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Tech Support thread

Kepler

Kepler

Si certus es dubita
OK, engineers and people good with your hands (and heads).

The equipment: Fairly new DVD/Blue Ray player (purchased within the year)

The problem: Vibration and fairly loud noise when disk is engaged (playing, paused, or stopped).

The interesting parts:

It only happens with certain disks.

A given disk is either always silent or always noisy (so it's not that the disk is ill-seated during a given session).

Pressing my fingers on top of the unit reduces the noise greatly (hence I assume it's vibration).

But the fact that it even occurs when the disk is stopped throws me, unless the disk is still spinning but the head is not engaged, but in that case what's the difference between "pause" and "stop"?

Turning the unit off instantly stops the noise (it doesn't "run down").
 
Re: Tech Support thread

OK, more info: pressing on the unit does not lower the noise, it's changing its orientation that does it. The noise gets progressively louder tilting the unit along the pitch, gets progressively quieter as I turn the unit along the roll axis. Yaw makes no difference (so, hey, gravity not magnetic I guess).


My guess is the disk is unbalanced. I had discarded that when I thought I could press down to reduce the vibration but since that's not the case...

So: not a vibration then but the actual whirring of the disk in space? I assume I cannot do anything about that. Boo. But I'm still not quite sure why that would vary with pitch and roll. Maybe the moved air finds a better path to circulate in some alignments?

Note that I have always had the unit stacked (on a desk, under a screen) but I isolated it for the test.
 
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Re: Tech Support thread

Yet more.

Now I'm thoroughly confused. Placing a cloth under the unit reduced the noise by 90%. This obviously resuggests vibration.

The f-ck?
 
Kepler said:
Again, obviously. But what can I do about it?
Click to expand...

Vote for Sniffles.

Seriously, I have no idea. A decade ago I would have been happy to help and might have even had the answer for you, but I've been out of the loop so long I wouldn't have a clue.
 
Re: Tech Support thread

Buy ‘murican!! :mad:

:D

Since it appears to be vibrational, how’s-about inducing some ‘intentional warpage’... such as a bar coaster (or equivalent) under the rear right or left ‘leg’/corner? Cheap, easy, and if it don’t work... “awww, nuts”.

#redneckfixes
 
Re: Tech Support thread

Only thing I can think of is that it got too warm and the internals melted *just* enough to cause the imbalance when a disk is loaded.

Unfortunately, most electronics are built to be thrown away, as the cost to have it looked at/fixed (or even just ordering the parts yourself and attempting it) is more expensive than sh*tcanning it and getting a new one.

Or, for a quick fix, do try putting a coaster under a corner/all of it. I had to put a drink coaster under the HDD attached to my XBox via USB because the vibration made a low rumble like I was watching a Michael Bay film every minute or two. All day and night. Coaster silenced it immediately.

I've stuck with Samsung for my TV and BluRay players because they seemed like they were the only one with their sh*t together during the big push for HDTV/BluRay. Unfortunately, being the leader for so long has given way to complacency on their new stuff (from what I've read). That, and they decided too many of us stream for them to continue producing BluRay players.
 
Re: Tech Support thread

Kepler said:
Yet more.

Now I'm thoroughly confused. Placing a cloth under the unit reduced the noise by 90%. This obviously resuggests vibration.

The f-ck?
Click to expand...

Order a new one online as you can get a good one for $50 these days, or a cheap one for $30. Just a thought. How much is your time worth?
 
Re: Tech Support thread

Some notes:

- Does the vibrating disk act this way every time it's played? In other words, are "safe" DVDs always safe, and vibrating DVDs always vibrating?
- When you hit "Stop", the player will almost always continue spinning the disc. Hit stop again and it will probably actually stop spinning. They do this to limit the annoyance from accidentally hitting stop when you meant to hit pause.
- DVD players are manufactured insanely cheaply. It's not a surprise that it acts up after less than a year. Some are just lemons.

Do the offending DVDs act the same in other players? It's almost never the disc itself - they're manufactured in huge quantities, then printed with the data separately. While flaws can happen, it's far more likely that the player (which is infinitely more complex in mechanics) is the problem.
 
Re: Tech Support thread

Here's a fun one that could also go in the grinding gears thread:

My cable company at the new house is chock full of winners. Internet went down while we were at work, which has been an intermittent occurrence normally solved by resetting the modem. Come home, reset the modem, still not working. Call up tech support, they say it's the modem. Try using the one they provided since I've been lazy and haven't returned it, still nothing. They still still say its the modem even though both aren't working, earliest they can get a tech out is Saturday.

It's a new house, and they hadn't buried the cable line yet. Also of note, the city just put in new electrical poles on my street, and the cable lines which are co-located are still on the old poles, but they're in process of migrating to the new ones.

I go look outside, and they had buried a new line and connected us to that one. I switch back to the unburied line the initial installer hooked us up to, and it works fine. I go look at the poles, and the unburied line is still connected to the old pole along with a handful of others, and there's one connection on the new pole which is presumably the new buried line to my house.

So in both a mystery and a miracle, the guys buried a new line, hooked us up to it on one end, hooked it up to the new but not yet live pole on the other end, and then left the original unburied line there even though it should have no longer needed.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to communicate this to the cable company so they don't fark it up by taking out the unburied temporary line before the new one is live.
 
Re: Tech Support thread

Kep - I suggest a hammer followed by a trip to Best Buy, Target, Amazon, or whatever your favorite retailer happens to be. :)
 
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