Bad Hardware

[billroper]

daisy_knotwise told me a couple of days ago that the DVD drive in the Guy Box (it's a combo DVR/DVD recorder from Toshiba) was refusing to load the Pooh disks that she wanted to play. Of course, given the condition of some of the Pooh disks, that might not have been a great surprise, but they were able to play in the Toshiba DVD player in the living room, so I suspected a minor problem at best.

Last night, we sat down in the family room to watch the copy of Casino Royale that dek9 had loaned us some time ago. It wouldn't load.

I went to living room and grabbed the DVD player from that set. Then it was off to the basement -- twice! -- to get the required cables, then find the remote, then reconfigure the player, then finally load the DVD.

On the third try.

My hardware hates me, apparently.

A bit of searching later, it appears that the failed DVD burner in the DVR can be replaced with an inexpensive LG model instead of the $350+ part I found elsewhere on line. That's good. But that bit of surgery is going to be postponed for a bit.

In the meantime, I'm buying a cheap DVD player. I'm sure I'll find a use for it...

Comments

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

I've had reasonably good luck with a subline of Philips DVD players - their big advantage is that they play *anything*. Downloads off the internet, PAL, other regions, you name it. The remotes have not been the greatest, but the performance is pretty good. And they're cheap.

[whl.livejournal.com]

And some of the Phillips players have USB ports, and will play things off thumb drives and USB hard drives.

Unfortunately, not mine, but it is such a cool feature I've considered replacing mine even though it is working...

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Sure. Some people will buy those easy-move USB hard drives for that purpose. I have the house network, and three tivos / three Windows machines with TiVo networking capabilities, so the USB feature isn't so important to me, but....

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

I debated getting a Blu-Ray player not long ago, and decided that it was a waste of money. I don't have an HD TV in the house, and my TiVos don't handle HD. Not to mention that the DVD burning software I have doesn't do Blu-Ray.