Samsung DVD-N501 Blue LED Mod
By Shemp Mo-Din

I love the N501, but the "standby" light bothered me. It was so bright, so red, so out of place. A nice blue one would match the display nicely, I thought. So, I fired up the soldering iron.

Well, I still need to get some pics online, but here's the info on my blue standby led mod. NOTE: perform this at your own risk. I'm not responsible for damage to your player.

I used a Radio Shack blue led, catalog number 276-311 ($2.99). It's a dollar cheaper than their other blue led, and is not as bright (which is what I was looking for). Also, the wavelength is a nice deep blue.

First off, turn off and unplug the player.

Removing the top cover of the unit is easy enough, just three philips screws

At the front of the unit you can see the small circuit board that has the nuon ports, power switch, and standby led on it. It's held on by just two screws. Remove those, and unplug the cables for the led and nuon ports.

The led shines upwards into a "light guide" that is actually what you see on the front of the player.

The original red led is a 3mm unit, the Radio Shack part is a 5mm unit, but there is just enough room for it to fit withou modifying anything else.

Desolder the original red led, replace with the blue led (be mindful of polarity) Fortunately, Samsung was nice enough to print the polarity of the led on the underside of the board if you forget.

Reassemble the unit.

On a difficulty scale of 1 to 10, I'd put this at about a 1.5. If you aren't handy with a soldering iron, or don't have one, find a friend who does - it's about a 15 minute job, from start to finish.