With all the discussion concerning the lack of reliability in Harman electronics and concern for the environment related to recycling all these boat anchors, I decided to attempt to repair my ailing Harman/Kardon DVD22.

A quick Google check shows similar complaints; when turning on, the power light changes color but nothing works. There's one fix involving adding a resistor but my serial number range is beyond those and supposedly has the update. Another suggests a repair to caps on the power-supply board that are listed in the repair documentation as causing other problems.

The basic question I have, as an EE idiot is when the instructions say to measure the voltage at the pin connector . . . are we talking vDC? And does it matter what I use for the (-) for the meter? The board seems to have a common ground circuit. I assume I'm reading this with the power cord connected and the unit turned on? Carefully!

Here's the repair manual text:

"Complaint: Will Not Read Disc; Other Functions May Be Disabled
See h/k service bulletins HK2004-03 and HK2005-02, as the issues covered there involve similar symptoms.

Probable Cause: EC19 and EC20 (1000μf 16v capacitors) may be defective in the power supply. This can be checked by measuring the +3.3v and +5v voltages that are associated with EC19, 20 to see if they are low (more than 0.1v low). The SPMS output voltages are marked on the PCB adjacent to the large 13 pin header. While there is only one 3.3v pin, there are several +5v pins, and care should be taken to measure the correct one(s), which are either two +5v pins approximately in the center of the header.
The repair performed by the owner found another blown-up cap. Mine actually has four or five that look "bulged". One writer said he used 24v caps to replace the 16v caps. Why is that an improvement if the originals are 16v?

You can see photos of another person working on this same problem at this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hsp60/s...th/4353241193/

Thanks for any assistance you can offer this capacitor novice. This a nice-sounding player for CDs using two-channel audio output. I'd be happy to see it working again.