Recently my DVD player (Panasonic DVD-S75) has ceveloped a strange fault.

After playing normally for an hour or so, sometimes longer, it will pause and I can hear a whirring sort of motor type noise. Then it will resume play for a few minutes before doing it again. This re-occurs over time more frequently as play continues.

The other night I unplugged it from the electric socket and when I tried it the next night, it played well for almost two hours then started pausing again.

I've unplugged it again so I'll see what happens tonight.

Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong?

Perhaps it is overheating.

I don't know if it's overheating, do you know how can I check this?

It's certainly not external heat as it's winter here (13 degrees C) and the player worked well all through summer (30-40 degrees).

I hope it doesn't fail altogether as it has 5.1 ch connections to link to my HiFi for surround sound. New players available don't have 5.1 anymore.

Try running a lens cleaning disc through it, if that doesn't fix it just replace it, much cheaper than taking it in to be fixed.