We bought a Koss dvd player a little over a week ago. The model number is KS3112-2. We played a movie twice and some mp3 music and jpeg data. It was working fine when we used it last. I went to use it the next day and the display would not come on nor could I access the player. My electrical outlet is fine. Only the red power button comes on. Other than that it is dead. What is wrong? Is this machine faulty or what?
Go with JVC. They use a direct drive spindle motor, far superior to the cheap DC brush motors Sony and Pioneer use. Unless they've recently changed motors.
Sony currently uses brush-type motors for their lower end and mid-range machines as far as I can tell (although I think they've used a brushless motor for their newer players, even in the low end DVP-NS50P if memory serves me). But, they are usually fairly reliable. Reliable enough, along with other aspects, to warrant a recommendation.
Current models of Pioneer players use, what I feel, is one of the most reliable DVD traverses I've seen. Current Pioneer players do also use brushless motors for the spindle, unlike their vintage players. Plus, the current Pioneer players use Mediatek MPEG decoders, which do not have problems with CUE and are lightning fast with DVD navigation and even have completely seamless layer changes on some RSDL DVDs and are near seamless with the ones that don't play through seamlessly. The only real caveat with the newer Pioneer players are that they don't pass blacker-than-black. The Pioneer DV-588A is a great choice overall for value and performance.
And JVC, well, you know about that already. - Reinhart
Sony's Mabuchi brush motors are anything but reliable. It doesn't take long to wear the brushes down to nubs. Open one that has quit working and look at the brushes, there's nothing left. Their laser assemblies are problem prone too.
The laser assemblies were problematic with their older models as far as I know, such as the DVP-S360 and DVP-S560D. Although, from what I've seen, those players had a fault in the "PrecisionDrive" servo control DSP which would fail and sometimes took the pickup out with it.
Now, Sony seems to be okay. I guess I've been fairly lucky not to have seen that many failed Sonys. (Although, I have seen bad Sony players). I've seen plenty of failed Samsungs, Pannys, RCAs, and some Toshibas, but not that many Sonys. But, sometimes when the Sonys go, they GO!
For the current generation, one player that Sony has which currently seems problematic is their DVP-NS975. It appears to be buggy as heck. They probably corrected the problem in later revisions, though.
And, talking about spindle motors, I'm sure you've heard about Panasonic's H07 troubles? I wonder what happened there?
At first, Panasonic produced a DVD player with a good MPEG decoder and an excellent traverse loaded with brushless motors but blew it with a failure-prone pickup. Remember the DVD-A100, DVD-A110, DVD-A115, and the DVD-A120? Then, they came out with the DVD-RV30, which is likely one of the best interlaced DVD players ever made in terms of reliability and performance. Then, they dropped the ball when they redesigned the traverse and stopped using brushless motors and went with those Mabuchis. Now, they changed their MPEG decoder and allowed their players to drop in overall quality.
Of course, Toshiba is following the same trend with their players today as well.
So, from what I know: Sony, Pioneer, JVC, higher end Denon, and Oppo are ones that I'd recommend checking out.
The Oppo is the best choice out of them all as they use an excellent Mediatek MPEG decoder and the Farjouda DCDi, which is one of the best deinterlacers out there for progressive scan (and this player has one of the best implementations of this deinterlacer). Above all, the Oppo doesn't cost an arm and a leg for what you get. It's about $200 with the only player outperforming the Oppo being the $5,000 Denon DVD-5910.
The only problem with the Oppo player is that progressive scan output is available using the DVI output only. My concern in terms of reliability is the fact that the Oppo uses a Sanyo disc drive. But, so far, I've been hearing some good things and, supposedly, their customer service is beyond reproach. - Reinhart