This was actually my dad’s idea. He did all of the work, I merely grabbed the camera and decided to write a small blurb about it.

So, rather than toss away the old DIVX/DVD Player and buy a newer, probably slimmer model, my dad decided to fix it. The problem? The DVD tray refused to open, which meant we had to “hack it” (in the traditional sense of hitting the device repeatedly until it opened) just to play a movie.

The solution was replacing the old DVD tray with another DVD unit.

Left: Old, broken one. Right: Old, functional one.

Apparently, a DVD Player is a computer, with a crappy, limited OS dedicated to playing movies, but the hardware itself was easily identifiable. The DVD used the same ribbon cables as the desktop computers have used for years, including the Power cables and the breaker pins. Some minutes later, and a quick test showed that the unit was compatible as expected. The old DVD didn’t have any sort of a funky firmware that would prevent replacing it.

The new problem was that the new DVD unit wouldn’t fit inside the old one, as it was much thicker, so my dad decided to cut out a hole so it would fit on the side.

Some heavy-duty scissoring later, and the DVD was functional, it fit almost perfectly, but there were some cosmetics that would need to be fixed. So we grabbed some duck-tape, to cover off the ugly, sharp points that cutting aluminum left.

Ah, there we go

So, now we can watch our movies (loading them on the side, instead of the front of the device), without having to hack our device repeatedly.

The lesson here is that in today’s economy, you can get a new DVD player for about the same cost as repairing an old one, creating landfills of old electronics that chinese/taiwanese kids end up going through to recycle. Rather than contribute to the problem, you can (sometimes) repair your old electronics with stuff you already have at home, as was our case.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch a tape on my old VCR.
-Nushio