KISS Media Player + Smoke = Problem

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On Friday I was watching a DVD and all of a sudden the image froze and the player became unresponsive, I tried restarting the player but the system got stuck on the boot up process, it was at this point I noticed the odd smell and the smoke seeping from the DVD player draw. The DVD player is part of the Linksys KISS media player I bought last year, something I was hoping would last longer that 14 months.
With the player being just outside of warranty and not wanting to throw away a £180 piece of equipment I decided to open it up and try and find the cause.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what the player looks like inside, there is a power supply along the bottom left, a standard DVD ROM drive and a circuit board along the back.

The circuit board has a few obvious parts to it, at the top is a VIA chip, I initially thought this was a sound chip but a quick search for the part number VT6212L reveals it's true purpose, a 4 port USB hub. This must be designed to act as an interface between the USB port on the back panel and the rest of the system because I can't think of any other parts that run on the USB bus.

Next to this is a Realtek RTL8100C, this is the fast ethernet controller

Below this is a Mini-PCI Wireless LAN adapter which has the 2 antenna connectors attached to it.

Below this is a large chip, this is the video processor chip in this case a Sigma EM8622L.

Finally at the bottom is a Silicon Image SiI9030 chip which is the HDMI interface, this controls communications and encryption across the HDMI link.

Also on the board is a ST Electronics 64Mbit flash memory chip and 2 Nanya RAM chips.

As you can see from the image above there is no obvious damage, at least nothing that would cause the smoke I saw, this led me to believe the problem was in the DVD ROM drive. After spending 10 minutes fiddling round with it and eventually breaking several bits of plastic I managed to release the drive, when I removed the circuit board I found the following.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chip had heated up and started to melt the plastic which was right above it, this could have been bad if this had happened when no one was around. The good news is the problem is hopefully contained to the drive which is a standard IDE DVD ROM drive and should be easily replaced.

I will post an update when the replacement drive has arrived.