Here's something else I wanted to run past CXUHD owners to see if anyone else is experiencing this...
I realize that most owners of a player of this caliber will be of the bleeding-edge tech type, thus they have left their DVD collections behind for mostly UHD playback...however, I own a massive library of DVD titles and simply cannot afford to replace even my favorites (perhaps one or two at a time, but not at the present) on Ultra HD Blu-ray (if they're available at all). We also do a ton of DVD renting (can't get most new titles on Blu-ray via the "Redbox" kiosk we rent from here in the States) and own many "special editions" of films in the DVD format that we have no intention of replacing. As such, the format remains important for us, and it's vital that a UHD disc player upscale DVDs well.
That out of the way, I have experienced a strange noise when playing some DVDs in the CXUHD almost from the first day I had it -- it's difficult to describe, but it's almost like a "grinding" or "chuffing" sound. It doesn't happen at all when viewing regular or 4K Blu-rays, only with some DVDs (and, again, not all); I have been in contact with Cambridge about this over the course of months now, but what they have asked me to do, most recently, is actually send them the DVDs that I am experiencing noise with to see if they can replicate it on their end...this sounds kind of weird to me, so I'm in a bit of a standstill with this situation right now.
During this past Halloween season, we viewed the
Superbit DVD edition (region 1/A) of
John Carpenter's Vampires (
), and the CXUHD was the noisiest I ever heard it with this disc -- so loud, in fact, that the quieter parts of the film were difficult to make out (and we have a full 5.1 surround system) over the grinding noise of the tray/loading mechanism (where I assume it's coming from).
Have any other CXUHD owners experienced noise when playing DVDs? What could this possibly be coming from, any guesses? Perhaps my particular unit is simply out of spec as it came off the assembly line?
On a side note, I asked Cambridge about my using this Maxell brushless "laser lens cleaner" on a somewhat regular basis in the CXUHD:
And if it could possibly be doing "damage" to the point it is causing the noise I'm hearing in the player with DVDs (I didn't think it could, being that Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays play back without any noise) and while my contact told me he doesn't think it will cause long-term harm to the player (there are no brushes involved to touch the laser), it is certainly possible it is somehow causing the noise...
This concerned me very much, as I usually use this product after so many hours of viewing discs on my CXUHD (and have used it previously with an Oppo BDP-83), and I just can't see how this cleaner would be causing the noise (I believe I heard it before using the Maxell product, so that's even more evidence that it didn't cause it)....perhaps the spinning action of the "wind funnel" system is "loosening" the drive mechanism inside, or perhaps weakening the disc tray?
Anyone have any thoughts in this regard?