DVD player "cleaning"?

[Steven Rogers]

Lately, I've been having trouble playing burned DVDs on my DVD player 
(Sony DVP-S560D). At first, I thought it had something to do with my 
Mac, but now I'm starting to see the problem with commercial disks. The 
main symptom is that the player gets "lost" while playing the disk, and 
particularly when changing menus, and flashes the wonderfully user 
friendly "C:13:00" which means "disk is dirty". But of course, it 
isn't. My DVD-Rs play fine on the Mac, and they used to play fine on 
the DVD player, but what used to be an occasional drop-out has turned 
(in about a 6 month period) into almost unplayable DVD-Rs.

I've heard those DVD player "laser cleaning" devices are a hoax, but 
I'm starting to get desperate. DVD players are so cheap, I'm not sure 
its worth it to have the thing professionally serviced. Anyone have any 
experience with this sort of thing? The player is maybe 3 years old - 
do DVD players croak that quickly?

Thanks,
SR