RE: Life of CD/DVD Drives? (OT)

["Williams, Gerald S \(Jerry\)" <gsw at agere dot com>]

Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:
> I've had this happen several times with standalone DVD players.  It
> has nothing to do with amount of use or anything else AFAICT.

This was especially a problem with certain Sony DVD players.
Apparently they ran them too hot and used cheaper components
that they were hoping will make it past the warranty period
(although even if they don't, they charge you more money in
"handling" than a new player would cost). I think this was
especially a problem during the first round of price cuts in
DVD players (when they went from ~$750 to ~$250), since the
older 700-series Sony models were generally considered the
quintessential DVD players at the time.

There have been ongoing efforts to create class-action suits
against Sony for quite a few years now. I'm hoping one will
stick so I can get something back for the one I bought that
lasted less than a year.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that other players have
similar issues, but (knock on wood) the cheap JVC player I
bought to replace my Sony with has been doing pretty well so
far. As far as PC drives are concerned, I don't know if I've
ever kept the same DVD drive in a PC for more than 2 years.
:-)

gsw