Problem with my DVD player

Factual Questions
1

Techie dopers, please help.
I have a Panasonic DVD-VCR combo player as a part of my home theater surround sound system. The gadget is just over a year old. Everything was fine until a few days ago, I popped a DVD into the player and all I get is the audio. No picture, no video at all! The DVD runs because I can see the “Play” display on the console, but all get is the audio. Something is obviously wrong. Also after popping the DVD in, I do not even see that screen on the TV where it says “Reading disc…” followed by those blinking dots. So, is my DVD player part of the combo fried? People have suggested that I buy a new DVD player instead of trying to repair this one. I picked up one yesterday(a cheap one) and when I took it home and read the literature it said that this DVD player cannot be hooked up with my existing VCR-DVD thingy, with the excuse of something like the picture from the DVD player would get distorted.
Please help!

2

Before you throw it away, check the cables on the back and make sure they haven’t worked loose.

3

One easy thing to try is to unplug the player for a while. Try a full day.

As to hooking a DVD player output to a VCR to get an RF signal to a TV: Yeah, there’s thing copy-protection picture-distorting thing called Macrovision. In comes in different flavors and different devices react differently, etc. In addition, not all DVDs have Macrovision.

One way out of hooking a DVD player to a VCR is to use an RF converter. But hooking up the cables from the DVD player directly to the TV works a whole lot better.

See the Video Help site for more info.

4

As an aside, I’ve run three different DVD players through my VCR, and none of them have a problem with it… the picture starts to go all flooey when the VCR motor actually comes on (to rewind or play or record) but otherwise it’s great.

My TV doesn’t have the seperated inputs for audio and video, so instead of playing with coaxials I just plug the DVD player (any dvd player) to the VCR and turn the vcr to ‘line 1’. It’s worked great for me.

your mileage may vary. :smiley: