Hello,
I have the same problem and I recently took it out and put it in my computer and it played a movie. Except for some reason it won't play a game DVD It's almost the same kind of drives that they put in computers, except for an small extra plugin on the left side in the back. I'm going to put it back in the recorder case after I try to clean it using a CD cleaning disk and see if it works. I hope this helps you.
Steve Smigielski, March 2008