electronics annoyance

[cellio]

Grump. The DVD player seems to be relaying video but not audio. All connections are tight. And there are two audio connections anyway, and wouldn't they both have to be loose to produce a total failure? Sigh. The player worked fine a few days ago. (Yes, I confirmed that the TV has sound and that multiple DVDs failed.)

So we are now faced with the prospect that buying a new one might be cheaper than investigating and repairing the problem. That's just wrong, somehow. It's a region-free player and I don't remember if we bought it from overseas, so repair might not be trivial. But I don't like the disposable-goods consumer model and I feel bad every time I go that route. I can hear the landfills crying out for mercy.

It looks like replacements are slightly cheaper from Amazon UK than from Amazon US, but electronics is one of those areas where it might be worth buying from the guys in your own country. (And then there's shipping.)

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Try a different cable with it, maybe the wiring has some problem.

[cellio]

Good point. It's a doubled cable and I assumed both parts would have to fail, so I didn't think about it, but that could still happen. It'd be great if the problem turns out to be a $10 cable!

[cellio]

I took the cable to Radio Shack and asked them to test it. The guy said "these are usually rock-solid cables, but sure". He then pulled out the testing gadget, futzed with it, and said "this cable is astonishingly solid". Drat. I apologized for not being able to give him the business for a replacement cable. To his credit, he didn't try to sell me a DVD player on the spot. :-)

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Drat. Oh well, was worth a try. And you cleaned the connections with alcohol or whatever, and double checked everythings plugged in the right way round (my dad is an expert with his hifi and still managed to get a speaker cable running the wrong way and it was bugging him for *months* about the poor sound till he double checked and had one of those, "duh!" moments ::giggle::). Um and made sure you didn't press a button or turn a knob the wrong way or something really stupid? I do that way too often for comfort *sigh*

[cellio]

Alas, the cables are clean and correctly connected.

Technically I still haven't determined if the problem is the TV contacts or the DVD player, but I'm betting on the DVD player. For sound to completely fail two contacts on the TV would have to have failed simultaneously; on the other hand, if the problem is with the DVD player then it might not be the contacts at all but whatever generates the signal in the first place. I don't have either a second DVD player or a second TV to test with, but I think the next step is to take the DVD player to a repair place for evaluation and watch them hook it up to a TV as a basic test.

[vonstrassburg.livejournal.com]

Also check that it's the DVD outputs that are stuffed, not the TV inputs.

[cellio]

Good point. Ok, time to actually try to comprehend the wiring jumble that is the TV and its associated bits. :-) With luck, there'll be alternatives that I can easily swap around. (I didn't wire it in the first place and I know there are different types of connections so you can't just blithely swap a VCR and a DVD player. But hey, I can read manuals. :-) )