Hello,

Long time lurker, first time poster. I purchased a Sony HIL-C1 Muse laserdisc player awhile ago from a stateside seller for a relatively low price so I was able to experience MUSE for a relatively low entry price of a $300 player and $200 Muse decoder.

I hadn't used the player in a while, and recently I powered up the machine and got some scrambled video. I powered down the machine, noticed the infamous fishy smelly of capacitors leaking. When I powered up the machine again, the scrambled video was no longer there, and I was able to play a MUSE disc just fine.

However, the fishy smell still persists and I'm wondering if just a matter of time, before the player goes. Is it worth it to open up the machine and do some cap replacements as a preventative measure? Does anyone have experience with this machine? Any service manuals available? Thanks in advance for any help.

Depending on the capacitor (as long as it isn't specific to that machine), any electronics repair service might be able to fix it. I had a Sony MDP-A3 that had a capacitor go bad (blacked out the digital display on the front of the unit) and my local repair guy (not an authorized service or anything) was able to fix it.

If you know it's a capacitor problem, might be worth a shot to have someone like that check it out.

Absolutely. It isn't a question of whether capacitors will go bad, it's purely when. Operating in a hot environment will shorten their life and less than optimal circuit design will create a hot environment, and MUSE equipment did not have many generations of refinement to optimise the heat management design.

If you have any evidence of bad caps, replace them immediately. Failed caps can cause more specialised components to fail too and then you'd really have a problem.

For the simple cylindrical capacitors, my advice is to do it yourself. Just take the case off and do a visual inspection of all the electrolytic capacitors. Replace any that have the foil cap domed outwards or that are leaking anything, either from the top or if they're pushing the rubber plug out at the bottom. You do need to match the original capacitance rating (units of Farads, F), but the voltage rating is a maximum that the cap can handle, so you can safely replace with a higher rating than the original.

If you're nervous about the soldering, just watch some youtube tutorials and do an hour's worth of practice first. It's really not hard.