remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap

"Scott" wrote in message news:t_ydnWU3rMEj21HbnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com...

Well, once it has determined that it *is* a CD, it might, but there are a couple of qualifiers here. Firstly, most DVD players assume a DVD first, so spin up to full speed in readiness for that. They only then slow back down to CD speed, once they've determined that the data streaming off the disc is CD audio, not DVD video and audio. Secondly, some DVD players run CDs at full speed also, much like a personal CD player runs the disc at high speed, when in anti-shock mode ( to keep the bit bucket full ). Thirdly, some players have a lot of trouble making any sense of a cleaning disc. I don't know whether this is an issue with the data contained on them, or whether it's an issue with the brushes whacking the lens on every rotation, and vibrating it about its correct focus point. Whatever it is anyway, some players just will not lock their spindle servos on these discs, and they just run at very high speed, totally out of control. At the end of the day, the only way to clean a laser lens, is 'properly' - that is by hand, carefully, with nothing more aggressive than electronics grade IPA. Even then, any improvement may be only marginal or temporary as, if dust on the lens was the primary cause of whatever problem was apparent, the chances are that there is also dust on the critical angle mirror and the face of the pickup photodiode array, both of which are internal components of the optical block ( laser ) that you can't get at to clean. And again, DVD lasers seldom collect dust on their lens, due to the blanket of air dragged round under the disc, by its high rotational speed.

Arfa

And those lens cleaning CDs/DVDs may do more harm than good.

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