A while back I inherited an older Philips DVD player (from the neighbour's trash pile). As in this case discarded electronics often have some sort of functional issue i.e. they don’t work. But perhaps the cup is half full. Why not take up the challenge to resurrect the lifeless carcass? With the first deep breath the plug is inserted into a 120 V socket. In the absence of a puff of smoke or a popped circuit breaker the first test is passed with flying colours. Not much going on though. In this case a red LED in the power button was flashing. Off to Google.
Mainstream media often maligns the internet because of some of the content it makes available. Yes it does make a lot of dark corners out there that much more accessible, but for DIY repair, mods or hacks it is an irreplaceable resource. For my quest the search string was something like “DVP642 flashing power LED”. Second test passed, I did not have to go beyond the first page of results. Everything pointed to capacitor C316 on the power board. There was even a post with a picture of the board and the faulty capacitor in question.
Ready to operate. DVP642 on bench, check. Soldering iron plugged in, check. With only a couple of Philip’s screws the top came off and there right in front of me was the power board. Capacitor C316 is clearly marked. A few more screws removed and it dangles. Now in this case I, honestly, had another DVD player of a different brand that has even more problems. So I looked at its power board and there it was, a capacitor with the same specs as C316. Now the soldering iron is put to work.
Out comes the transplant capacitor, out comes C316 and in goes the transplant. All with only the solder on the board and I did not have to buy anything new. Sweet.
The moment of truth comes as I plug in the recovering DVP642. It turns on as hoped and the test DVD plays fine. Now only one problem remains. What do I need a DVD player for?