LD audio sounding like frying bacon halfway through a side.

Exactly as the title states. The LD title in question is the 1995 CAV box set of Thunderball. The audio is very clear until about halfway through a side. Then some light crackles start to creep into the background. This gradually increases so that nearly any noise is covered completely by this really overbearing crackling. And it happens on every side. By the time a CAV side is up, the noise has become unbearable.

At first I thought it might be improper wiring on my part in the speaker connections. Rewired all of them-still bad. Changed audio cables-still bad. Tried headphones directly into the LD player-and still bad. I've never had this particular issue happen on any of my other discs with this player. I stopped the movie and checked some other discs to make sure it wasn't my player being faulty, but everything else still plays just fine.

I checked the condition of the discs and they appear spotless. No glue residue on the edge at all. Is this a form of laser rot? A quick google search said something about the laser getting weak and being unable to read the audio.

It sounds kinda like an alignment problem now. My player stopped reading digital sound 3 minutes into the second side of another CLV disc tonight.

So I've just given it a minute to rest and popped in another CLV disc which works fine...so I've just popped back in the original disk i was watching tonight-and it's working fine again!!

I'll test the TB CAV afterwards to see if that works now...this is weird.

Sooo....would it be worthwhile to fix my player or try and upgrade to something better...the quote I was given for repair of the alignment, audio circuit etc. was about $150.

My player is a Pioneer CLD-D702 and I could upgrade to a 703 or 704 for less than the cost of repair on ebay. Or get a new 702....