# Repairing a Panasonic DMP-BD65 Blu-ray player



## TexasWineGuy (Jun 19, 2017)

Problem found and fix for Panasonic Blu Ray player DMP-BD65 that will not play Blu Ray discs

My Panasonic Blu Ray player failed to play Blu Ray discs after a few years. DVDâ€™s are good to go. A quick Google search turned up hundreds of others with the exact same issue: Blu Rays wonâ€™t play but DVDâ€™s are fine. No solutions were found using Google that day.

However, I found the fix.

Iâ€™m writing this up and posting on the internet because I know there are MANY other people out there that have the same problem, so maybe this will help someone else.

Rather than trash it and spend another $150 bucks I decided, after much â€œencouragementâ€ from my 9-year old daughter who owns several Blu Ray discs, I decided to crack it open and first clean the laser lenses. Note: I have been in the electronics industry for 30 years to Iâ€™m not in uncharted territory. I removed the top cover, the entire rear panel, and the internal cover to the disc drive itself. See pic below.

I found the laser lenses to be quite clean, with only a small amount of tiny dust bunnies in the chassis itself, all of which were quickly removed with gentle blast of compressed air. While there I did gently clean the 2 laser lenses with a Q-tip and some isopropyl alcohol. 

Then I discovered this: a bloated and slightly discolored capacitor on the Power Supply board. (see pic below with red arrow pointing to the capacitor in question - note, this pic was taken after the CAP was replaced.)No way was that capacitor working properly. It was a 68uF, 35V Electrolytic capacitor. I removed it from the board (as I have soldering irons and small tips), and measured it with my Fluke DVM. Surprisingly it still has some value to it - 14uF to be fairly precise, but thatâ€™s too low for a filter cap in this circuit. Also, with the physical bloating caused by _excessive heat_ in that area, I knew it was close to a catastrophic failure. I replaced this capacitor with a 100uF, 50V Electrolytic cap.

Why did it get hot enough to fail you ask? Because Panasonic in their zealous efforts to save a penny did not require the manufacturer to apply thermal grease between a TO-220 Voltage regulator and its attached heat sink, which is right right next to the above capacitor. (see component circled in red) The Regulator could not dissipate the necessary heat from its internals, so it heated up the entire area. I stumbled upon the absence of thermal grease because although I assumed there was thermal grease between the heat sink and the Regulator, I decided to see if there was enough, and also to see if the grease had dried up and become less effective. I removed the heat sink from the Regulator (a single 4-40 phillips screw) and to my surprise found NO thermal grease at all. That explained the excessive heat in the area of that regulator and that one capacitor. Obviously I applied a layer of thermal grease over the entire heat sink backing and reattached it to the Regulator. (see close up pic showing the white Thermal Grease on the Voltage Regulator back) The regulator will now operate at least 25-30 degrees cooler, in my opinion.

I put everything back together, connected the player to our Surround Sound system and handed the remote to â€œthe checkerâ€ - my daughter. Somewhat to my surprise it played all Blu Rays that we threw at it. It works like new. Although I donâ€™t have a schematic my thoughts are: with the capacitor failing, and the high temperature of the voltage regulator, Iâ€™m betting that the 5 volt or 3.3 volt buss was noisy, so the high data-density Blu Rays could not be read properly.

A few things to consider: I understand that very few people have the tools or skills to make this repair, but itâ€™s likely that they may know someone who does, or may have a local repair shop they can take their payer to. Knowing what to do in advance should make this a 20-30 minute job at worst. Itâ€™s a quick fix.

You will need a very small tube of heat sink Thermal Grease, and I recommend a 100uF, 35 or 50V Electrolytic capacitor. An Electrolytic capacitor is polarized meaning it must be installed with the positive and negative leads of the component in the correct places on the board, else it will pop like a cork on the board.  

Note that there are other Panasonic models that are similar to to this one, including the DMP-BD655 and DMP-BD45. I suspect that the power supply board may very well be the same for each of these models.

In conclusion, this problem, which MANY people seem to be experiencing, could have been avoided if Panasonic would have specified the usage of 2 drops of Thermal Grease on that heat sink. It is an industry standard practice to apply Thermal Grease between a heat sink and a component.

Good luck.


TWG


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