Sulky DVD player

[Daddles]

I dropped a DVD into the player tonight ... and the player wouldn't recognise it, just spent ages saying 'loading' and then eventually defaulting to 'no disc'. Naturally, I blamed the DVD, gave it a clean and tried again. No luck. In fact, experimentation with six other DVDs shows that it doesn't want to read any DVD regardless of its condition :((

It did occur to me that there might be dust or fluff or muck or something on the lens that reads the DVD, but how do you clean that? There used to be lens cleaning kits in the shops years ago but I haven't seen them in yonks (probably because they were a con).

Any thoughts on what to do? At the moment, all I can think of is to buy a new DVD player and you can imagine how uncomfortably that option's sitting.

Richard

[blonk]

I have a rather old (expensive) DVD player that is also quite fussy. It will play any new (Shop bought) DVD, but hire one, and it generally refuses to play. Sometimes it will play fine until the layer change and then play up. No idea what the problem is, but I have a lens cleaning DVD that has several small brushes on it. I run it through and it will then play the DVD happily. Got sick of doing that so I bought a super cheap LG which will play anything, regardless of the DVD's condition.

[Daddles]

I'm using a cheap AWA that's about 5 years old now. The DVDs it's refusing to play are all ones it's been happy to play before which is why I think something's gone funny rather than blaming the DVDs themselves. Any idea of where to get one of those cleaners? I know it's a long shot but I'd hate to buy a new unit because of a bit of fluff in the wrong place.

And, of course, this has happened at the wrong end of the week so I can't go chasing things up until the weekend :((

Richard

[blonk]

Crikey, pushing the memory here! I think I bought it from somewhere like ezydvd. It was about 4 years ago, so can't really remember. If you're handy with a screw driver, there's always a quick clean manually. You should be able to access the laser without too much difficulty. Just use a camera lens cleaning kit. Even with a torch and angled mirror, you may be able to look inside with the drawer open to see anything obvious stuck to the laser. Places like Jaycar or Dick Smith will probably sell them too. The one I have is the much older brother of the unit at the top of this page. Mine only has four measly brushes, the new version has six!
http://www.musicway.com.au/catalogue/musicway_listcatalogue_exec.asp?cid=107&curpage=2

[Ashore]

I have a cd-dvd cleaner , its just a disk with a little length of soft brissles about 1cm long glued on the face , this must brush the lens clean , has worked for me many times on all the family players, mabye you don't see them anymore cause there's nothing to wear out and after you buy one you may well never need another one
Just looked it out its a "TEAC cd laser lens cleaner" :2tsup: