LG LDA-730

[Wanderlustus]

Hi Folks --

My LDA-730 began turning off/on by itself recently, and when I called LG about it they gave me some cock'n'bull story about a "new coating" on DVD's that cause this to happen with their players. They said I needed a firmware update but since I can't download the firmware from their site (too many people screwing up their players from downloading and installing incorrect firmware, they claimed). I'd have to get a dealer to do it.

Is my player fried and this goon is just having me on? I've tried older discs on this player as well, and it just keeps doing the same thing.

Oh yeah, this player (worked well for two years) is a replacement for a LDA-530 which stopped working properly after a couple of months. I think I'm done with LG.

Thanks for taking the time to read this rant.

[Wanderlustus]

Man, I thought someone might have had a thought on this. Has anyone ever had this sort of thing happen with a different player?

[jman98]

Yes, the "new coating" story is completely false. You are right about that. I'm guessing that they lied to cover up the fact that they've probably had a lot of issues with that particular model. Some models from various manufacturers are simply problematic. I have a Philips DVP-642 that has worked fine for me, but many people had serious problems with this model when it was still in production. The story about firmware is probably right though. Your original post was on a major holiday. Many people here don't read the forums on holidays or weekends.

Consumers don't like to hear this, but this is the reality of your situation. Today's DVD players (with some few exceptions like Oppo) are generally designed to be as cheap as possible. The marketplace demands it. This means that the manufacturers use only the cheapest components. The thin size that the marketplace also demands means that today's players simply must have adequate ventilation to air cool. Eventually the player will break down either from the cheap components or heat damage and you'll have to replace it.

If you decide to get another player, I'd recommend that you not buy Samsung if you care anything at all about being able to play discs from other regions. We're getting a lot of posts from all over the world asking for unlock codes for Samsung players and it seems that at present their players simply cannot be unlocked. I have a Samsung HDTV and it's great and I generally am favorable towards their products, but I wouldn't buy a DVD player from them at this time. If you care nothing at all about playing discs from other regions, then you can ignore this.

[Wanderlustus]

Thanks jman, very informative. though, if the "new coating" story is false, what is a firmware update supposed to fix the "real" problem of the player shutting off/on? If so, how am I to get this firmware? And if the player keeps shutting down how am I supposed to load the firmware? Sorry for all the questions but I've never loaded anything but a flic into a player.

BTW, as you may have read in a couple of other threads in here, I'm looking to grab a philips dvp5990/5992 as soon as I can find one in stock without high shipping costs. At this time I can't find any place to by one in my area. The closest Best Buy, which has them in-store, is at least a 6 hour trip. BB currently doesn't have any for sale online.

Of most imp' to me is the ability to play Xvid, but I'll admit the idea of being able to hook-up an external drive to the player rocks too.

[jman98]

I have no idea if the firmware update will fix your problem. It might or might not. Others have reported somewhat similar problems on other models. The usual advice is "buy another player". You'll have to apparently take the player to an authorized service center and get them to apply the firmware update for you unless you can find an unauthorized copy of the firmware somewhere on the internet (I have no idea where to go for this). Again, I can't guarantee that the firmware update will or won't fix your problem. You'll need to factor that in when you decide if it's worth trying or not. You'll surely be charged for them applying the update. I would make a wild guess that $30 might be the approximate charge. If a service center was willing to do it for free, it might be worth it, but if I'm right about the cost, that's a lot of money to gamble on something that may not fix your problem.

Amazon.com has those players for sale for $59 and $56 US respectively. If Amazon.com has them, Amazon.ca might too. I didn't check. Those prices are reasonable for the US market. Note that any DVD player that plays Xvid/Divx may not play everything. We have a sticky here
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic352457.html
that tells what encoding options may be problems for DVD player playback.

[Wanderlustus]

Thanks again for the feedback. The philips players haven't been available on Amazon.ca. Maybe I'll just kick back and wait a little longer. Hell, it aint' the end of the world, but I'm sure getting tired of watching flics on my 19" comp' monitor. :>