Coby 514 DVD player doesn't

[doglover]

I am trying to troubleshoot this Coby 514 DVD player for a friend who got it a ways back and now wants to use it for a club that is meeting at her house. I tried yesterday to play 2 different DVDs of mine on it at her house, and have been trying to do so again today in my home with DVDs that play fine on my Sony SLV-D300P DVD/VHS and a new Panasonic Blu-ray. These DVDs are from my collection, from Netflix, from a friend who burned them and from some I've copied from VHS to my DVD recorder. In other words, they all end up being unwatchable but before I quit on this Coby unit, I wanted to ask...I've read their manual and troubleshooting guide and none address the problem. Every DVD loads, starts to play, and randomly but frequently pauses, stays paused for some random period of time up to a minute, and then restarts play, sometimes a few frames later, sometimes up to 30 seconds later. I can live with this.

Eventually, 10 minutes in, 20 minutes in, whenever, it will STOP and then usually exhibit "Invalid Disc"; sometimes it will start up again. But too often it STOPS and then the screen displays bright green lines all thru it. When this happens, neither the buttons nor the remote will work, so the disc is stuck inside. The unit doesn't have a hole to force the tray open, grrrrr. When it happened at her house yesterday, I brought the player home and my husband (an EE) finally forced the tray out. Unplugging it for several hours before this had not reset anything, the controls still didn't work til we forced it open.

So? I can put in a drive cleaner but since pristine discs have the same problem as older ones...???

Any help is appreciated.

PS: My husband says it isn't that the manufacturer makes awful product, it's something else, since there are only 1 or 2 sources of manufacturers of the disc drives themselves. Still, the player does NOT like to be paused, or fast-forwarded, either. Harrumph!

Thanks.

[usually_quiet]

Sorry, but I think Coby does make awful products. Historically, they are among the cheapest of the cheap. My sister bought a couple of their DVD players at the supermarket or deparment store for her kids (teenaged and college aged at the time). Neither of them lasted very long. A lens cleaner disc is unlikely to help.