My three-year old Panasonic BluRay player seems to be on the way out. Lately it's been refusing to play discs - at last count, 1 or 2 DVDs and 2 BluRays. Just now, the DVD refused to load twice (the disc surface was nearly flawless, and played fine in a laptop), and then when it finally got going it stuck at 1h18m and wouldn't budge. Trying to open the drive didn't work, turning it off took about 4 times longer than normal, and when I turned it back on again it still wouldn't open the drive. As I write this, the disc is still inside the drive. A secondary fault I've noticed, but which I guessed at the time was a cable fault, was some funny lines appearing on both the TV picture and the On-Screen Display. I pegged it as a cable fault, because I unplugged it and re-plugged it in again, and the lines disappeared. But both faults make me suspicious that the player is on the way out.
What do you think I should do? Is there a place in Palmerston North that services BluRay players? And is it worth it? It's only three years old (model DMR-BW880) and it wasn't cheap, so I'm loathe to just toss it. I could always take it back to Harvey Norman, but it's hard to replicate the fault and Murphy's Law suggests that they won't find anything wrong with it. What do you think?