I recently got a Disney Mary Poppins DVD and it's the first DVD in 100s that my DVD player (Panasonic RV-30) has had trouble playing. I put the disc in, hear the player spin up & down several times, and then get a "this is not a playable disc" message. However, if I eject the disc and re-insert it, it ends up playing after several more tries. The disc plays flawlessly on my DVD-ROM drive.

Anyway, I called Disney tech support and the support guy told me to take any DVD out of the tray, and then unplug the DVD player & leave it unplugged for about a 1/2 hour as this will "reset" it. He said it's similar to clearing your "cache" on the computer. However, being very familiar w/computers, I don't understand why this would work.

Can someone please shed some insight for me? I've also read on some other reviews of Panasonic DVD players where over time, they start locking up or not playing, and it takes a reset of the player (both unplugging & whatever it says in the manual) to restore it. It just doesn't make much sense to me, but I don't know the inner workings of a DVD player.

A friend of mine also has a pretty old Sony DVD player and he says he has to do this with every disc he has. Could he also have the same problem I do?

Thanks for whatever insight you can give me.

As long as power is stored in the capacitors the player has the potential to stay in an error condition.

Not sure if that answers your question but this is a known method of "fixing" all kinds of electronic devices including DSS receivers.

Whacking it with a shoe a la Paulie Walnuts never hurt either.

cold booting (what unplugging it is called in the tech support world) also allows any static charges to dissipate, in addition to resetting the hardware
it's the first thing I have callers do at work, although usually just leave it unplugged for a minute
had a vcr the other day that would eject a tape as soon as it was inserted. cold booted for about a minute and it started working correctly again
I've had 'no disc' errors fixed on dvd players doing it too.

Hey all - thanks for the advice & info. Unfortunately, in my case, after doing the "cold boot" Mary Poppins still refuses to play. I'm going to lend it to a friend & see if they can get it to play in their DVD player. That way we can see if it's possibly a defective disc.

Any other suggestions?

That is a good idea. It is not as frequent but some players have problems with some discs. I have not heard of this one but your test should confirm it.

Maybe it would rather watch some more of that pr0n instead of Mary Poppins.

Maybe this Panasonic player has problems with the Mary Poppins dvd?
Try to locate another person with the same dvd player or another Panasonic dvd player and see if they have problems with Mary Poppins too!
If you have a dvd player in your computer try it there.
If you don't have the problem in your computer, it's probably an incompatibility problem with Mary Poppins and your dvd player.

Also does your friend have a 1st generation Sony dvd player?