I have had a string of bad luck with DVD players. I'm wondering if everyone has these troubles with the stupid things.

Our MH has a Panasonic Etertainment System installed in the overhead cabinet but it only had a VHS tape player. So I replaced the VHS component with a compatable Panasonic VHS and DVD unit. The DVD player only worked for a year and gave up. Of course it was about 5 weeks past warranty. So I purchased a Toshiba VHS/DVD player and it only lasted 6 weeks. I returned it and brought home a Sony. Thast was 8 weeks ago and now the Sony wants to stop playing the DVD disks about every ten minutes or so.

It's not a heat build-up thing because We have a thermostatically controlled ventilation fan in our overhead entertainment center set at 90* and it works very well. Not only that, but the last two players have never been used while installed inside the overhead cabinet. We have only used them inside our house.

Are all DVD players like this? Do you think lack of use could be the problem. I don't think so since the last two are so new.

We're not big movie fans at all and look at a movie about three or four times a year. But our children are starting to send us home-made DVDs of the grand kids and family gatherings. I have asked them if they run the DVDs before they send them and both said they have not had any trouble with any of them.

Have had nothing but trouble with DVD players. The first one was so counter-intuitive to operate that I thought the problem had to be me but I figured that if I couldn't operate it I didn't want it. But Walmart took it back and gave me another one just like it which did work.
The old VHS tape players were simple analog and relatively trouble free if you cleaned the head. DVD's are digital with a ton of data packed into a very small space. If anything goes wrong you are screwed. If a cosmic ray hits the processor the player is destroyed without any visible damage.
I lump DVD players with camcorders, digital cameras, cell phones, laptop computers, etc. Almost everyone is convinced that their life will end if they don't have all this junk even though it breaks down almost as soon as you get it out of the box and people just keep spending tons of money to replace them.
My favorite DVD player was our first one which somehow jumped to French with English subtitles when you hit resume after a pitstop break. You then had to turn it off so the processor would reset and then hunt through the "scenes" until you could resume play near where you stopped it!

I just replaced the broken stock "PJ Jamo" brand ($74 on the internet for the entire unit, and speakers), with a Sony.

Anyway the Sony has a mechanical lock for the DVD player when moving it.

Maybe the innards of the stock ones were getting jounced around and misaligned/broken???

We'll see how the Sony endures.

I know that I posted a while back that I was having DVD problems but after taking the time to read the manual I have solved all my problems. Now to the OP. Many of the problems you are having are likely in the disc itself. We used to rent a lot of DVD's from Netflix and they were always well used. A lot of them gave us problems until we learned to do a cleaning before trying to play them. We kept a spray bottle of just water and a clean dish towel near our entertainment system. A good wipe and they usually were good to go. Also, get a good DVD cleaning disc and use it once in a while. Since doing these things we have not had a problem that couldn't be worked out. Many times the homemade DVD's that people make are not compatible on your machine because of the settings that the maker has on their machine. Also, watch out for discs that have a stick on label on them. The adhesive that holds the label on will eventually come loose from the heat inside of your player and get stuck in the mechanism. I had to completely disassemble my player/recorder to get a disc out after the label came loose. It almost ruined the machine. Anyway, bottom line, most of the problems that people have with their electronics are self-imposed. I have had many of the things if not all of them listed above and never had a problem with any of them. "Operator error" is the problem. Read the instructions and be patient and you can almost always find the problem or solution. Hope this helps,
Ray

Ray - I agree with you that most times it is a loose nut at the wheel (me). We have tried brand new DVDs, old DVDs, and home made DVDs with pretty much the same problems.

But it's kind of hard to make a mistake when you:
1. Push the DVD OPEN button
2. Set disk into holder (I must admit, though, that I have placed the disk in the holder upside down once.)
3. Press the DVD CLOSE button
4. Press the PLAY button

Boogity, I agree that it should be just that easy. What type problems are you having? Does the DVD attempt to play, no play, or play-skip-stop or what? I was having a problem with subtitles, and hearing impaired viewing. I finally found a menu that eliminated the problems. If you can describe what is happening I might be able to help. Are these players new, used or what?
Ray

The first replacement (Panasonic) I installed just quit after about 13 months of good performance. I even took it to a repair shop and the guy there told me that fixing these units is not economic because they are so cheap at the discount stores. He said that he would have to spend more time than the unit was worth.

The problems we were having with the other 2 units are pretty much the same. We put in a disk and everything works fine for about 10 or 15 minutes. Then the picture stops for a second and resumes playing. Then after another few minutes it repeats the routine. Many times it will not re-start.

We have cleaned disks many times without much success. Yes, we have even studied how to clean CDs.

I'm wondering how people who watch these things every day cope with the problems - or how they avoid these problems. Luckily we only use one about once or twice a month. Maybe that's part of the problem. Grin.

We have an in-dash unit that came with our coach. It hasn't worked since day one. It is and was more trouble than it's worth. It has been replaced by Monaco 4 times and still it doesn't work. Dual layer technology has quite a bit of bearing on how well a player works. Most players aren't really designed for the disks that are coming out these days. They will play them but seem to protest about it quite a bit. If the tracking of the lazer is off any the player just locks up. I finally just gave up on it.

What we have done is to purchase a 30" monitor for one of our laptops, and we use the DVD drive in the laptop to play movies. So far, it's been a great system. The DVD drive in our Mac Book Pro is dual layer capable and it has never skipped a beat. The laptop wasn't purchased for playing DVD's but it has served great in that mode. The big monitor really helps when I edit photographs or play an game every once in a while. The nice thing about it we also purchased an "Applecare" extended warranty, which still has about a year of time left so if it goes belly up, it's not my problem man.

We have a portable player that has done great. I think the laptops and poprtables have drives that are made for the jouncing/shock of moivement and the others are made for stationary home theater use.

As I said my new one has a "mechanical lock" setting to use when moving it. So there's probably something inside that wasn't made for "life on the road."

Anyway, from past experience, I am not rtoo confident that my new one will last either. So I extended the length of the wire lead connections to the new unit for easy removal/replacment if/when it goes.

The good part is that due to the release of the new Blu-Ray format, the DVD format is becoming obsolete and the better brand name DVD players are very cheap now.

They offer great 100 watt/channel sound and do a great job of upsampling DVD to near HD picture quality - about $200 got me my Sony with far better perfomance than the no-name POS unit that came with my rig.

But I would have preferred to have gotten at least about 5 more years service out of the original...

We buy the cheapest we can find and have had pretty good luck. $20-$25. I did have one that died right away though. So I guess that's 2 outta 3 which ain't bad. I have found that I can not expect it to act as fast as I think it should. They seem to need time to think once I choose a function. If I'm impatient and push to many buttons or the same one a number of times, the best way I found to clear it is to open and shut it and then go slow.

Not sure what's going on with your entertainment system. I have 5 DVD players currently and have never had the problems you describe, even with the HD-DVD (talk about obsolete) in the SpaceCraft. I have $49 cheapo's, and full digital component theatre quality DVD players. My parents and brother are using my cast-offs, and they are almost 10 years old. They really old stuff won't play recorded DVD's, only production discs.

Three in such a short period sounds a lot more like power problems to your entertainment cabinet.

A DVD player produces a digital sound signal, amplification comes from an amplifier, a combo unit may produce 100 watts of sound, but a DVD player doesn't produce any sound.

The upscaling players out today upscale 480i (Standard DVD) to either 720 or 1080 resolution. I have noticed a lot of 720 TV's for sale at box stores really cheap. There's a reason that they are really cheap, they won't work with any of the newer format stuff (Blu-Ray, etc. unless you dumb them down to 720)

In short, it's pretty bomb-proof technology. I'd look for problems otside of the DVD player.

FWIW...

Whatever you call it, it's one unit that you stick the DVD into that produces 100 watts per channel for 5 channels, plus, another 100 for the sub-woofer.

A separate DVD Player and separate amp with these specs would be at least $400-$500, plus, take up more space and would not fit.

I could not find a separate 5.1 theater system amplifier that powered the sub-woofer speaker - most required self-powered sub-woofers. And the AM/FM radio receives much better.

The unit that came with the trailer only put out 25 watts per channel.

The difference is amazing. Definitely worth $200. Which as I said, is probably a heavily dicounted price due to the emergence of Blu-Ray.

It's a good time to by a DVD player/5.1 theater system. That is, if you do not want/need the latest and greatest which is now Blu-Ray that will play Blu-Ray discs that can fit the data from 7 DVD's onto 1 Blu-Ray disc.

I tend to think like DIYguy, that your power to the unit may be a little problematic and causing premature failure. Not an uncommon problem if your DVD players were being powered from an inverter.

However, one other thought does come to mind and that is that there may be some contaminate settling on the lens of the laser that is causing some buildup and that can distort/obscure the reading from the DVD. Cleaning DVDs is not a bad idea but it does nothing if the problem is a coating buildup on the laser lense, itself.

One other place I have seen buildups cause a problem is in the friction plate that holds the DVD to the powered hub.

It does not take much contamination on this to make them slip under use. The contamination can come from inside the cabinet but more likely from fingers and such that have touched the hole and the rim around it on the DVDs. One contaminated DVD can mess up a player for a lot of perfectly good DVDs that follow it.

Lots of common substances can cause the friction material to become slippery or even glazed or hardened. Once contaminated, there are few tools to clean these spindles properly to restore the grip.

One suggestion is to clean each DVD around the spindle hole before putting it into the player and be sure to only handle it by the edges and not by the center hole area of the DVD.

I do not THINK that power supply is the issue due to the fact that the last DVD player was used in our stix-n-brix home. The first one was used only in the motor home and the second was used in both. I capitalized the word THINK because every time I think one way it ends being the other.

The advice about handling the disks is a good one because I sometimes handle them with one finger through the hole. Hmmmmm. Thanks for the tip.