Which DVD Player is more reliable?

Second that, I haven't seen much from that guy aside from inflamatory flame posts.

The voltage rating on capacitors is the voltage they'll tolerate without popping, it's common design convention to add a safety margin of 50%, any electrical engineer will tell you that. I've noticed a disturbing trend lately of squeezing that margin smaller and smaller, along with correspondingly more capacitor failures. It's not as bad as the faulty electrolyte epidemic several years ago, but I find myself replacing a LOT more electrolytics in modern equipment than stuff built back in the 80s and

90s.

Jeff and James. Thank you gentlemen. I feel vindicated ...

Arfa

I'll second that, Ron. But back on the original point of reliability, have you ever had cause here in the UK to consider Philips gear to be particularly badly built, or unreliable in any way, compared to other makes ? I wouldn't say that I actually have, certainly not to the point that Mark Z and other US posters seem to have done. Perhaps there is some fundamental difference between Philips products for the US market, and those for the European market, given that Philips is fundamentally a European company, being based in Holland. Interesting ...

Arfa

I'm only going off the newer stuff. maybe that`s not as well put together as the older gear.

I spent many years repairing vcrs, audio, and microwave ovens made by Philips.

As I`m sure you know, they used a totally unique system in their later video recorder transport, fairly reliable, heads wore out fast, but the majority of problems were 'casebook' so a good little earner there.

Philips microwave ovens were good, again unconventional in some ways and prone to recurring faults, so again a money spinner... erm.. I'm starting to like Philips gear, it`s made me a few bob over the years!

I was never a fan of their 'moving coil' cd player mechanism, but I guess it was early days for the technology.

Philips washers and dryers were jolly good for business in their way, plenty of easy stock faults and easy availability of spares. another bunce earner

So, lemme see, recently gone to the great landfill in the sky are a Philips freeview receiver B.E.R due to some logic problem (again I understand this is a well know fault but non the less unrepairable), a just out of guarantee Philips DVD/Hard/Disk recorder - something in the logic failed + DVD drive up the spout, such a clunker of a machine anyway I wouldn`t spend any time trying to fix it.

Both those were my own equipment.

Also there were several DVD drives out of computers - I realise that these probably weren`t made in the Philips factory, but they carry the Philips brand name, and that`s what counts to the punter.

Anyhoo, I declared that I wouldn`t buy any Philips branded gear again, and so far I`ve stuck to that.

Maybe I`m being unfair to Philips equipment, I dunno, the Philips stuff I bought in the last few years has already gone to the tip and I have no confidence in their products now. I imagine most of it is made in China?

Ron(UK)

OK - Which brand(s) woukld you recommmend??

Bob Hofmann

I used to have a recent Philips DVD player and it was not made by Philips. The quality of the boards and components was similar to a $9 clock radio. There were also lots of firmware bugs which made it almost unusable (and there were no updates available). When I got tired of it I ended up throwing it away rather than donating it (I didn't want anyone else to waste money of it).

Andy Cuffe

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com

"Arfa Daily" hath wroth:

Personally, I feel vindictive. Time to rant some more on the topic of reliable products.

Once upon a time, I was doing design reviews for a manufacturer of consumer electronics. For those not familiar with the term "design review", it's an ordeal process, where an outside authority is paid to shoot holes in a pre-production design, with the specific purpose of finding screwups, catching oversights, reducing costs, and generally making the life of the designers miserable.

State of the art in component selection and computer modeling had progressed to the point where it is possible to predict component failure rates given known operating conditions. The capacitor formulas at:

are what is used. Note that the lifetime for electrolytics operating at maximum ratings is only about 1000 hrs:

There are similar models for semiconductors based on thermal cycles and power components based on simple entropy. Given years of experience with a war chest of standard components, additional data can be added to the mix.

My part of the puzzle wasn't in the failure prediction department, but I watched the process evolve over the years. At one point, the manufactory could estimate the point at which the largest number of field failures would occur and target their stocking, warranties, and replacement products accordingly. For example, if the calculations showed that units sold on introduction will begin to fail after 3 years, then the warranty will be less than 3 years, and a replacement product will be available at the 3 year mark. Under ideal circumstances, everything will fail at once. This method gets the product closer to this ideal.

In grinding the numbers, a simple spreadsheet was used for capacitors. I may have a copy somewhere but don't want to leak someone else's work. If I get ambitious, I'll recreate it. Anyway, the result is an estimate of capacitor lifetime based on known operating conditions. If the target lifetime is 3 years (26,000 hrs), then any capacitor that shows a calculated longer lifetime is considered over-rated and is a potential waste of valuable pennies to the bean counters. Once identified, the size and voltage ratings are reduced downwards to fit the predicted lifetimes.

In the distant past, there was an advantage to using as many capacitors of the same exact value as possible to increase quantity discounts and reduce handling overhead. With bulk lot purchasing and robot assembly, this is no longer the case. It's perfectly acceptable to have a wide variety of electrolytic sizes, values, and voltages without impacting the cost. The result are boards stuffed with 3v,

4v, 6.3v, 8v, 10v, 12v, 15v, 16v, 18v, 25v, etc capacitors with almost identical capacitance values. Such boards are easy to spot and should give you a clue as to the degree of penny pinching that was required to cut costs. If you have a product on the bench to repair and a wide assortment of capacitors are apparently dead, don't assume user abuse. It might be that they were sized specifically to all fail simultaneously.

Anyway, I don't have much experience fixing DVD players or with Philips products. I do have a Philips DVDR 995 DVD recorder, which trashes most DVD-R's it tried to burn, and now refuses to play other home burned DVD's, although it will play most commercial DVD's. Probably a dying laser. It also has a rather oddly designed remote control that also eats batteries. It was given to me with the warning "It's crap" which I have personally verified. It would be at the local thrift shop or recyclers were it not at the very bottom of my equipment pile and therefore difficult to extract. Caveat Emptor.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

"hr(bob) snipped-for-privacy@att.net" hath wroth:

Bad question. At that price level, even the so called name brand manufacturers do not make their own products. They buy container loads of product from Chinese vendors, and put their name on the product. If really ambitious, they might document it, but normally, all they do is stuff the white box into an impressive and gaudy retail package. It's sometime difficult to contact the manufacturer or get them to admit they imported the product.

The result is that you never know what you're getting. The quality varies from dismal to impressive. I bought a no-name DVD player at Kmart as a present. I think I paid $35 for it 3 years ago. It was a gift for a 12 year old brat with a marked tendency to destroy everything he touches. It's still working perfectly today, although I've rebuilt the remote control twice. On the other hand, one of my customers was giving presentations at Rotary Club meetings. I convinced him that using a laptop for playing a short DVD movie was overkill, and had him buy a DVD player. It was a Magnavox which lasted about 60 days and died. The warranty was 30 days.

If you want to do the necessary research, it's possible to get a clue as to the quality by looking at the guts on the FCC ID web pile. Look at the serial number tag and extract the FCC ID number. Then go unto:

and find the listing. You may have to play with the format of the "product code" as some entries start with a "-" or space. The inside photos should give you a clue as to what you're buying. If it looks like junk components, get something else.

If you insist on shopping by brand, I've had good luck with Panasonic and Toshiba. However, there's no guarantee that they didn't just stick their name on some piece of white box junk. At the bottom of the barrel, I've had a history of weird problems with Sony. Sorry, but not much experience with anything else.

Drivel: Do you supply a DVD player for your tenants? When I had my rental, I wouldn't even give them the time of day, much less a free DVD player. For a rental, anything will suffice, preferably the cheapest, since it's assume they'll either destroy or steal it.

Drivel 2.0: No change on the local solar powered RFI generator front because everyone is too busy to do anything useful. Sigh.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

it varies, but in terms of reliability over the last few years there have been numerous widespread problems (albeit in a narrow range of stuff.)

-faulty tubes: W56ECK001X04, (chassis L01.1E) W66ECK001X14, etc.

-painter chips: chassis, A10 /E

-dvd recorder pickups dropping like flies (in most other and cheaper makes i find the power supplies to go first!)

all of which are serious expensive problems which can mean a write off. Not funny in such new equipment.

Apart from that though, I usually find the build quality to be pretty good. I personally still have a 16 year old 28GR9772 working superbly in the bedroom and a VR632 which has only had the usual minor plastic cog problem as with most turbo decks. Most of the Philips Tvs I get asked to repair apart from the above listed known 'dogs' are still serviceable, even the likes of CP90 and CP110. but I digress.

to get back on topic to the dvd discussion, I would stick with the philips being a more well known name, but must echo what others have said, i.e. at that price point you're going to get cheap and nasty stuff in any case. You get what you pay for. Anyone worried about reliability would be well advised just to skip that price bracket.

-B

That's interesting Andy. I see a reasonable amount of Philips stuff - mainly hifi and DVD - and I can't recall ever seeing an item that you would not have said was actually made by them. They have a distinct 'Philips-ness' about them, and it would be very easy to say, when taking one to bits, "that doesn't look like a Philips ..." if indeed it didn't. So perhaps they do reserve stuff that they make themselves for the 'home' market, and badge stuff of other manufacture, for the US market. I suppose it could be something to do with import restrictions or duties or even for some 'political' reason. I have a friend who works for a company that carry out exclusively Philips service. I'll give him a call, and see if they see stuff that isn't of native Philips manufacture.

Arfa

That's highly enlightening, and goes a long way to explaining the multiple failures of caps that I often experience. It also answers for Graham, as to why he is wrong with his contention that a cap can be run to its voltage limit, with no ill effects. It also explains why you are absolutely spot on about different voltage ratings of caps with the same values in the same equipment. I have come across this many times and wondered why, when they were using a 25v cap in one position, they then used a 16v one of the same value elsewhere, even though the physical sizes are similar, and you would have imagined that they could have got a better deal by buying twice as many of a single type. Good stuff.

Arfa

Well, I looked at a couple of units and decided to go with the Philips dvd player, since it had a 1-yr warranty on parts and labor and the competition only had 90 days parts and labor. Brought it home and hooked it up, actually followed some fairly clear instructions just to see how good they were. Must have been written by someone with English as a first language, because the English actually made sense, without the usual stilted words. Turned it on and it worked just fine.

Decided to use my older dvd at the rental and keep the new one here at my home. BTW, the rental unit is only loaned out to ski friends who don't trash it if they want to be allowed to rent it again. So I don't worrry about problems with tenants like I would if it were a regular ski rental.

Thanks for all the civil discussion this generated.

H. R.(Bob) Hofmann

Brought it home and

Philips are actually a Dutch company, so that's probably where the manual originated. Interestingly though, the Dutch people speak English almost as well as English people. I can easily work most of the near-European countries on the radio, and it is always a pleasure to speak to the Dutch, as they understand colloquial English and jokes just as any native English speaker would. OTOH, if speaking to a German or French or Belgian ham for instance, although they speak very good English - certainly much better than I could speak their languages - I always find it necessary to keep it very straightforward and 'text book'.

I once saw something that explained this as being to do with their proximity to England, and their low-lying land, combining to give them good TV coverage on UHF from south coast UK TV transmitters, so they grow up watching UK / American TV as a 'free' supplement to their own. Is that just the best example ever of a whole country being influenced by the power of TV ? I wonder if their ability to speak better English than their neighbours, will decline when it all goes totally digital, and only the low power transmitters are left here, which will probably struggle to make the trip to Holland ?

Arfa

I believe a big factor is having TV with subtitles instead of dubbing.

I think this is true for most smaller countries.

Hell, a few or ten years ago we had actually shipped product where the polarity on the silkscreen was incorrect, causing the tantalum caps to be installed backwards. Some of the boards ran 24/7 for 3 to 4 months of operation before catching fire.

Thirded. I've been repairing electronics equipment for 20+ years.

And ditto as well. I was once looking for a source on power cords for some vintage HP test equipment. The guy pops into the thread ranting and screaming at me about how different types of wire would not effect the quality of sound from a stereo system. Sheesh.

JW hath wroth:

I had a similar experience. Ancient IBM XT clone motherboard with a few tanatalums backwards on the 5V power supply bus. The board worked just fine for about a month of daily use. Then, I get a panic phone call. "The computer is on fire. What do I do"? After careful consideration of the situation for perhaps 100 milliseconds, I calmly suggest they turn it off. I heard the loud "clunk" of the XT power supply switch over the phone.

When I arrived, the culprit was obvious. There was a smoldering black carbonized blob of charcoal where the tantalum should have been. I couldn't resist applying power and watching it glow very bright red and belch smoke. Was going to show everyone in the office the smoking capacitor, but nobody seemed interested. So, I just cut it out of the circuit board. I also looked around for more backwards capacitors, but didn't find any. I don't recall if the silk screen was correct. Incidentally, these were 10uf 15v caps on a 5v bus.

Later, I was curious if backwards tantalums could be thermally detected. I applied reverse voltage and waited for the capacitor to get hot. I had to apply more than the rated voltage to get it to start heating. However, once it started to draw current and get warm, it rapidly progressed towards burning. Thermal detection didn't work because it took far too long to get hot.

Slight subject drift...

I had some difficulties with tantalums. I was dealing with a simple voltage doubler power supply. For some reason, I decided to use tantalum capacitors instead of the usual electrolytics. The result was low output and far more ripple at the output than I would have expected. I eventually found that I had a bag of defective tantalums with very high ESR (as measured on my Dick Smith ESR meter). Apparently, I wasn't the only person with the problem. See:

to the right of the photo with the two yellow tantalums. I later sample tested my small inventory, and but didn't find any more with high ESR.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 08:50:51 +0000, Eeyore put finger to keyboard and composed:

I'm aware that solid electros are not relevant to this discussion, but I found the following datasheet useful because it discusses failure rates for aluminium electrolytic capacitors:

NSP SERIES ? LOW ESR SOLID ALUMINUM ELECTROLYTIC CAPACITOR

There is a table at the end which represents a failure rate model as outlined in MIL-HDBK-217, the Military Handbook for "Reliability Prediction of Electronic Equipment".

The formula for failure rate (FR) is ...

FR = (BFR) x (temperature factor) x (voltage factor) x (capacitance value factor)

BFR = Basic Failure Rate for Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors (per MIL-HDBK-217F)

FR is influenced by: - temperature of operation - applied voltage to voltage rating (voltage ratio factor) - capacitance value factor

For example, the FR for a 1uF 100V electrolytic capacitor operating at

25C 30V is 1 x BFR.

The same cap operating at its rated voltage would have a 14x greater failure rate. The voltage factors at voltage ratios of 0.6, 0.7, 0.8 and 0.9 are 2, 3.2, 5.2 and 8.6, respectively. This suggests to me that any design that allowed for a 50% margin would be 5 times more reliable than one that operated at rated voltages.

If typical "wet" electros follow the above pattern, then Arfa's observations would be right on the money.

By comparison, solid electros (as used in current motherboards) appear to be a *lot* more reliable and according to the datasheet suffer no degradation in ESR, capacitance or leakage current after being operated for 7000 hours at rated voltage and temperature (105C).

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

For the past 8 years i have been working on this new stuff ... store returns ... As time goes on i see more & more samsung products inside several major branded units . I have seen the same laser pickup used inside those goofy branded players and inside a supposedly expensive sony and in those 60$ little foldup portables .

Its all made up of who will send the cheapest part that week . Good luck