"Scott" wrote in message
...
Arfa Daily wrote:


To be honest, you are likely to be wasting your time getting to the lens
to clean it, as this is highly unlikely to be your problem unless a) you
live in a very smoky house, or b) you've recently had some dusty building
work done. Unlike with a CD player, normal household dust tends not to
deposit on the lens of a DVD deck, because of the extremely high
rotational speed of the disc, compared to a CD deck. This causes a layer
of air to be dragged round under the disc at high speed, which tends to
keep the lens dust-free. From years of experience repairing DVD players,
it is far more likely that you have a worn laser ( or possibly, but less
likely ) a worn spindle motor. If the unit plays CDs without skipping,
then you can be reasonably sure that it is a laser issue.

Arfa

It started skipping when I was playing a CD. It has been exposed to a lot
of smoke from people exhaling towards the TV. I'm prepare for the worst
anyways, just in case the DVD unit is bad I already have the replacement #
from Panasonic($110). So either way I have to pull the unit out.

-ss

You may be lucky then, and a clean of the lens might restore it - for a
while at least, and assuming that it's not a computer-style IDE type drive.
Cleaning never seems to help with these. Clean the lens with a cotton bud
(Q-Tip) moistened with electronics grade (99.7% + ) isopropyl alcohol.
Polish with a dry cotton bud. Don't be tempted to adjust any pots mounted on
the laser. Mis-adjustment of them is likely to result in rapid destruction
of the laser diode(s).

If the price you have from Pan is for just a laser, rather than a
pre-assembled sub deck, be aware that most Pan DVD players, require
mechanical adjustment of the tilt and skew after the laser is fitted.
Provided that the model in question has the jitter meter software built in,
this is not difficult, if a little fiddly.

Arfa