Hmm, turns out I have a disk cleaner that I bought for my cd player, that says it works on a dvd player. Except now I can't even get the dvd player to open. It just sits there. Won't open, won't play, nothing. It says it's opening and closing and loading disks, but it does nothing. And yes, I unplugged and replugged it in a few times.

Anyone got any suggestions? As it is, there's a Netflix disk stuck in there I'll have to get out, one way or another...

Consuela, there's usually a hole in the bottom of a DVD player that will let you manually open the drawer.

Ooof, Consuela, my sympathies. My DVD player died last weekend. I think there is a Murphy's Law for the pre-Christmas gift-buying season.

Mine was only a cheap Cyberhome I got from Best Buy four years ago, and I have to admit I got my money's worth from it. Never had any hint of trouble with it until suddenly the only thing that worked was the power-on light. It still had one of my Firefly DVDs in it, and it did not have a manual release hole.

The few parts that now remain don't even make a decent doorstop.

Disassembling the machine was actually kinda fun, and I got my DVD back okay, but I noticed that the manual release mechanism worked just fine -- all that was missing was a simple little hole in the right place on the case.

Grrr.

Office Depot's clearance section online includes a couple of Apex DVD players for under $18. [link]

Manual release hole? Awesome! I shall try it.

You usually have to stick a pen or a pin in and move the gears yourself.

My tool of choice is an unbent paper clip, the answer to many of life's dilemmas.

The unbent paper clip opens many doors.

Unbent paper clip
My simple key, always there
Opens many doors

If I wanted to paste in some ASCII art here, what would be the easiest way?

The <pre> tag would work, but the font is too narrow. Maybe a <pre> tag inside a <code> tag?

eta:

<pre> and the courier font?

test: