As the drive’s front fascia plate is still attached and the tray would not open, the front of the unit has to be removed too.

Removing the drive in this state requires removing the three ribbons that connect the drive to the green PCB, and undoing the two silver screws near the rear. The brown board in front is the power supply board. Under this lid, we see that the optical drive assembly takes up most of the space, and it’s a “bare bones” plastic unit with some of the drive electronics integrated into the smaller green PCB that contains the rest of the brains (i.e. The unit is extremely cost-minimised and as a result, it only has two black screws to hold the outer lid on.

The model number sticker with region coding is adhered to the underside, which is a little different. The unit has a USB port for playing files from as well as the optical drive.Īs part of the cost reduction, it features only HDMI output, with coaxial for audio and LAN for data (including network media play, firmware upgrade). The player is a very compact unit, rather unassuming, light and flimsy but with a decent remote control that has “clicky” buttons. This is a fairly common issue with almost all tray-loading optical drives, so I decided to use the opportunity to show the insides of the player as well as the components that make up the tray-load mechanism.

It would try to eject, making a half-clunk before stalling, timing out, and clunking again. I decided to try and watch something just yesterday, and to my annoyance, the tray would not eject. Since the initial first few weeks, the unit’s not seen much action as watching things on a TV (centrally located) has fallen out of favour to watching video on a personal device (be it a phone, tablet or computer) and optical discs have also fallen out of favour compared to streaming. At the time, there were a few units, but the Philips BDP2180/79 was the cheapest at AU$89, which was pretty much the same price as most regular Blu-ray players. I decided to opt for a 3D capable unit, so as to have something to watch on the new TV. Around three or four years ago, coincident with my purchase of a 3D TV, I decided to buy a Blu-ray player.

Apple dvd player teardown