Replacing the drive in a DVD recorder?

My mum owns a Lite-On 5005 DVD recorder that she has been using for the past few years to record from TV. But recently it has been acting up a bit. It will often not accept blank media, or it will fail to read an already recorded disc.

I took a look at it today and on opening it up discovered the drive is connected using a standard IDE cable and molex power connector. So... it can be replaced with a standard PC DVD-RW. :)

I've done a bit of digging around some DVD forums and some are saying the recorder will only work when the drive is replaced with another Lite-On, and then only specific hard to source models. While others are saying they have had success with Sony and LG drives.

So I thought I would try one of my DVD-RW PC drives with the unit and see what happens.

Has anyone else tried replaced the DVD drive in a set top DVD recorder? And if so did you have any success?

I will let you know how it goes.

Looking through some of my older DVD-RW one of them is a Lite-On 812S. Now the original drive in the Lite-On DVD Recorder is a Lite-On 813S. So these two drives have to be pretty similar.

I've connected the 812S up to the Recorder and with the drive set to master the system boots up fine and shows the Lite-On menu system. It will eject from the remote too.

I initially tried some pre-recorded commercial DVDs in the drive and it just kept reading them but just displaying a blank screen. I then tried a DVD-RW disc and it recognised the disc, let me prepare it, and then let me record. So that worked. I then tried a DVD-R with a film on that had been recorded in the original drive and it played fine, and also let me finalise the disc so it would work in other players.

So now the only thing I need to work out is why it won't play commercial DVDs. Any ideas? I'm wondering if the drives region code has been set to something it doesn't like. I might have to connect it back up to a PC to see what it is currently set to.

I think you nipped it in the bud there m8y... region code needs to match the bios on the board.

you can flash (firmware update) the both of them (the drive AND the bios on the controller board), for region free :) pending on the device you have.

looks like you and google have a bit of a quest ahead, best wishes.... pack plenty of lanmus bread sam:)

Hmm... I found a firmware update that is meant to sort this out. However at the same time I came across a post where one owner said how easy it was to open up the original drive to get at the drive lens to clean it. So I just tried that and it was very easy. Just take off the front from the drive tray. Then remove 6 screws and the drive comes out. Then finally take 4 screws off the top of the drive and the whole top comes off to reveal the insides. I cleaned the lens with some alcohol and cotton buds, ressembled the lot and... it bloody worked! It will now read commercial DVDs from both regions 1 and 2, recorded DVD-Rs and RWs, and prepare and record to both. So it looks like just the lens was dirty. Well... that was easy in the end.

I'm still going to research replacement drives a bit more though as I expect the drive will die at some point.