It was past its shelf date
I got home last night to hear a bizarre whirring coming from the far corner of the living room. Fortunately, there’s not a lot over there that’s capable of emitting a whir, so finding the culprit was pretty simple.
Apparently a combination VCR/DVD player was in its death throes; a motor was turning, but nothing was moving. There was no disc in the drawer. (The display actually read NO DISC, which turned out to be accurate.) There was a tape in the slot, but none of the transport controls had any effect, and Eject was fairly instantaneous, meaning the tape probably wasn’t wound around the head in playing position.
I hadn’t used this particular unit in about a year, so I’m not horribly put out about its demise, but salvaging the tape reminded me how much I hated the transition to on-screen menus. I couldn’t eject the tape until I started the unit, fired up the TV set, and then dropped down a couple of menu levels to make sure the tape section was selected; both Open/Close buttons, on the front panel and on the remote, apparently default to the DVD side. Which explains why I still have my very first DVD player, circa 2001, hooked up to the HDTV box: it doesn’t second-guess my every button push.
