Hacking Shortening Laser Life?

[Bob Loblaw]

ITT Newbs that think because their system still works after playing some back-ups that burnt media isn't harder on your laser than pressed media.

Burnt media does not reflect as well as stamped/pressed (retail) media. It's along the lines of only 60% as much a retail discs reflective quality is, and that's using good quality dye.

Your laser can not and will not power itself up trying to read poor media. It will however take longer to read. Meaning the amount of time the laser is powered on is greater. Meaning the life span is shortened due to it's increased powered-on time.

 

[acky]

Woah artctic_flame, have you seen a laser operate before? The laser dot on the disc will adjust its radius until it can read the DVD. I don't think the laser itself has mechanically adjustable lenses.

Uh, yeah. It's something called "Focal length" which is a property of the lens. Which means that to be focused, the laser must be at a certain distance from the "pits" on the disc. Even on pressed discs, the depths of the pits vary slightly. So, the lens moves up and down until it focuses.

The laser doesn't have a mechanism for adjusting the focal length like devices such as cameras. There is a focal length but it's fixed. The laser can adjust is by changing the resistance on its potentiometer. When more power is required to read a disc, the resistance is lowered.

 

[arctic_flame]

Woah artctic_flame, have you seen a laser operate before? The laser dot on the disc will adjust its radius until it can read the DVD. I don't think the laser itself has mechanically adjustable lenses.

Uh, yeah. It's something called "Focal length" which is a property of the lens. Which means that to be focused, the laser must be at a certain distance from the "pits" on the disc. Even on pressed discs, the depths of the pits vary slightly. So, the lens moves up and down until it focuses.

The laser doesn't have a mechanism for adjusting the focal length like devices such as cameras. There is a focal length but it's fixed. The laser can adjust is by changing the resistance on its potentiometer. When more power is required to read a disc, the resistance is lowered.

Hehe, don't accuse me of not observing a DVD drive. The actual laser assembly moves up and down. If you have a gamecube or flip top PS2 (These are the easiest drives to observe) watch the laser when it attempts to read the disc.

 

[zosh]

The laser doesn't have a mechanism for adjusting the focal length like devices such as cameras.
Of course the laser itself doesn't, a laser only emits light. The whole optical pickup, however, is comprised of the laser along with a quite sophisticated lens configuration, along with servo motors to adjust the focus. And all of this is very much like a camera object lens.

QUOTEThe laser can adjust is by changing the resistance on its potentiometer. When more power is required to read a disc, the resistance is lowered.

Where do you get such fairy tales? How could increasing the power to the laser possibly affect the focus point?

 

[pokemongalaxy]

ITT Newbs that think because their system still works after playing some back-ups that burnt media isn't harder on your laser than pressed media.

Burnt media does not reflect as well as stamped/pressed (retail) media. It's along the lines of only 60% as much a retail discs reflective quality is, and that's using good quality dye.

Your laser can not and will not power itself up trying to read poor media. It will however take longer to read. Meaning the amount of time the laser is powered on is greater. Meaning the life span is shortened due to it's increased powered-on time.

That seems reasonable.
Personally I dont think the laser would die of backups.
Like someone else said that their ds had a bad touchscreen, same with me...I got it replaced by nintendo and got a spanken perfectly good new one. So the same thing goes for the wii in my opinion. The LASER is probobly bad to begin with.

 

[acky]

Hehe, don't accuse me of not observing a DVD drive. The actual laser assembly moves up and down. If you have a gamecube or flip top PS2 (These are the easiest drives to observe) watch the laser when it attempts to read the disc.

My apologies arctic, you are right about the laser assembly. However, it does not explain why backups eventually become unreadable without manually adjusting the potentiometer.

 

[arctic_flame]

The only thing I can think of is degrading media dye. None of my console's lasers have ever died on me.

 

[Vulpix]

It's easy to manually tune a laser if you have an oscilloscope. Maybe I should release a video on that someday.

 

[taram007]

I’ve just burned Bully for Wii and when playing I remarked that this game demands a lot of reading and spinning from the laser, there are tooooo many students on Bullworth Academy and everyone talks to you and also there is too many loadings … I don’t know if I’m right or wrong but I prefer not to play this game because I feel like it’s shortening my laser life!

 

[jonas7611]

Hopefully this will answer any questions regarding "laser life":

1. The wii laser, like any other drive laser, consists of a laser diode emitting a very shot wavelength light invisible to the eye.
That light passes through a one way mirror prism then through a focus lense and then hits the disc.
The disc then "mirrors" the light back through the focus lense and and gets diverted by the mirror prism to be detected
by a light sensitive photo diode or photo transistor.

2. The focus lense consists of a lense wich is mounted on a copperwire coil wich in itself is mounted around or very near
a metal bracket.
If the light beam is out of focus(the wii cant read the disc) the drive will adjust the current flowing through the copper coil
either raising or lowering the lense, ergo; changing the light beams focus.

3. The "clicking" noise in the drive can be two things:
The focus coil hitting the lowest point on the bracket, not dangerous in any way.
Or it could be drive sled making a stop and turning the other way very quickly, or many short stops after.

In short: Lasers do not take any damage what so ever from different kind of media.
If youve got any questions PM me.

//jontte, electrical engineer and electronics technician..