Upon insertion of a disc the player searches and after 5-7 seconds it says "No Disc" and on TV it shows "This type of disc cannot be played.".

I thought it was the laser-unit which has gone bad or worn out or something, but I only have this problem with (all my) DVD discs and not with any Audio CD.

(I know the laser operates at another frequency for DVD and CD, but it's the
same laser right?)

Any tips or suggestions on what you think it might be are welcome ofcourse

Cheers,
MrSnake

It's probably becuase some Panasonic dvd players don't play plus-r media. My dmr 80h dvd recorder only plays minus and ram disks. IF I bitset my plus disks to dvd-rom booktype it will then play them fine, even DL disks.
Other then that your burner may be burning things just marginally enough that it can't read them where another more forgiving player will play them fine.
Many olderlayers only have one laser pickup instead of two and will not read any cdr media but will read pressed cd's and normal movies fine.

I forgot, I was talking about silver pressed DVD and CD discs in my first post.

Not recordable media, althought I had no problems with pressed DVD and -R discs in the past. Just now :/ I doubt if it's worn out, coz it ain't used that much really and it still plays Audio CD's.

Btw, anyone know how to update firmware or so? Can't find any, but I know that mine isn't the same like one i know in Germany.

OK, well some of the panasonic models had motor problems that cuased them to start not reading disks and give a error code on the display. Maybe yours just has a dirty laser pickup and you MIGHT be able to gently clean it off and see if it will play again, other then that it might well be worn out. most newer machines have a dual laser pickup, one is tuned for pressed cd's and DVD 's and the other is tuned for cdrw and dvdrw style disks.

It's probably the laser unit which has gone bad, I don't see what else it could be.
I already cleaned it with a lens cleaner disc and manually myself without luck.

I wonder if it's worth fixing, I have no idea what a new laser unit costs, but nowadays you can buy new and very cheapo dvd players

If not, I'll integrate it in my stereo system and use it as a CD player

You might find this interesting. My Panasonic DVD-S47 reads DVD+R, despite the manual and website stating DVD-R and RAM only, and only if you are lucky.

(I wrote a DVD+R disc using Nero Recode 2 and an NEC 3500A with NEC Firmware 2.18 which does not support booktype on anything except DL)