Toshiba SD-4800 may be fried - grinding?

[SkaarjMaster]

OK, what do you guys think? Here it goes:

I rented 3 movies tonight and the first one gave a lot of grinding noises from the DVD player, never started playing and just kept grinding. The next one started grinding, but played anyway. I got to one scene at the end and had to restart that segment of the movie but it finished fine. The grinding did stop for most of the rest of the movie. Never played the 3rd DVD but might find out tomorrow. Is the DVD player toast or did I just rent some bad DVDs?

[SkaarjMaster]

Well, I just bought a new Toshiba DVD player (SD-3990) from BestBuy today.

[Ian]

Just kinda curious.. were the DVD's you rented scratched or dirty?

[SkaarjMaster]

No, they looked fine to me. Also, now the new DVD player comes up all green (component video) with wavy lines (horizontal, vertical and diagonal) going across the screen. I took it back to BestBuy and exchanged it for the same model and I'll be testing that one in about an hour.

By the way, the old unit (SD-4800) had grinding sounds when I closed the tray as well. I don't think it's the DVDs themselves.

[SkaarjMaster]

F*CK! The new 3990 unit does the same thing. I even switched it to the component video 2 plugs on the TV and the same thing. I even tried different DVDs. Also, all of them play perfect on my computer in PowerDVD. I guess I could buy new component video cables, but that can't be it because they were working fine before. I just think this particular model of DVD player just does not play well with my TV (Samsung TXM3296HF). I might have to just exchange it for the Sony model tomorrow. Anyone have any other ideas?

[Justin42]

Try hooking it up with Svideo or Composite and going through the setup to be sure everything looks ok. I'm wondering if some setting got corrupted, and maybe the Component out got switched to something incorrect.

?? (random guess but I've had it happen before)

[SkaarjMaster]

That's part of the problem. I can't even get the menu to show legibly to change it at all. Anyway, you're never going to believe this. I put away the second 3990 DVD player in the box and before I pushed our entertainment center back against the wall, I decided to hook up the old 4800 again to see WTF would happen. Well, I still had it set on Component Video 2 and VOILA , everything is fine now with a fourth DVD (rented) and no grinding noise. It is very possible that the one DVD that wouldn't play at all is dirty and just happened to play fine on the computer for some reason and the other movie we watched last night was slightly dirty and had because of that had a minor glitch near the end.

I'm still wondering WTF is with the 3990s though.......strange.

EDIT: You haven't heard the most f-ed up part yet though. Just for the hell of it, I put the most f-ed up DVD (the one that wouldn't play at all in the 4800) in the 4800 again and it plays fine now with no grinding. Could it be that my Component 1 Video port on the TV is now toast and I have to use Component 2 Video?

EDIT NEXT DAY: OK, so it only lasted one movie. The next movie I put in there the grinding was back and the movie kept stopping in parts. Looks like I'll just have to get a new DVD player. All I want is progressive scan component video with none of that HDIM (or whatever that new thing is that my TV doesn't have a connection for). Any suggestions? I might try Circuit City this time.

EDIT SECOND NEXT DAY : OK, I've narrowed the search for a new DVD player down to 3. Any reason to get one over the other two?
- Philips DVP642
- Sony DVP-NS55P/S
- Sony DVP-NS50PS
These are available at Circuit City or Wal-Mart. I believe one of the Sony players is also the same one available at Best-Buy. I'd get something with HDMI, but I don't believe my TV has that connection.

[SkaarjMaster]

Got the Sony DVP-NS50P from Wal-mart and it works fine!