I finally get all my DVDs back from a friend after four months, and I sit down to enjoy The Big Lebowski, when I get a “no disc” message. I mentally curse my friend for scratching one of my favorite DVDs and take it out and look at it. No scratches, not dirt, it’s perfectly fine. So I run a lens cleaning disc, still doesn’t work. So, I try other DVDs, one which was brand new, another two which worked perfectly last night, nothin. I unplugged it for 15 minutes and tried it again, still nothing. It did, however, play the audio on the cleaning disc.
Is there anything else I can try, or am I doomed to either having the player serviced or buying a new one? It’s a three-year-old Samsung.
If the lens cleaning disk didn’t do a thing for you, then it’s pretty well hosed. These days DVD players are literally throw-away cheap. Unless it’s under some sort of warranty, it’s not worth the repair cost, unless it’s a very high-end model.
One thing you can try is unplugging the player for several hours. Sometimes there is sufficient memory backup (usually a largish-value capacitor) to keep the thing in whatever scrambled mode it may have gotten itself for quite some time. I’ve salvaged things before by doing this.
If the broken player is 3 years old, I’d suggest spending $50 on a cheap new player instead of worrying about fixing it. It’ll have a ton of features that the old one probably lacked (region free hack, MP3/JPEG/VCD playback, CD-RW/DVD-RW/+RW compatibility), and if that one breaks, well, you’re only out $50.