Maintenance

[CoffeeGuy]

For the average user, what sort of preventative maintenance can be done to most any dvd player to insure the most reliable use ?

[Roundabout]

IMHO, the best thing you can do is to keep dust off of the unit, and out of the unit. Wipe the tray occasionally with a damp cloth to remove any dust, and keep the unit in a cabinet if possible to limit the amount of dust that reaches it. Dust is a big enemy to lasers, the objective lens of the player can accumulate dust and block the laser beam (or decrease it) causing skipping or complete failure to read. If you can't keep the unit in a cabinet, the second best thing is to cover it with a cloth when not in use, which will also keep too much dust from reaching the tray area and infiltrating into the unit. If you do have dust getting inside, you'll need to clean the lens from time to time, but the dust will also get down inside the FOP (optical pickup) and settle on the prism and/or the laser/photocell assembly where it's nearly impossible to clean. Then the entire FOP would have to be replaced. So keep dust away whenever possible (and smoke too, if you're a smoker).

Other than that, the only other thing you could do is unplug the unit when not in use to extend the life of the Power Supply, as most units have a "soft off" state (like standby) where the PS is running (consuming a small amount of AC power) all the time even when the unit is off. They do this so you can turn it on and off with a remote, but there are electronics running inside even when the power is off to allow this function. Maybe it's not that practical to unplug it every time, but if you aren't going to use it for an extended period of time, just unplug it and that may help a little to extend it's life (and save it from power surges and lightning strikes, if you have those in your area). Some units will completely turn off AC power if you press the Power switch on the front, some won't - depending on the design. There's no way to tell just by looking at it, if you have an ohm meter, you can measure across the AC plug of the unit (with it unplugged, of course) and if there is any resistance at all, the power switch is a DC switch and that means the unit's PS is always on, even when the unit is off (it also uses a small amount of AC power in this state, less than it consumes when the unit is on, however). If you have infinite resistance (open circuit) with this test, then the unit has an AC type power switch. In that case, you could just turn the power switch off and know the unit is totally off (same effect as unplugging it).