Help! DVD Player Sputtering & Skipping?

[merc]

I've owned a Pioneer DV-05 for almost 2 years and it has never given me any problems whatsoever. No lip sync, no prolonged layer changes, no nothing. Lately, it has started to stutter and skip with the audio portions of BOTH DVDs and CDs. This skipping usually occurs after about 1.5 Hrs of continuous use. If I pause and then restart the unit, it continues to stutter. If I stop the playback, open/close the drawer and then start it, sometimes it begins to stutter again. If I turn the DV-05 off, then back on again, it plays perfectly for the rest of the DVD or CD. Is this unit about to bite the dust? Could the problem be due to a dirty lens? Is there anything I can do to inexpensively fix this problem?
Thank you for your help and suggestions!




Take Care,
merc

[Lexman]

Merc, not sure what to tell you on this, but I would start by inquiring to Pioneer to see if there is a way to get to the factory panel to run any sort of a calibration procedure.

Have you noticed if it occurs more on dual layer discs? My Sony S7000 developed problems in this area. Unfortunately, my solution was, it became my dedicated CD player. These discs seem to give the most problems.

Lex

[merc]

Thanks for the advice Lexman.
Unfortunately, it skips on CDs too. Others have suggested that I may have a dirty lens on the DVD. I hope it is as simple as that, since I wasn't planning on upgrading my DVD player till I upgraded my TV and the current battle between SACD and DVD-A had been decided. If I had to upgrade my DVD now, I'd probably just go with a cheap interim player, to get me to the point described above...




Take Care,
merc

[Mike S.]

Whoa....you've just about summed up what's going on with my Toshiba SD-2109.

I got it in March of '99 and it's worked flawlessly until several months ago when it would start to hang up after and hour to an hour and a half of use (in some cases..usually works fine).

The pictures starts to pixilate, the sound starts to skip, then the whole thing locks up with the picture still on the screen.
FF, RW or skip hardly ever work. Stopping and restarting at the beginning of the problem chapter always winds up locking up within 30 seconds of the same spot.
Skipping to the next chapter usually works, but I wind up missing several minutes of the movie (ticks me off).
The only thing that works to fix it is turning the player off for a couple of minutes, then powering back up and restarting. It plays through the trouble spot flawlessly then.

Never had it happen more than once per movie, and it's probably happened on maybe 10 different discs (none that I own...always rentals or discs borrowed from friends).

I've got an email in to Toshiba, and they've replied wanting more info, so if I hear anything from them, I'll be sure to post what they tell me.

Let me know if you find out anything.

[Lexman]

Mike, goodluck on the fix with Toshiba. Also, welcome to htguide! Merc, goodluck to you to. It's really agrevating when something doesn't go according to plan.

I really do need to take my 9000 in for a software update.

Lex





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[ThomasW]

You should certainly try a laser cleaning disk, but unfortunately this sounds more like the laser is mistracking, or losing it's alignment. A dirty laser isn't going to play for 1.5hrs then have problems. Check with a service center to find out the cost of having the laser realigned. This is probably a $100 "fix" and definitely not a DIY situation.




theAudioWorx
Klone-Audio

[Mike S.]

I finally got a reply from Toshiba about this, and it was as vague as I figured it would be....

"Since this does not happen consistantly, we feel that debris (dust or dirt)
on the disk or in the player is the cause of the trouble. However, it is
possible that your player may need to be repaired. We recommend bring the
player to a service station. For the nearest Toshiba Authorized Service
Station, please check our service center locator on-line at the following
web page."

Thanks Toshiba!