On 16 Dec 2004 21:05:40 GMT, (LASERandDVDfan)
wrote:

My first question is: is it more likely that the DVDs have degraded
or that the DVD player has?

Nope. It's likely the player.

Your player likely uses a dual laser/single lens configuration for the optical
pickup. One laser is optimized for DVDs while the other is optimized for CDs.

For a DVD player, it is fairly safe to assume that it will be mostly used to
play DVDs, which means that the DVD laser gets the wear from use.

Eventually, the laser will start to become marginal and will no longer emit
light at the required efficiency like it once did. This problem is much more
prevalent on "economy" DVD players like the brand you mentioned.

My second question is: having looked inside the box, what I see
appears to be a standard computer DVD drive connected to the power
supply side with a standard computer power supply cable and to the
other side with a standard 40-pin IDE cable.

In this case, it is most certainly possible that your DVD player may be able to
accomodate an IDE standard DVD-ROM drive from almost any manufacturer.

It may be worth getting a DVD-ROM drive if you can find a decent drive at a
reasonable price. - Reinhart

OK, many thanks. I have a spare DVD drive which is known to work, so
I'll try that.