When I put open the entire LD tray and place a DVD or CD when it closes it makes a grinding sound. If I open the tray using the DVD eject button, which only opens the DVD size tray it works fine. It plays LDs just fine too. Is this how its supposed to work?

No it isn't supposed to make a grinding sound. Does it make this sound upon loading an LD? And I assume the sound is only upon closing of the full tray with DVD, not opening, or is it on both?

I have the same 'problem' with my DVL-V888. Only difference is that if I open and close the tray it makes a short squeaking sound. Don't know if that's the same sound you experience.

I've heard squeaky trays before, and sometimes it was just needing some lube, other times it was the load belt giving out a squeak at a certain point of tension. Occassionally it was a minor obstruction that got rubbed at a certain point. A grinding type of noise would concern me more. That usually means gear teeth gnashing as if stuck. Sometimes that's the noise the laser assembly gives off if it happens to be stuck in a position and trying to move. Or the tray load motor spinning without the tray moving quickly enough and the belt slipping can possibly be construed as a grinding noise.

I've played around a little more with it. Anytime I place a 5 in. with the entire tray open it does not detect it as anything and loud high pitched noise begins. If I place a 5 in disc with the smaller DVD tray open it works just fine. Its hard to describe the noise. I guess it would be best to open it up and see for myself what is going on.

Okay opened up the player and I figured out what is going on. It turns out it only happens with DVDs. what is happening is the LD player thinks the DVD is an LD at first, and starts to spin the DVD far too fast. I'm not sure if the DVD begins to touch something and that noise is made, but the LD player realizes its not playing an LD, retracts the LD laser, and brings out the DVD laser. The DVD then plays fine. If I insert the DVD using the DVD tray the LD player automatically attempts to play the disc with the DVD laser so there's no problems.

Another interesting thing of note. If I insert a VCD with the LD tray fully extended, the player only detects it as a CD, not a VCD. It will only detect it as a VCD if I insert using the smaller DVD access tray. Again this seems to be laser dependent.

Inserting a regular CD makes no difference regardless of what way I insert it. I didn't try a CD+G. One final note, that I should have mentioned to begin with, and I should have realized this was the problem. The LD laser lens only fails to detect the presence of a DVD at first (before loud spinning noise) on certain types of DVDs. I know the DVD units in these players are of the early kind and might have issues playing some types of commercial DVDs and DVD+-R media. Its mostly DVD burned media.

Sounds like an easy solution. Use the small tray with small discs and the large tray with LDs.

Most definitetly, and thats what I will be doing from now on.