I bought a Panasonic DVD recorder (DMR-E55) from EBay and it lasted 2 days before going dead, not a good start.

Anyways the seller was being an arse so I opened it up and found the reg had gone in the power supply, it was an STRG6353 and only £4 so I chaged it and back to life came the old girl so no big deal.

Now 3 days on another fault has appeared, when I insert a disc (DVD-R, DVD-RAM or normal film) it tries to read the disc and resets to "self check", tries to read the disc and resets to "self check" tries to read the disc ....... you get the idea. The only way to get it to boot back up is the manually remove the DVD from the drive.

I have checked the power supply and the 1.8v, 3.3v, 5v & 12v are all clean with no ripples.

Finally I put a retail DVD in earlier this afternoon and it played the whole disc perfectly. I thought it might be OK so I ejected the disc and push the tray straight back in only to find it when straight to "self check" again, there can't be a fat lot wrong as 5 secs earlier it had just finished a 3 hour play with no issues at all and now it is back to not reading discs.

Anyone any idea what could be wrong with it now or if not a recommendation for a good recorder with a built in HD would be nice as I feel an upgrade on the cards.........