Fixing broken UB820 UHD player

[captainsolo]

My UB820 decided to go bad one month out of warranty. The disc tray will no longer open and close. I finally managed to get my disc out by moving the white plastic switch on the bottom and pulled the tray out. The disc was fine.
The player powers up and the tray will retract if open but never open on its own. All other functions work perfectly and if there's a disc in there it will play normally-just never come out again. I've dug around and seen others with the same problem. It's apparently the drive or belt under the disc tray that goes bad and can be repaired....but I can't remove the tray inside because of this one darn ribbon cable attaching it.

Has anyone dealt with Panasonic player repair or UHD player quirks like this? I really don't want to send this off to the third party repair shop or buy another one I can't currently afford. This is becoming a more prevalent and known issue which is super infuriating.

[alleycat]

Don’t know if you’ve seen this but there is a post here that describes how they fixed a dead spot on the tray gear;

https://www.reddit.com/r/4kbluray/commen...?rdt=37581

[HippieDalek]

I'm not a hands on hardware kind of person, but I once fixed up a broken laserdisc player that had very similar symptoms; turned out to be a broken cog that I was able to easily replace myself.

With a screwdriver, a bit of patience, and being careful to remember how things fit back together (take pictures, even film yourself taking it apart if it helps) then a belt should be a very easy fix.

[stwd4nder2]

It's apparently the drive or belt under the disc tray that goes bad and can be repaired....but I can't remove the tray inside because of this one darn ribbon cable attaching it.

If it's a belt it shouldn't be too hard to fix. Is that ribbon cable soldered in?

[captainsolo]

It's apparently the drive or belt under the disc tray that goes bad and can be repaired....but I can't remove the tray inside because of this one darn ribbon cable attaching it.

If it's a belt it shouldn't be too hard to fix. Is that ribbon cable soldered in?

It seems like it. I’m not too experienced in repair but in theory it sounds similar to an LD player belt. I had been reading that same Reddit post above to first try and diagnose what was going on. None of the factory resets worked and the only way I got the disc out and the tray to open was the switch on the bottom in the little slot.