I have a Toshiba SD-2109, which I've owned since late December of 1999. So, it's been in use for over 2 years now. A few weeks ago the DVD would not respond to the remote control, which prompted me to go out and buy a universal remote b/c I thought the remote was broken (changed batteries, still no good). Then last night, it was not responding to the universal remote suddenly, and it wouldn't respond to the standard remote it came with again. Now knowing for sure the batteries / remotes weren't the culprit (the universal remote was new, the batteries for both still new), I came to the quick fix solution of turning it off. When I turned it on again, the remotes worked.

Is this going to happen more and more until one day, the DVD will never respond to the remotes again? Has anyone had this problem before?

Thanks.

Hard to say. The IR sensor in the player might be blocked or bad.

Does the player still respond to panel controls? Does the player have any other problems?

The player still responded to panel controls, both times. Unfortunately this is an older panel so it did not have the directional arrows and 'enter' buttons that are crucial elements to navigating through a DVD menu.

No other problems I'm aware of. It may have older 'firmware' or whatever b/c it had the subtitle problems w/ the first batch of Month Python and the Holy Grail SE discs, but that's about it from what I can tell.

I've never dropped it our left it out in the heat/cold. I have boxed it and moved it a few times but that's normal stuff as far as I thought.

Another thing to try is to unplug it overnight and see if it resets itself.

If you go to Radio Shack, they have an IR sensor strip (piece of IR sensitive paper) that will show red if your remote is working. (The RS guy didn't even charge me, he just opened the package and we tested it in the store. YMMV)

I found out my remote was working, and that it probably was the IR sensor on my laserdisc player. A local A/V store said if that was the case, they could probably fix it there for pretty cheap.

This happened to mine a few weeks ago too. After changing batteries (still didn't work), I gave up and went to do something else. A few hours later it suddenly worked again. I put in the old batteries (still the ones that came with it from November '99) and it has continued to work fine. Damn dvd gremlins!

On another note, it suddenly won't play my Road Trip Unrated DVD despite playing it perfectly before. The surface of the disc is pristine. I buddy tested the disc on his Playstation 2 and it worked fine.

What's gonna go out next on this quickly aging player?

How cheap is "pretty cheap?"

Laserdisc player? Does what you say apply the same to DVD plyaers?