On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 21:02:58 +0100, Anthony Bowles wrote:

After much fiddling with
various connections etc I touched the case of the DVD player and could
feel a humming through my finger tips. If ran my fingers across the
case they didn't so much as "glide" across it as "juddered". Anyway
this seemed to cure the problem and the DVD came back on. The only
thing I could think of was either it's becoming faulty or it was some
build up of static (however I didn't get a static shock).

This is normal for any non-earthed mains operated device with a metal case - it's capacitive
coupling of the mains through the transformer. Very low current and not harmful.