I've had my trusty Panasonic DMR-HS2 for a few years now & the unit has worked without a hitch... until today. I put in a disc of a sporting event someone copied for me & it tried to load the disc for over a minute & I finally received a U99 error message. None of the controls would operate. I turned it off & back on & the machine went into recovery mode & it just stays that way no matter what I do. I can't get the disc out & I don't see a pin hole to open the door manually. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Some recorders have a flip lid for the tray and some just have a tray only. I think Panasonics have a lid and a belt driven tray (some brands have gear-only driven trays).

You can unscrew the recorder's cover (make sure you have it unplugged), then push open the tray's lid and gently push out the tray by hand.

If it won't move, look in inside where you open the tray lid to see if there is any type of plastic push lever/button/tab in the right side (like where one would normally push a pin if it had a pinhole. I've only seen pin push release things in PC drives though.

I've never tried this on my Panasonic but I've done this with my other recorders and players when I had a stuck disc.

Don't know if all Panny recorders are the same, but this is from my ES-10 manual:

"Press POWER on the main unit to switch the unit to standby. If the unit does not switch to standby, press and hold POWER on the main unit for about 10 seconds. The unit is forcibly switched to standby.
While the unit is off, press and hold (STOP) and (CH^) on the main unit at the same time for about 5 seconds. Remove the disc"

I have sucessfully used this method a few times to retrieve discs that, for whatever reason, my Panny did not like.

Thanks to all who responded. I finally managed to get the disc out. I'm not sure why, but the second time I unplugged it, it finally re-set on the hard drive side so it never tried to read the DVD side contents.