DVD player freezing....

[Salu]

My old DVD home cinema system had a problem where increasingly more and more DVDs would play about 3/4 of the way and then suddenly pause. After several minutes it would carry on or it wouldn't. Removing the disc and cleaning sometimes bought a bit more time. Moving the DVD to my PC meant I could watch it again. I put it down to either overheating (although it had plenty of airing space) or dirty heads (which were cleaned repeatedly). Eventually I decided to replace it.

I went out a fortnight ago and bought a new Samsung home cinema. When I got it home I was annoyed to find that it had previously been opened and the wires coarsely recoiled but installed it anyway.

I put a DVD on and watched about 3/4 of it. The same problem happened again. This was a rented DVD and had not been played in my old system. Putting it in my PC I could watch it perfectly. I optimistically put it down to overheating as I had arranged my kit with the video on the bottom, the DVD on top and the Sky+ on the top. I had to because they didn’t fit otherwise. The Samsung has no vent holes on the top but a visible small fan at the back. The Sky + can get hot so I put it on the top.

Last night I put a second DVD in and the same happened again! This time it was a brand new DVD that had never been played before. It would get 1:16mins into the film and pause. The counter would however continue, almost like the DVD had forgotten to show the movie and sound. Leaving it up to 5 mins can cause it to carry on for a couple of secs or no change. Fast forward, rewind etc have no effect nor any other button except eject or “Off�.

Obviously I can take it back but I am reluctant to as fitting the wires take an age…I might try taking the DVD and speakers back but leave the wires…however my question is “Is this a fault or is it overheating?� “Would overheating cause this fault or what fault?� Am I just unlucky or is something else causing it? Electromagnetic fields etc….

Any help would be appreciated….

[punky]

I think its the laser on your DVD player. Some players naturally pause while switching layers, and I am sure that's your problem. If the pause is really long, or as you say stops entirely, then I think the only option is a new DVD player. As its only 2 weeks old, can you still take it back to the shop?

[banjo]

Take your DVD disk into the shop and watch it on the DVD machine that you fancy just to make sure that you will not have this problem again !

[Jefferson T]

Yup - as said it sounds like it's not doing the layer transition properly. Take it back.

[JediMaster]

I've had this error on DVDs. My DVD Player (£40 Asda) would stop. Lucky it was a 3yr Cover. So I got a Philips. But last night 1 DVD stoped 45min into a TV Series. So wiped DVD and worked ok....

Hope you get it fixed soon. I hate a DODGY DVD.... ;-(

[Salu]

I never did take it back as it seemed OK but it happened again last night. We don't use it that much, maybe twice a month or so...

I will contact them now as it is still in warrantee but I'd like to know why I have the same problem on 2 different DVD players...is it a common thing? Remember these are commercial DVDs and not DVDr's or RW etc..

What happened last night is that the picture froze and the sound continied for a split second and carried on. It did this 4 times or so over 5 mins. It then froze the picture completely and carried on with the sound for a while. The counter continued noramally. I think the sound stopped too but I can't remmeber...

Any ideas?