I bought a Philips DVP 642 DVD player in December 2005, and 2 months shy
of 2 years, it failed - having symptoms of a well-known problem with a
certain capacitor in the power supply.

Well before the problem occurred, I had come across a description of the
failure and how to fix it by replacing a particular capacitor on the power
supply board.

It turns out that the particular capacitor supposedly would likely be
leaking some electrolyte or be bulging - it was doing neither.

When I opened up the player and left it turned on for a few minutes, that
particular capacitor became very much hotter than any other capacitor, so
I replaced it, and the player is still working now, some two years later.

A couple of years ago, I bought a Digital Stream DTX9900 digital to analog
converter box for my old TV. Son of a ... it too failed at about the 22
month mark. I opened up the case, and there it was - a bulging capacitor
on the power supply board.

I replaced that capacitor a couple of weeks ago, and the converter has
since been working.

Anybody else noticed any coincidences like these? About the only
similarity in use between these two boxes is that they both are on
"stand-by" power 24-7. Other than that, I use the converter a lot more
than the DVD player.

--- Joe