Do I Need To Clean Anything On A DVD Player...?

[SteyrAUG]

I have a pretty high end Sony DVD player that I bought 4 years ago. Been running smooth until about a month ago.

One some of my DVD+Rs after about an hour of play the picture gets pixelated, freezes and skips back to an earlier chapter of the movie.

I know the DVDs are fine because they play without error on my other 2 more recently purchased DVD players. Also if I turn the DVD player off for several hours it will play the same disc all the way through without problems.

Is there any kind of regular maintenance I need to perform to keep this from happening?

[jameshgross]

Are you a smoker?
If so you may need to carefully clean the lens on the laser LED.

[SteyrAUG]

Are you a smoker?
If so you may need to carefully clean the lens on the laser LED.

Don't smoke but I suppose it could be dust.

Is the lens obvious if I open it up and is there any special cleaning considerations?

[redwudz]

Get some 'canned air' and try blowing it into the lens area. Sometimes that all that's needed if it's just dust and not grease or smoke contamination.

To clean the lens in most DVD players means taking it apart. But open up the tray and shine a light in there, may be enough room for a cleaning swab. I use denatured alcohol and a long foam Qtip type swab. Don't get the swab too wet, you don't want to wash the lube off the laser slide.

[lordsmurf]

Sounds more like bad media than dirty drive.
Could also be heat.

[SteyrAUG]

Sounds more like bad media than dirty drive.
Could also be heat.

They all play just fine in my other 2 DVD players.

[Captain315]

I just use a lens cleaner on mine. You can buy them at most stores that carry cd's and dvd's. A cd cleaning disk will work on a dvd player just as well. It's just a disk with some fine brushes to clean the lens when it passes over the laser.

[MOVIEGEEK]

It sounds like the player is overheating.Open the case(unplug first) and blast everything with a can of air,then move the player away from other components.
If it still stutters then buy a new one.