Stuck in Spin: Reviving a Jammed DVD Tray

by Berik Visschers

Repair Café De Bieb, Utrecht

The first repair of today is a Sony DVD player. I can’t tell you the exact version, but from what I’ve seen, they are all built similarly.

On the inside, these machines have a box-standard DVD mechanism with a custom tray with flip door. There is a mains power supply for which almost half the space inside the device is reserved.

The fault of this device is that the tray won’t open. When pressing the eject button, I hear some motor spinning, and there is a little movement of the tray door. When I hold the flip door open, the tray comes out when I press eject.

This is a common issue with Tape, CD and DVD players. The elastic bands that are used as drive belts age and lose their tension. In this machine, the elastic band seemed to be alright. However, once a new elastic band is installed, the tray would function properly.

Replacing the elastic band

To find the belt, I manually and gently slide the tray open. I wiggle the mechanism of the spindle lift to unlock the tray. I take my time here.

Once the tray is halfway out, I can see the elastic band. I remove it with a small screwdriver.

Repair Café De Bieb has a cheap set of elastic bands with different sizes. For this tray I use one of the smallest bands, less than 4cm circumference.

To install the new band, I first wrangle it underneath the tray and behind the drive wheel. Once in place, I tension the band and hook it behind the driven wheel.

Testing

Once the belt is in place, I test opening and closing the tray five times in a row.

Works like a charm.

References

You can learn more about the elastic band replacement on this iFixit page, the brand is different, but the procedure is mostly the same.

Belts for repair can purchase in a set or exactly sized for the use case.

Second Sony DVD player repair

An almost exact copy of this machine, with the exact same issue is being repaired at the same time by one of the other repairman. They find that the small size belt is too small for that machine. Apparently different versions and production dates have different belt size. The smaller belt is so tight that the tray motor won’t spin. I don’t know the details, but they found another belt that did work for them.

1 March 2025