My brother and I got my mom a DVD player for Christmas a few years ago. All of a sudden, it just wouldn’t turn on. Don’t know what I ever did without the internet, because Google revealed that it’s a common problem with a simple fix. You just have to replace the capacitor component 316.

I was very intimidated by the words capacitor, board, and solder, so I left it to my brother to fix—the MIT grad. But MIT grads who work at Knight Securities in the IT department (and, no, it wasn’t him) and have small children often have long to-do lists. In the meantime my mom bought a new one. So I brought the broken one home with me and decided to tackle it.

There are a couple of posts/videos that I found extremely helpful:

This forum post is what started me down this road. One comment gives step-by-step instructions for the soldering novice. And there are always people chiming in with extra tips:
Philips DVP642 problem (nothing works)

This video is helpful in that he shows you exactly which capacitor you need to change and where the matching connectors on the bottom are. Don’t worry that he doesn’t show you how to solder, because the next video below is excellent for that.

This video is a general one about how to replace a capacitor. The video is great at the close-up shots:

So armed with the instructions, I set off.

The first thing I had to do was drive to Radio Shack to buy the capacitor and solder (I already had a soldering iron). The capacitor you want is #272-1032, which is 1000u and 35 volts. It costs less than $2. The solder was more expensive, about $7. I got 60/40 Rosin Core, .05 diameter.

Step 1: Remove the cover