The scenario that has come up that prompted me to use my Discwasher device was when a player was already having problems playing discs reliably, ie skipping, dropouts, etc. and cleaning the disc itself did not help. At some point, if a player is already apparently not working as it should, there is probably little harm in trying to clean the laser however possible. But again, I have not had much success with the Discwasher device delivering any results.