Hi All
We have a cyberhome DVD/VCD player (can't tell you what model exactly, there's nothing notable on the case and, as its second hand, we don't have any of the packaging bumf - its fairly long in the tooth as far as these things go I think) that has started playing up in the last few months. I'm seeking advice on what might be the root cause and if there's anything that can be done to fix it.
What's Happening
===============
Every now and then the playback will skip - you will lose the sound and get a black frame for about a second or so, then a glimpse of picture (generally without sound), then another black frame; this repeats, sometimes as many as six times but generally two or three times in quick succession before normal playback resumes. Rewinding and retrying triggers a skip at exactly the same point each time, so its not an entirely random glitch. This behaviour pretty consistent across all the DVDs we've tried (some of which were fine when we played them earlier in the year) and checking the same DVDs on the computer in the office upstairs sees them playing entirely glitch free.
At first this was something that happened fairly infrequently, generally near the beginning or end of a DVD rather than in the middle, but as time goes on it seems to be getting worse; last night for instance there were probably a dozen or so 'skips' during a one hour TV documentary we watched, whereas when this first started happening we'd maybe get three or four over the course of a two hour movie. However when I experimented with a VCD this evening it played the entire thing, an hour or more, without any skips or glitches whatsoever. Interestingly when I then replayed the documentary from the previous night I was able to get well into the second chapter of the DVD before I encountered a 'single' skip (we'd had maybe two or three 'double' or 'triple' skips by that point last night).
Any thoughts on what's going on here? It seems to me that the laser is 'missing a beat' or something when playing DVDs, but I'm interested in why I'm not getting the same behaviour with a VCD - are the tolerances less demanding with them? I'm also intrigued as to why playing a DVD immediately after playing a VCD was noticeably less problematic than it had been the night before.
Regards
Luke
We have a cyberhome DVD/VCD player (can't tell you what model exactly, there's nothing notable on the case and, as its second hand, we don't have any of the packaging bumf - its fairly long in the tooth as far as these things go I think) that has started playing up in the last few months. I'm seeking advice on what might be the root cause and if there's anything that can be done to fix it.
What's Happening
===============
Every now and then the playback will skip - you will lose the sound and get a black frame for about a second or so, then a glimpse of picture (generally without sound), then another black frame; this repeats, sometimes as many as six times but generally two or three times in quick succession before normal playback resumes. Rewinding and retrying triggers a skip at exactly the same point each time, so its not an entirely random glitch. This behaviour pretty consistent across all the DVDs we've tried (some of which were fine when we played them earlier in the year) and checking the same DVDs on the computer in the office upstairs sees them playing entirely glitch free.
At first this was something that happened fairly infrequently, generally near the beginning or end of a DVD rather than in the middle, but as time goes on it seems to be getting worse; last night for instance there were probably a dozen or so 'skips' during a one hour TV documentary we watched, whereas when this first started happening we'd maybe get three or four over the course of a two hour movie. However when I experimented with a VCD this evening it played the entire thing, an hour or more, without any skips or glitches whatsoever. Interestingly when I then replayed the documentary from the previous night I was able to get well into the second chapter of the DVD before I encountered a 'single' skip (we'd had maybe two or three 'double' or 'triple' skips by that point last night).
Any thoughts on what's going on here? It seems to me that the laser is 'missing a beat' or something when playing DVDs, but I'm interested in why I'm not getting the same behaviour with a VCD - are the tolerances less demanding with them? I'm also intrigued as to why playing a DVD immediately after playing a VCD was noticeably less problematic than it had been the night before.
Regards
Luke
