DVD player repair 

They would have to build a penal colony on mars to lock up all video pirates on earth!

+Robert Mattison Yes these "unlicensed" players are great because they will play anything. There was a big push to get them off the market, and a court ruling in the US had some retailers pulling them from the shelves. There is a video floating around on youtube of thousands of brand new machines being crushed. So anyone that has one of these gems should think twice before tossing it, because they are only going to become more valuable to some people as time goes by. I have old Betamax machines, and I get 20.00 an hour to transfer Betamax tapes to DVD or to digital files. Soon it will be 30.00 an hour as more of these obsolete machines are discarded. Vintage electronics are worth a bloody fortune these days. Just ask anyone sitting on a Sansul 9090db That receiver is going for more than 1,200.00 these days, or a Pioneer SX1980. The local vintage electronics store just sold one of those bad boys for 7,000.00!

I use them in my conversion business. When a client brings me a DVD that was recorded in PAL, and they want to play it here, I just hook it up to my DVD recorder and make them a copy. Sure I could do it with my computer too, but for what I make on it, that is too much work, and time consuming. Much easier to just make a copy in real time and be done with it. They quality is good enough for the people I deal with.

I might just do a video of mine in action. Mine sits under a 85lb tube amplifier though, so it might be awhile before I unhook everything so I can move it to the shop and take it apart to show the internal workings.

12voltvids No worries, do it when you get some time for it, I would really like to see another one, since the last one I saw was like 10 years ago.

Yes exactly. Many people don't know that new DVD players will not play bootleg films. Even for stuff that people sneak a camera into the theater. What the studios do is inject a watermark into the sound track. An inaudible signal, that even the microphone of the camera will pick up. It is not just something as simple as a tone either, as that would be easy enough to spot and notch out. It changes dynamically with the audio, and basically creates a digital signature that is impossible to remove. When a DVD or BD player detects this signature it refuses to play the video, and you get a message that the content is only playable on professional gear. That is one of the reasons these basic machines are so valuable to a collector, who collects disks from around the world. They play everything, so they are certainly worth saving from the scrap heap.

+12voltvids I used to be a projectionist so I know all about the various copy protections the film companies used. The subcarrier signal is primarily used to track which theater the bootleg movie was recorded from. The subcarrier signal in the audio track is a relatively new thing, it's not found on older 35mm film because there isn't enough audio bandwidth on the film stock. Newer 35mm film which has the three additional audio formats (DTS, SDDS and Dolby) can store the subcarrier signal, but it entirely depends on if the theater has one of the sound systems on the projector. We had both Dolby and DTS on our projectors. Since using audio copy protection on 35mm was unreliable, the film companies used other methods like "cigarette burns", changing the order of scenes in the movie and even adding or removing different scenes in different print runs. With these they could at least figure out which group of theaters a bootleg was recorded at. Digital movies are distributed on hard drives (average size is between 300-700 GB per movie) or by direct download from the film company. The subcarrier signal used in digital movies is far more advanced since they don't have to worry about data size. It'll tell the film company exactly which theater played the movie, what time the movie was played and the exact row and seat the person was in when the bootleg was recorded.

+GGigabiteM Of course they can figure out where the microphone was located by just looking at the phase of the signal. A little math and a 3 dimensional map could be created. Many bootleggers these days have multiple players involved. One person will smuggle in a camera and record the picture, and someone else sitting in the theatre with a high quality digital audio recorder. For what I don't know. I absolutely refuse to watch a crap copy of a film with the sounds of crunching popcorn, texting, and heads showing at the bottom of the screen.

+12voltvids You could try using a Toshiba BDX1100 I have made mine region free it plays DVD's/Blurays from anywhere in the world also it does not have Cinavia protection embedded on the hardware unlike most players you get these days.

Yes but those were big, well made motors with speed regulation held together with screws. These ones are crappy press fit garbage from china. No way to open them up without destroying them.

Yeah, you got a point there. Some of that crap I've had slice open with a Dremel, and then tack solder back together. Yes, I suppose that would have been as much or more trouble than scavenging the motor.

H7manity guy

There are only a few different sizes of DC motors. So I was pretty confident that I would find a motor in one of the units in my junk box.

The drive belt and the fuse seem to be the most common parts to go out.

​@@djijspeakerguy4628 I recently came across a Philips which wouldn't output video or sound correctly, on either composite or component so I scrapped it. I still use my generic one often.

I do read the comments and respond to them. Thing is I receive between 500 and 800 a day and there are not enough hours in the day to respond to every one.

Debbie Armioia Thomas Yes the dvd output is set to progressive mode. This is available on component output only. Go into the menu and turn off progressive scan and you will get video on both component and standard video out in interlaced mode. You need the original remote to do this no remote, sorry Charlie.

The only dvd recorders I have worked on was a Panasonic with a blown power supply and another that the remote receiver was shot.

Parts came from a scrap unit.

+Andrew Cramer Either your spindle motor shaft is bent, the bearings in the motor are out of round, or the disk table is too high or low, and that is not permitting the clamp to seat correctly.

Most cd or dvd players are not repairable

+Bri G. I have a multi system Aiwa sitting in my shop that has been here for awhile. Haven't been able to figure that one out. Looks like a tape sensor problem, but I have changed the LED emitters and detectors and it still is acting up. One of these days I will sit down and stare at it. But I tell you is the twit that keeps giving me a thumbs down keeps it up I will be thinking twice of continuing the videos.

this is one of the best channels I've found for consumer electronics repair. I don't have any experience with DAT recorders, recently bought a Sony PCM R-300 off ebay.

+Bri G. I have been playing with DAT recorders lately. Best ones I have looked at so far the Tascam and Sony models. Panasonic has a lot of SME capacitors in the servo control. The Panasonic looks really nice, but they are high maintenance.

+Jose Francisco Medeiros DAT is no longer made, they are all vintage now, however it is the best sounding tape format ever produced, and I have hundreds of tapes. I have many mixed tapes I made back in the 80's.MP3 just doesn't have the quality, and there is just something about grabbing a mixed tape, loading it, pressing play, and listening to it, in the order it was recorded.

+Jose Francisco Medeiros Yes DAT is uncompressed just like a CD. DAT supports 4 sampling rates. 32KHz LP speed was mostly used by FM radio stations for programing as the frequency response is limited to 15KHz which is right what the FM transmitter ordered. 44.1 was used by studios for mastering CDs (DAT was a professional format used by recording studios for mastering CDs. They would mix down the multi track session tape to 2 track DAT, and then send that DAT tape to the CD pressing plant to make the actual CD.

PS 2 are also grwat super audio cd players and very wepp regsrded in the audiophe community

Only partially correct. Region coding was initially designed to allow for region specific releases of movies. There are 7 regions, 1-6 is for region specific players and disks. Region 0 is universal, and therefore would play in every player right? Wrong. Many name brand DVD players are hard coded to not only look at the regional coding, but also the disk recorded format. Have an NTSC based name brand player, like a Sony, or Panasonic, and put in a PAL disk, even one that has no region coding, and I have such a disk sent from my brother in law, shot with his DVD video camera that recorded directly onto DVD-R disks and it will not play on most of my DVD players. The cheap no name brands, like the one I repaired in this video play the disk fine, but my more expensive ones just put up a message "Cannot play this disk" On another topic, all DVD players and Bluray players manufactured after 2012 have to have anti piracy circuitry built in. Motion pictures shown in movie theatres, and screener copies of movies all have an inaudible digital signature embedded in the sound track. Try to play one of these disks on a newer player, and it doesn't matter if someone took a camera into the theatre or ripped it from a screener, as soon as the player detects this signal, a message comes up on the screen that the content being played can only be played on professional equipment, and at that point it refuses to play. I have a few movies that I downloaded to test this out. They play fine on my media player, and PC. Take that same USB stick that played just fine on my Raspberry Pi, and my pre 2012 Insignia bluray player and plug in into my Sony BD player, and guess what, no play.

+12voltvids Hi the copyprotection your talking about is called Cinavia it watermarks the audio, so any dvd/bluray that has Cinavia protection will not play a copy within 5-15 mins you will get a message saying not licenced to play on this device...that means it's a copy and you should use a much older bluray player that does not have Cinavia protection in order to play copies of blurays.

Could be the flexible ribbon cable. As the pickup moves out the connection goes open when the break flexes.

so what do u do about it? is it the same issue with cds having broken songs nearing the end of the playtime..

Sorry i have no idea.

Plugnit in a different outlet

The new chew ones support 16x9 screens better though, that is why we got rid of our old one. I am using a Sony of similar build quality to this. This is an interesting failure, usually it is the drive belt.

+ducklandwikeno Many reasons. For starters it will play any disk from any country in the world. It will play all regions, and both PAL and NTSC. It will also output in either standard. A PAL disk can be output as NTSC, and an NTSC disk as a PAL signal. This makes for easy converting of a PAL disk to NTSC. It will also play disks that have the watermarked sound track. Modern DVD players and Bluray players, actually all units manufactured after 2012 have a detection circuit in them so that if they detect a professional copyright signature, which is an in-audible watermark in the sound track that will be picked up my a microphone from someone recording a movie, say in a theatre with a camera, will refuse to play it. The courts made the importing and selling of DVD players that do not have this copyright inhibit playback software illegal. So these cheap universal machines have all but disappeared. These machines used to sell for 25.00. Well you can still buy a 25.00 DVD player, but it won't play out of region disks, or PAL disks. This one, and others like it will. So to a video collector that has disks from all over the place, from all different types of sources a universal machine like this is a nice piece of gear to have. I sell theses extra units I get, and rebuild, and I get more for them now, as long as I have the remote for the unit than they ever sold for new. Not anyone will buy them, but those that know what they are, and what they do will pay top dollar for this "piece of shit" The one featured in this video fetched me 70.00!

ok well i see your point